HOW TO CHIP AND PITCH IN GOLF - THE 50 YARD PITCH SHOT

 Full Transcript 

Hey everybody Danny Maude here thanks for joining us this week we're going to look at pitching and specifically this kind of awkward 50-yard distance I don't know if you find the same but a lot of my clients find that this distance from 50 ad it isn't a full swing it's one as awkward little half swings and they struggle to strike the ball on a consistent basis and they really struggle to judge distance control as a byproduct so what I want to cover in this week's training is exactly how you do both we're gonna start with set up we're gonna then go through some of the mechanics and we're going to go through some common faults I see with a lot of my clients so let's get cracking the setup really basic what we're trying to do here is we want to have a nice tall posture but nice and balanced too often I see people with too much knee flex close too short club and they're sitting back here get the weight onto the balls of your feet here and a nice good strong tall posture here because it's a short shot we're going to go down the grip here to give yourself some control and from this angle we're going to have the stance around about two and a half Club widths apart with the toe turned outwards we turn the toe outwards to provide some room to come through the shot the next thing we're going to do is the ball position is going to be nice and central in our stance here all right directly under a sternum and the reason being which now brings onto mechanics is the Keillor mechanics is understanding that pitching is all about controlling the weight of this golf club if you can control the weight of it you can control distance control and you can control direction what we want to do is we want the way to the club to fall literally fall by the way directly underneath our balance point of our sternum that is the strike point on the ground it is different therefore to a standard iron shot where we're trying to compress a ball when we're trying to hit a neck and a tine along a long way we want to complicate the ball than the turf or the ground contact is quite a bit after the golf ball we don't want that with pitching because we don't want power we want to be a control power donut that want these sudden the ball flying off the face right so because of that it's a different type of strike we want the club's bottoming out right underneath our sternum so literally where the ball is all right so the next thing is well how do we do that how do we control the weight good question so from here this is how we control the weight from this position I see too many golfers slinging the weight around the corner right when it goes around the corner here where does the weight one to fall back right from this position we have no way of pitching we're going to have to reroute the club and we'd have to flash our hands at it we can't drop the club on to the golf ball there if the clubs in this position so the first thing to do is understand that when we're swinging and one we're pitching here we want the club to come back nice and simply here but then the wrists gently [ __ ] and put the club in a much more upright position that's the first thing so the way to the club now is in a higher more upright position gives us a chance now to what drop the club back under our balance point here so a nice high position and we're going to drop the club back under is it as simple as that not quite because if you're lucky enough to start to get this position right where the clubs now in a much more vertical position here you'll notice one thing the club here is where the way to the head is where behind us now without you realizing I see this a lot of people the club there can often feel like it's going to fall and what people do is they react to this the weight falls behind their knees drop and they get into this position here now look from here can we drop the club on the bar from there no we can't so what we do instead is get the hands work into active right this is causes major problems as you can imagine with strike and this is control so what's the answer the first thing to do is to become aware of it when you swing the club back here you want to realize you won't have been aware it necessarily you want to get the weight hold the weight in position don't let the weight fall let it come down and then look then just get this insertion it's look releasing here and dropping where the balance point or our sternum is let me show you how this works so from this position here I'm swinging back and I'm going to let the weight now for look influence of me here and down and away we go and it gives a wonderful spin watch the spin now next to flag Obama's on huh we're dropping down here that's how you get that lovely check right and it's how you get the strike let me show you from this angle here so from here what we're doing is the club swinging back and I'm letting the club look fall like this just literally fall down what I'm not doing is hanging on here and doing this right see this whole hell of a lot we golfers whatever do what we're doing I'll show you that one more time we're getting your nice tall posture here slow motion we're swinging back the weight wants to fall we're not gonna let it we're gonna let it come down here and watch this it works now gently on a mini act we'll let it fall down now one thing that you will need which a lot of clients do not have is anything a lightness in your grip if you've been struggling the pitching the chances that you know it but tense right so you need to soften that grip and get the sensation of this club falling right now your note I'm just going to one hand this is a great exercise here just one hand just getting them feel the weight dropping right under that sternum their right softer grips are allow you to feel more of this weight all right now once you've done that we want to learn distance control distance control for me is about pace control in terms of the rhythm of your swing which is often the link to the length of your swing a lot of golfers when they're pitching here their swings are far too long right they get to this position here they get into almost a full swing position and then they can only do one thing if they were to commit to this they would go through the green so consciously they would never do this so what you need to do and instead what they do is they decelerate through impact right we don't want that so for most average hitting players right we want to swing to about this distance we're gripping down the club it's about a quarter turn of the body and the hands here are about AB height with a gentle wrist [ __ ] that for most people is enough backswing to generate enough power to go about 50 yards let's show you what this looks like so swing to about here and they're gonna let the club just fall down in front of my body here and away we go fall down come on this time going not far off so you can see here enough energy and they've stored in the backswing here to generate enough power to fall and go 50 yards if for you if you know below-average not a problem go back a fraction further but just be aware that the length of your battery if it gets too long you're just going to have to do a lot of deceleration which is very very tricky to control strike and distance control so let's have a look now at some of the common problems I see when I'm coaching golfers in terms of their ability or inability to strike it so let's have a look at this from here so again what do we try to do we want to let the way to the club fall right under our sternum here that's when the key factors right that's how we generate the strike and by allowing the weight to do the work okay it's also how it helps with the distance control as well so again stands to inherit bits apart dripping down the club what I'm gonna do here and then swing bats a little quarter turn I'm going to let the club fall now back on the Mike stone I'm not going to drive it here and you let the called fall back underneath and then watch this I pick up the turn on the way through have a look at this and away we go I should spin nicely lovely really really under control so here's some things I find that Oh with a lot of golfers and again it's often a misconception they've often thread I'm not striking the ball I'm thinning the golf ball I've got to try and keep my hands ahead and I see too much of this is very different type of strike through an iron shot where we're trying to compress a golf ball too often I see golfers trying to do this that they've got their hands way ahead of the golf ball here in order trying to strike the ball first and all that does he leads to the club lagging miles behind and when the club lags behind here we react to that and end up basically thinning the gob off getting hands way over active the other problem this is the leading edge often then as an alternative gets digging into the ground we don't want that we want the bounce to be working with our pitching we want it to be bruised in the ground here and when that Club falls down here the leading edge and the bouncer level right we're gliding through the surface I'm barely taking any turf out here really helps me the connection that really helps me judge the distance control on all of these shots so that's some another look at this little quarter turn here and then allow the club just to fall now back in front of the body

