Most of the greens on the course I play on have elevated greens in which either the green itself is up on a plateau, or it is slopping upwards from front to back , sometimes with a large ridge across it. When you find yourself short, with a 10 yard chip/pitch shot, what is the best technique to use to get the ball up to the pin. I try to have a forward lean of the shaft, take a divot in front of the ball, but on shots like these, I dont get much height to the pitch. Even with the Lob Wedge it still comes out too low. Any ideas? Thanks.
Short Pitch shots
- Thread starter TPG
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Need to use the bounce on your (lob) wedge.
With your forward hands, you are probably using the just the front edge of the sole.
At impact, the club should be vertical, only leaning slightly, slightly forward, so the entire sole of the club head bottoms out at the same time.
This will give you a nice click sound at impact while you use the true loft of the club.
Learn to control the amount of lean on the golf club. If you are trying to get the ball to fly high and land soft... trying to do it with forward lean will be difficult to do. Brian advocates learning to hit different parts of the bottom of the club with the ground. A leading edge shot requires the hands well ahead of the ball at impact. The results will be low and not much stopping power. A mid sole pitch shot will have the club contact the ground in the middle of sole. In order to do this you have to have the shaft pretty much straight up and down at impact. The last of the shots has the contact point on the back of lthe sole and the club leaning backwards at impact. This shot makes the ball fly high and stop on a dime.
For practice, apply some electrical tape or lie tape on the bottom of your club and try some different shot off a lie board. Take a look at the mark on the bottom of the club and see where the mark is.
If you get a chance watch the pros around the green you will see that not too many of them will have a bunch of foward lean and alot of them will have a soft left wrist at impact and a left arm that bends a little on the follow through.
Hope this helps
For practice, apply some electrical tape or lie tape on the bottom of your club and try some different shot off a lie board. Take a look at the mark on the bottom of the club and see where the mark is.
If you get a chance watch the pros around the green you will see that not too many of them will have a bunch of foward lean and alot of them will have a soft left wrist at impact and a left arm that bends a little on the follow through.
Hope this helps
Jim Kobylinski
Super Moderator
Move the ball much further up in your stance and stand more open to it and try and take as little as divot as possible. This will help you get more loft on the ball to hit it higher and come down softer even with less spin on the ball. However you will have to swing a bit harder to get it there.
Backyard shots
Thanks for the info. all - I took a look at the Pelz material regarding pitch shots and cut shots - they still didnt get the ball upward quick enough on the short shots (less than 15 yards) - what worked best was putting the ball opposite my front foot, choking down on the LW, and taking a 1/4 swing with full wrist hinge. This worked in the backyard but seems to be a risky shot.... Tomorrow I will try the idea of putting tape on the bottom of the LW and see where I make contact.
Thanks for the info. all - I took a look at the Pelz material regarding pitch shots and cut shots - they still didnt get the ball upward quick enough on the short shots (less than 15 yards) - what worked best was putting the ball opposite my front foot, choking down on the LW, and taking a 1/4 swing with full wrist hinge. This worked in the backyard but seems to be a risky shot.... Tomorrow I will try the idea of putting tape on the bottom of the LW and see where I make contact.
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