The Fastest Way To Improve Your Pitching from 30 - 80 Yards

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Transcript Summary-

How often do you leave your second shot short of the green, stuck with that awkward 30 to 80-yard pitch? It’s a tough one—it’s not a chip, but it’s also not a full swing. So what club should you take? How do you get consistent contact? If you’re like many of my students, you probably struggle with this area of the game. Sometimes you thin it, sometimes you fat it, and often, you’re just not sure what to do. So in this video, I’m going to show you how to strike the ball consistently so you get it on the green every single time. Then, we’ll talk about dialing in your distance control so you know exactly how to control the pace of your swing and make smart club selections.

Before we dive in, if you’re new to the channel, consider subscribing. I release videos like this every single week to help you improve your game, and you never have to remember a thing—I put everything into a free practice guide, which you’ll find in the description box below.

So, I’ve measured my shot, and I’ve got about 60 yards to go. For me, that’s a half 56-degree wedge. I’ll cover distance control later, but first, let’s talk about how to strike the ball solidly. Just like a full swing, we want to make ball-first contact, then brush the turf. That happens when you control the low point of your swing. If your low point keeps shifting—sometimes too far behind the ball, sometimes too far ahead—you’re going to struggle with consistency. The key is setting up correctly.

For a pitch shot, your stance should be about two clubheads apart, with the ball just ahead of center. Now, a big factor in consistent strikes is your pelvis position. If your pelvis is too far back, you’ll hit behind the ball; if it’s too far forward, you’ll strike too far ahead. So start with your pelvis slightly ahead of the ball. Next, check where your upper center—your sternum—is. If it’s too far back, you’re likely to hit behind the ball. Too far forward, and you’ll struggle to get good contact. A simple way to check is to hang a club from your sternum and see where it lines up with your pelvis and the ball.

Once you’re set up properly, start making swings while paying attention to where your club is striking the ground. Don’t try to force the club into the turf—just stay aware of where the club naturally wants to bottom out. If you struggle, check that you’re not swaying off the ball on the backswing or follow-through. A great way to stay centered is by thinking of your motion as a spiral. Your lead foot should be turned slightly out, and as you swing back, your trail pocket pulls slightly behind you while your lead knee moves forward. Then, you reverse that motion coming back down. This keeps your pelvis and upper body stacked, preventing excessive movement.

Now, let’s put this into action. I get set up, check my pelvis and upper center, and visualize that spiral motion. I take a smooth swing—and there it is. Ball first, then ground. Notice how shallow my divot is? That’s because I’m striking the ball before my swing reaches its lowest point, then naturally moving up and through.

Once you’ve got solid contact, we can work on distance control. The first key is rhythm. Your swing should feel like a smooth “one and two” motion. What you don’t want is a jabby, hesitant stroke caused by worrying about the strike. Trust your setup, commit to the motion, and maintain a flowing rhythm.

To control your distances, start by figuring out how far your full-length swing goes with each wedge. Once you know that, shorten your backswing—maybe to rib height or hip height—while keeping the same rhythm. This will give you reliable reference points for different distances. The key is not to take a full swing and slow it down but to control distance by adjusting your backswing length while maintaining rhythm.

So, the process is simple: first, get your contact right. Then, build a smooth rhythm. Finally, work on controlling your distances with different backswing lengths. If you follow this system, you’ll start loving your pitching game.

If you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up and share it with a friend who struggles around the green. And remember, there’s a free practice guide in the description below. If your iron striking needs work, I’ve linked another video here that will help. Until next week, have a great golfing week!