pretty good not bad let's summarize so let's summarize how do we control disses control and strike without pitching step one starts with the setup get yourself nice and upright right nice and balanced on the balls of your feet grip down the golf club so you've got some control right from this position get the board position in the middle of our stance directly under the sternum with our left toe pointed outwards that is basically set up right then we said look after that point we've got to control the weight of this golf club right when we swing it I've got a 56-degree here when I'm swinging this the weight here is key we want the wait to fall right under a balance point here when the club swings back we want to fall here what we don't want it to do is fall behind or get too far this way right we want the club to the weight of it to fall right under here what do we say how do we achieve that well we said look it's not always easy to achieve right because unconscious is what a lot of you may be doing is when you get to a backswing here we want the club you know in a wrist cocked position but what tends to happen with a lot of guys is the react to the weight falls behind them without them realizing and they get they're stuck in this position here very very dangerous right or vice versa the weight falls behind and they they sling it this way that's the other thing so what we want to do is once you start to become aware of these things you then go okay right I'm gonna swing to here feel the weight of the club I'm going to just practice letting the club look work on this mini AK and let the weight drop now and as it works this mini I look at my bodies naturally now also working on an AK on the way through and I'm just practicing dropping the club right under the balance point now sometimes when I've worked people in this it often felt that the club feels like it's coming outside the line but it's really not what it's doing is is they've been so used to clapping behind them that it's actually working now back out in front of their bodies through the impact area and it really helps the balance of the club start to activate okay simple as that so we're working it back swing back to here right so the final thing we worked on was distance control we said that a lot of golfers tend to work over swing that causes them in a sense to sella read through the impact area causing so much inconsistencies and strike and distance control for most average hitting golfers we want to have a quarter turn here where the hands but up higher and the gentle wrist [ __ ] from here that's enough backswing to gently move into the golf ball here with a gentle acceleration allowing the way to fall and judge your distance control perfectly from the house probably life but hey I'm rushing but yeah that's basically it look if you've got any questions on this matter don't forget to leave them in the comments box below I'll head over onto my Instagram channel and ask them over there if you know anybody who's struggling they're pitching in you think this might benefit don't forget to share it and of course if you're enjoying the content and you want to sieve it in your inbox every week don't forget to press the subscribe button and the bell and until next week have a great golfing week.