Perfect Golf Pitching - Accuracy & Control 30 - 90 yards

Hi, I'm Mark Heineman from Get Golfing.ie and today we're at the fabulous Beaufort Golf Club in Killarney County Kerry, South West Ireland, continuing our series of instructional videos that are designed to help you play your best golf. And today we're looking at the pitch shot, okay, in particular the low flighted high spinning pitch shot. Let's take a look. Often a part of the game that I see club golfers struggling with because it's neither a chip and run from a closer distance and it's not a full distance golf swing where we can hit a golf shot with a with a full swing, okay. So it's that sort of shot that's in between. A little bit of confusion often arises here and how to go about this one. So I've looked at the top players in the world over a number of years at this particular shot and a few common points that actually crop up there. Generally play the ball with a quite a low flighted trajectory, a lot of spin on the ball so it stops quite quickly generally on like the second or third bounce, doesn't really roll a whole lot when it actually lands on the green, okay. And take very little divot, so very shallow at the bottom of the swing here, very broad base to the golf swing, okay. So like any shot in golf there's a number of things we need to consider in the setup first to give us the best chance of success, okay. So certainly ball position here, trying to keep the ball fairly centered between your two heels, okay. So somewhere in line with the sternum and sitting on a slower pace swing like this we see the base of the swing going to be somewhere around sternum between our two heels, okay. So ball position, second thing there what I like to see is a slightly open stance. So if we were to take a look here in terms of the address position, toe line I've got the actual left foot drawn slightly back, so my left toe is pretty much equal to the instep of the right shoe here, okay. But don't get caught by allowing the shoulders to go too much to the left, it's really only just the toe line that we want open. So it's basically setting our left side, left foot back and the idea of that it just allows us to turn and keep the rotation of our body going through the shot, okay. So we've got ball position, we've got a slightly open stance here with the toe line, okay. And the third thing that I'd be looking at here would be to have the body weight marginally left footed, okay. So maybe like 60 percent at most, just for a bit of stability and to give us a slight angle of attack that's on the way down, okay. So again three key things in the setup there that I want you to bear in mind. We've got the ball position, we've got a slightly open stance with the toe line and third thing there is that I've got my body weight marginally left footed, okay. So maybe 60 percent on the left side, okay. So once we've got the setup under control and one of the key things we're going to look at here is using the bounce on the club, okay. So essentially using the back edge of the club here, back edge of the sand wedge sole to hit the ground before the front edge does, okay. So certainly we don't want to see too much of what I call handle pulling or pulling the handle this way, okay. That's going to give us a lot of front edge and take all the bounce off it, okay. So feel as though the shaft is fairly neutral at the start and more importantly at impact, okay. So certainly this setup position and the impact shouldn't really differ a whole pile, okay. As I said we certainly don't want too much of this type of action going on here where the handle gets too much in front of the head, okay. So we want the head to return fairly neutral back to where it was and again feeling as though that this part of the sole of the club actually hits the ground before the front edge does, okay. So from there on what we've got to remember is that the length and the pace of your swing will determine how far the golf ball actually travels through the air, okay. So certainly on a shorter shot that's going to require a shorter swing. On a longer shot that's going to require a longer swing but always try and maintain the length of the swing to be equal on both sides of your body, okay. So let's give that a try, okay. So a short distance shot, short swing, okay. Longer distance shot is going to require a longer swing on both sides back and through, okay. So certainly this type of shot is all about trying to get the ball to land a particular distance, okay. So it's important that you know how far the shot is and how far a particular swing is going to actually send that ball through the air, okay. So what I want you to bear in mind, try to think of a clock face, okay. So what we've got up here, 12 o'clock, 6 down below, 9 and 3, okay. So trying to match up your hands on both sides of the swing equal, okay. So set up good and what I'm going to think about on this one is a swing that's along the lines of 8 o'clock to 4 o'clock. So that's where my hands get to, okay. Okay, if I want to add a little bit more distance to that I'm going to work my hands more along the lines of 9 to 3, okay. That's gone about 10 or 12 yards further than the last one, okay. And final one, thinking here now a little bit further, I'm going to go more towards 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock, okay. So again another 10 yards or more through the air than the previous balls, okay. So once you've got the setup correct, again the length and pace of your golf swing will determine how far the ball travels through the air, okay. So with one club you actually get three very accurate distances that the golf ball travels through the air, okay. So I'm Mark Heineman, that's our pitching lesson for today. Hope you find something there that helped you. Check out the rest of my YouTube videos there on the other areas of the game of golf and hope you'll find something that you like.