Full Summary- How often have you left your second shot short of the green leaving you that really awkward yardage let's say between 30 and 80 yards it's a difficult shot is it's not a chip shot it's not really a full swing what club should you take how do you get consistent contact well if you're like a lot of my students they struggle with this area of the game they get over here they're not sure what to do they struggle with their strike sometimes they'll thin it sometimes they'll fat it but they really don't know what to do in terms of Club selection in this video I'm going to show you first of all how do you make consistent contact time and time again that's the first so you get it on the green at least every single time the next thing we're going to do is really get your distance control dialed in so knowing how to get control the pace of your swing and also Club selection so that is what we're going to cover in this week's video before I do the look if you're new to the channel when the First videos of mine please consider subscribing all these videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game plus you never have to remember a thing everything we do today I'll put in a free download practice guide in that description box below so I've just measured the yardage and I've got almost 60 yards to go now for me that's kind of like a half 56 Dee wedge I'll go into distance control a little bit later but let's first of all do what I'm sure you'd love to do which is get that ball on the green every single time to do that you need a solid strike solid strike just like a full swing comes from a ball then Turf contact we want to strike the ball then the ground how we do this is is your ability to control the lowest point of your swing so we have an arc in your golf swing all the time where the club is arcing down we strike the ball just before the club gets to its lowest point of the Ark right about here now if you're struggling with this area of the game My bet is you're just not controlling that bit there what I'm seeing with so many of my students is is they sometimes get it where they low point of the AR is there but then sometimes it's there and then there it's just not consistent enough so I want to help you become more consistent with where you land the club every single time now to do that let's start with a great setup so I'm going to put the club Behind the golf ball and unlike a um it kind of this isn't a chip shot so we're not standing like a chipping stance and trying to hit this ball harder which I see some people doing neither we do we have this massively wide stance where we have a full swing and then have to slow it down to try and hit the shot we don't want any of that this shot is about just past maybe two Club wits apart with a ball just ahead of Center now I said I want you to get the low point just ahead of that golf ball the first thing I'd love you to check in your golf swing is where your pelvis is where is it the pelvis has a huge impact on where you your Club strikes the ground if I have my pelvis Way Forward does it make it easier to strike the ground ahead I think so if I pelvis is back here I can't reach there anymore I'm more like to strike the ground behind the golf ball so the first thing and the easy wins is is just get your pelvis just over the ball or just at least maybe even ahead of the golf ball to start with right the second thing I want you to do is notice where the middle of your shoulders are a lot of times you could have your pelvis forward but if this P this the upper Center here is too far behind you're more lik to again to strike too far behind the golf ball if it's too far ahead we're going to strike way ahead of the golf ball so I like to have it particularly with the pit shots which is what slightly different to full swing I have it right stacked on top and the easiest way you could kind of check this for yourself just grab a club hang it there on the middle of your sternum look where your pelvis is look where your middle of your Center is and just maybe just hang them just a little bit just slightly ahead of that golf ball it's a real simple checkpoint now once you've got those in place make some swings simply make some swings paying attention to where your Club is landing relative to that golf ball now I say pay pay attention I don't say try and hit the ground ahead of the golf ball cuz this can lead to a lot of people chopping at it paying attention means you're allowing the arms in the club to swing beautifully while paying attention to where the club is landing so being aware of it now I can see comfortably that club is landing backwards and forwards now don't get me wrong I could start with my pelvis and they Center in the great place but then if I suddenly start to kind of move off now now I'm struggling so before while we hit a shot let me just uh talk about one final thing that gets in the way of people striking you saw there I moved off I see this a lot either on the back swing or I see a lot by the way on the F fruit and I think this is the biggest killer to most people's pitching is the concept of what is a pitch shot now what you're really doing pitching is is we're not in a sense like a full swing where we're transferring excessively our weight over onto our lead side in theory we've already preloaded more weight on this lead side than we have on our Trail side here but the other thing which is unbelievably important is notice what I'm doing here I'm in a sense not turning around and around because this would move this upper Center backwards and forwards and notice this look what it does to my pelvis if I start to turn around this pelvis in a sense is moving all over the place so how do I keep everything more centered well the body needs to work in almost like a pulley fashion right so notice here my left foot here my lead foot is pointing outwards and what I'm going to do is I'm going to push down here I'm pushing up here I'm pulling back with my trail pocket just very subtly but I'm creating that motion there then what I do it's like a spiral isn't it upwards I then come back down to the golf ball and then spiral back up this way so it's like a very very mini golf swing in a certain way there but it's all under control it isn't look this motion and this is really really important because what this will do if I keep this motion here that's a simple way of keeping my pelvis and my Center on top of one another on the way back come back in through look and through notice unlike a full swing I might do this and then this this now suddenly they get separated that's great for lag and power but I don't don't want you to do that with the uh with your pitch shots so let's have a look at this in action I'll show you my routine to go through this for strike and then we'll talk about distance control so I've got the ball position just ahead of Center here I've got making sure that they all in a line get myself set and then I'm kind of in a sense finding that kind of visualization where my lead KNE is KN KN is going forward my turil pockets pulling back here and I'm spiraling up then look I'm not sliding and separating these now look where that dots gone I'm basically coming back to where I started and through now this is something that you can do indoors just practice in a sense one two three and then obviously we want to uh merge these into a flowing

