The Most Simple Way To Play Chip Shots In Golf

So we're looking for a real simple pitch up here, get rid of those kind of fat and thins and disgusting shots we hit behind the green that wreck our scores. Let's look at some very simple fundamental basics and two game-changing exercises that help bring everything together to make you a consistent performer. So we're using a 54 degree wedge, very basics are we're going to look for a narrow stance, so heels about one club head width apart, toes about what two club head widths apart, so flarey with the feet to allow us to be able to pivot and rotate. Ball position to be in the centre, weight and pressure to be feeling 60 to 65 percent on the lead foot, feel like your sternum, your buttons of your shirt, you're more at the front edge of the ball and your eyes are more the front of the ball. Then the stroke wise we're trying to feel like we swing pretty straight in direction, we're stood aside the ball so the club will have an arc without us trying to have an arc, but feeling it straight. We're going to feel that we feel this very minimal weight or pressure shift on the backswing, so really feel like we stay on our lead foot, there is going to be shift but feel conceptually like you stay on the lead foot. When you swing through try and feel that your chest faces where we want to go and we try and feel that our right arm stays to the right hand side of our chest, it's kind of in that underarm scoopy throw position and when we swing through the ball try and feel like we move forward and up. Distance control wise I want you to think a length of swing for stroke, so for this it's going to be near enough probably like a rib high chest high swing for me, so lead arm to kind of chest, trail arm to kind of chest for a 60 yard kind of shot with this club, with this setup. If I was moving more weight wider stance I'd hit the ball further. The things we're doing here set up are designed to help us hit down in the golf ball, help us reduce the speed, get more finesse in the shot, the finish position we've talked about with the right arm to the right side helps us again get the loft really working the right way dynamically, so it's not releasing across the ball creating too much curvature and too much speed off the club essentially to give us this kind of high soft landing shot. So very very basically and we'll go through the drills in a minute, I'm standing here in the stance we've talked about, weight there and now I'm going to swing what I feel is you know rib highish back and rib high through and you see there quite a nice little shot, just gone a tad too far, the greens are quite hard here at the moment, we've got a lot of obviously dry spells here, they're very bouncy but in terms of strike and really happy with that shot. So if that was too long as it was there I would just reduce the length of the swing equally both sides and keep the rhythm the same but that would be the basics way we'd want to set the ball. In terms of the wrists if you look at that I'm looking for my thumbs just to work up, my thumbs just to work up, not trying to do anything too fancy, it's a fairly natural feeling swing in terms of wrists and arms for me compared to a normal swing just we're doing anything in the set up to reduce the power. Okay the two drills really focus on kind of arm and body connection and obviously pivot in terms of pivot and weight and stability. First drill is we're going to take a light roll put it in our right armpit, hold it with our right hand only on the grip, keep my left hand as it would be normally and when we make a swing through the idea is this brings our right side through and keeps it connected, doesn't let my right hand overtaking come this way. So again you might not be able to hit it the full distance when I'm doing this drill as in the 60 yard shot you might well be able to hit a 20-30 yard shot quite nicely. Looking for the same setup, keep this connection and you see there just a nice little pit shot there just at the front edge of the green, probably about 30 yards but in terms of how my body connection, arms, wrists, everything worked that's exactly what we want to see you do. So for the guys that tend to kind of move forward too much, kind of get the arms traveling too far, have the short backswing long far through, this drill really helps all those things get the connection, the synergy and the body action that we're looking for in the pit shot. The last drill really is all about that stability and weight positioning. So we want to basically set the golf ball as normal, take a right foot and just put it, I call it a tripod position basically. I'm leaning on one leg and this is just really there to stop me falling over. The idea is now I'm feeling that the weight doesn't move off this lead foot and as I swing through I want to feel like I straighten this lead leg a little bit to move my body away from the earth a little bit to try and feel like I'm getting them. If I'm going to fail anyway it's forward and up rather than coming back. A lot of poor shots we see in pitching are leaning back trying to lift the ball in the air with a very short backswing, lots of acceleration around the ball. So we go into the tripod position, this time we can hit it at the correct distance, so again we're swinging back about rib high and swinging through and a little fall forward is absolutely fine. That one there was the best shot I've hit, very very stable, means I can't move my head around too much. It really really helps me get that contact every single time that I'm looking for in terms of a simple pitch shot. So we think about everything we said, we've got the basic setup, the fundamentals, then we've got the key things we're looking for in the stroke which is being stable but pivoting and keeping the right side all behind the torso if you like as we swing through which is the rod drill and the connection and then swing even length. So if I swing back chest high, swing forward chest high and use that as my rhythm gauge to give me the distance I want for the shots that we're looking to achieve. If you're new to the channel please click like and subscribe and turn those notifications on, make sure you never miss out on any of my content again. Thanks for tuning in today, see you again soon.