Correct me if I'm wrong, but hitting a decent drive and
then screwing up your pitch shot is so frustrating. But there is a way that is so simple, so reliable. It is perfect, and it is especially
perfect for older golfers, senior golfers. First of all, I want you to grip the club in
the palm of your lead hand. Why? It is gonna help neutralize
the hands a little bit. To stop the flipping that we don't like, I want you to place the club not so
much in the fingers like we do with the regular grip, where you can
see the knock, you know, two, three knuckles on the left hand.
I want you to place it in
the palm of your hand just a little bit more, okay? What that's gonna do is enable
you to just see maybe one knuckle, something like that here as we look at
the club and place your right hand on it as normal, but as we take the grip, it should feel like we can't
really move the wrist too much. We have suppleness still, but we don't have that
much sort of motion. The next thing I want you to do is
perhaps the most important thing, let's say your setup is
sort of square in this way.
The feet are in line with the
shoulders, the knees, things like that, and we are parallel to our target line. If you sort of stand like
this for your wed shots, what happens a lot of the time is
the swing will sort of come over and the shot can often get
pulled to the left, right? We start trying to get a bit more handsy, trying to control it a bit more
because as we get a little bit older, we slow down a little bit. So we need to try and make sure
that we clear our lower body out the way, and one of the easiest ways to do that
is test to pull the left foot back and turn the left foot out so it's fled. What that's gonna do is
help us swing through without having to rotate, without having to sort of spin the hips
or make sure we get everything through.
Once we've got an open setup, the club can just glide through
with minimal resistance, okay? But from here we just our gravity
to pull that club through. It's so easy and effortless, but let's make sure that you get the
angle of attack better by working on your rotation. One of the biggest improvements to your
pitching will be when you stop being so steep when you're not trying
to rock the shoulders, okay? That tends to happen. People thinking they're trying to get
a bit more spin or get the ball first. What happens is the shoulders tend
to sort of rock like this, okay? So they rock back and they rock
forwards. That's inconsistent. What we want to try and do is
actually have the shoulders turn a little bit more level.
What's that gonna do? It's actually gonna help
a multitude of things, but one of them is to have
a shallower bigger margin for error.
Make some swings. If
you've got a lineman stick or a club, that's great. I'm just
using this for a visual, but what we're gonna feel is as
we sort of make our back swing, we are not tilting up this way. The shoulders are actually
turning a little bit flatter. It's gonna feel like we're a little
bit more rounded this way and a little bit more rounded this way, okay? That's
the feeling that we're gonna have. But what you're gonna do is resist the
lower body a little bit here, okay? We are not trying to make
a big turn or anything.
All we're doing is trying to allow
the club to hit the same kind of area every time with minimal resistance, with minimal manipulation or effort, and having a slightly shallower
angle of attack and a flatter turn is gonna give us exactly that. So practice in front of a mirror. Notice what you are feeling as you
make these sort of little turns with your chest. Resist the
lower body on the way back. You don't have to really worry
about it on the way through, but we're just gonna turn
here and turn that way. I want you to check your
ball position sounds boring, but with pitches it has a big effect. Make sure that it is not too far back
in your stance because if you do this thinking is gonna give you more
backspin, a lower ball flight, it's not gonna work out for you
because what happens is you end up digging more into the ground, even if you strike the ground
at the same time as the ball. But what happens is you
will strike the club, you strike the ball higher up the face, and that's not gonna give the
nice controlled flight we want.
That's gonna give a shot. That's more like what you see out
rough when it kind of dips this way. We don't want that. We want
control. So put your feet together, stand a little bit wider and
make sure that you do not have it anywhere near the back of your stance. I would say really want
to have it almost lead heal. That's probably the main checkpoint
that is gonna give most of you the most precision and consistency.
I told you
I've got a bonus tip, right? Well, using one club, you can
get several distances, whether it's 50, 60, 90 yards, it depends. But all you need to do is this. I've got a 50 yard shot here just a
little bit ahead of where we were before, but what do I do? Do I change clubs? Do
I try and hit it a bit higher? Nah. Ah. All I do is narrow my stance.
That's it. And the way to decipher what's gonna
work best for you is just to hit a few shots and practice even
on a hole like this. Just drop a couple of balls down
and notice how far they go when you adjust your stance. So that's where I
was before with this distance, right? So now I'm just gonna
stand a little bit closer. Bit more weight is on the the front side. I'm following exactly the
same checkpoints and turn and brush it through. what hand is going to
be more dominant. Okay? Doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be
your right if you're right-handed or left. If you're left-handed. It is about the feel that we
want for this particular shot because we don't need to, as I
said, do so much where we post up, where we aim really connected and
accelerate through with smooth. We can just allow this club to drop, and
as long as we are not in our own way, we are gonna get that low
consistent spinny flight without effort.
So how do we make sure
that that happens for you? Try and feel just a throwing action, okay? Whether it's an underhand pass with
your right hand, with your trail hat, whether it's that feeling or maybe it's
the left hand where you're just sort of throwing it that way if you like, that feel almost a tennis backhand
or a ping pong or something where you're a little bit firmer
with the left wrist. I don't particularly
care which one you do, but it's the emphasis
that I want you to have. It is about allowing
that club to just glide, to stay stable and move through. Okay? We're not using the body,
we're not using the legs, we're using weight and just
pushing or pulling the club. I can't tell you which one
is gonna work best for you. You have to just test it out.
You don't
even have to use all of those things. Some of them are optional, like the grip, but I would suggest that you make
sure that you change your stance, that you resist the lower body, and that you just feel like you
are throwing the hands through that you're not trying to rotate hard. That you can feel the way to the club
and allowing it just to drop through and brush through. That's what I'm thinking
about. It's passive hands. It's easy. Watch always, my friends always choose
your target. Remember, we don't want high floater here. We want to make sure it goes over that
little hump of the front of the green, but we don't wanna send
it way up in the sky. We want low and controlled with spin.
So we choose our intermediate point, always aim the club
first.
I take my setup, I move my foot back, I flare my foot out. I've got a slightly weaker grip,
and now I'm just going to turn there and brush through. Very
passive with the lower body, but it's just so easy to get the distances that you want..