Motion makes sense so everything now becomes much much more one and two one and two let's have a look at this in

action nice and simple get myself

set super super simple and you'll notice here I struck the ball then the ground and my diot is very very shallow very shall this ground is incredibly soft I'm not going deep into that Turf here so even though I struck the ball and the ground look I haven't gone like this so why is that divot shallow because look one two I I strike the ball before it gets the low point the A and then look three the club comes beautifully out of the ground because of the way I'm moving my body and this is how I want you to be this is how you get consistency moving around and around is where a lot of the problems start so let's move on to distance control now distance control is so much easier now you've got a solid strike then first step I want you to do to get distance control is have a great Rhythm so the Rhythm comes from a swing that is one and two and notice what I'm doing here I am swinging I am collecting the golf ball on the way what I am not doing and this is very understandable when you've been nervous about strike is I'm not focusing on oh I've got to strike this correct spot here I've got to do all those things because what you end up having then is a swing that doesn't go from here and finish here you have a uh a swing that looks more like jabby it's starting to go at the golf ball right so remember we've built your confidence up now you can strike it you can commit now look at this you can commit you've set everything up here you've got that body working correctly now you can start to use the Rhythm to control your distance look at this one and two yes so I'll get myself set here let's clean this club off a little bit that's one thing that will help you distance control this is the first stage get the Rhythm to match what you've just been doing so I get myself set pelvis in place upper Center's in place I've got the concept one I'm coming back down to the golf ball and then through right so one and two look at this oh beautiful right really really simple motion that's repeatable you'll notice here there's no jerkiness to this motion there's a rhythm to that motion right so you've now spend some time that's the first thing don't jump onto anything else find the um the strike then find the Rhythm once you've done that you'll then start to get a gauge of how far this club goes I would say to start with at its full length once you can once you've done that you've got your strike you've got your Rhythm you can then start to in a sense judge The Distance by lowering your hands so if I got a full swing up to above my shoulders I might use my shoulder height as another reference point and then make a nice rhythmical swing and if I did that for instance let's actually let's shorten a bit more I'm going to make a swing now where I've got the same Rhythm but I'm going to swing only to rib height so watch this I'm get myself set where's that one gone this will go towards the front of the greens make sense so I've now hit that just to the front of the green BR it if the flags there that's perfect distance control notice I didn't go for a full swing and then slow it down so you get your contact you then get a one and two Rhythm to go with that contact and then you start to take one club to start with you find out how far one Club goes with a full swing then you lower it down to shoulder height to rib height even to hip height find out far how far it goes and then you can gradually do that with all of your wedges and then when you measure your yardage you will have a very clear idea of exactly what to do from this area so you get your contact you then add the Rhythm you then start adding the length uh to one club uh one club and then you build it out into your bag and I promise you if you do this and you're systematic with this you're going to be loving pitching just like I do hope you enjoy this video if you did give it a thumbs up maybe share it with one of your friends who's struggling around this area of the green it's a real killer for a lot of people can ruin a lot of score cards remember I put a free download of practice guide in that description box below I'll put a video here if you're struggling with the iron striking because this what we're doing here can be leaking to your to your full swing too but until next week have a wonderful golfing week.