Why You Need This:

In this video, “How to Hit Solid Pitch Shots | Wedge System Intro”…

You’ll find out the differences between a golf pitch shot and a chip shot…

We’ll also cover the distance wedges, technique, and all the information you’ll need to decide which shot you should be taking.

Here are just some of the topics:

• Proper angle of attack (steep or shallow)
• Using the bounce vs. the leading edge on your wedges
• How much shaft lean and loft is needed at impact
• Which clubs to pitch with
• Pitch shot setup (stance width, ball position, weight distribution, spine angle)
• Pitch shot basic motion (arms and wrists)

Check out this video now to turn the sometimes scary pitch shot into a fun and simple way to get up and down!

What's Covered: Introduction to the Top Speed Golf Wedge System, covering the differences in the pitch and chip shots, clubs, uses, and drills throughout this video and the rest of this section.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:37

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, I’m Clay Ballard with Top Speed Golf, and welcome to the wedge series. We’re going to break down the differences in the chip and the pitch, go through distance wedges, and give you that perfect technique so you can start spiffing your wedge shots. Let’s go ahead and get started.

In this video we’re going to be focusing in on a pitch shot. A pitch shot could be anywhere from right by the green, all the way back to probably 50 or 60 yards or so. That’s what you’re going to want to do when you want to get a little bit more spin, and get the ball a little bit more up in the air.

So a chip shot, let’s go ahead and rewind, talk about the chip. The chip we had, we’re going to set the hands, we’re just going to basically do almost a putting stroke, keep the ball really low on the ground and get it to roll out.

That was a chip. A pitch, we’re going to go ahead and let the wrists set a little bit more, have a little bit more club action, get the ball to go a little higher in the air, with a little bit more spin. So we can do, like I said, a pitch from right by the green, we can do a pitch from 50 or 60 yards away.

I’ll even get later on in this series talking about distance control wedges which are those 40, 50, 60, 70-yard wedges, all the way back up to what would be a full swing. But for this one, we’re trying to get that shot that has a little bit more spin, a little bit more check on it, and we want to come in really nice and shallow.

Let me go ahead and describe what is a good pitch shot, so you know what you’re really going for. I think we’ve got to start from there, start from contact. As I make contact, I want to be coming in very shallow to the ground.

So I don’t want to be taking much of a divot, I don’t want to be hitting down into the ground. I want my club to be coming in very, very shallow. What this means, or what we refer to this as is the flat spot.

What happens is, as your club, if we were to keep this stable here, and we just let this club swing, that’s going to make a perfect circle. What happens in the actual pitch shot is that we have some forward shaft lean as the handle, let’s imagine it’s coming into my hand here. So this would be the perfect circle, just up and down.

As the handle is leaning forward, what happens is the handle starts to turn up as the club releases and we have a flat spot where the club travels very level with the ground for five or six inches on these pitch shots.

So when that happens, let me go ahead and exaggerate, as my hand is coming down, my hands are close to the ground as this club gets closer and closer to the ground, my hands move up as the club moves down.

Now you’re seeing that I’m having that flat spot. I could actually hit an inch or two inches behind this golf ball, and it’s really going to be completely fine, I’ll probably have a pretty good shot with it, because my club is coming in so shallow to the ground.

Now in order for this to happen, I have to push a little bit with my left leg down into the ground, my left hip works up, my left shoulder works up, and my hands work up as I’m releasing this club and that’s going to get it nice and shallow.

So you can see there how I’m hitting the ground, I’m kind of thumping the turf there a little bit, but I’m not taking a divot. We also want to use the bounce of our club. So we have the leading edge which is very sharp. If I start to chop down into the ground and let that leading edge catch, it’s going to want to dig.

I want to use the bounce which we’ll get into in a video later on in this series, so that club will glide on the turf. Now I also want to have some forward shaft lean, because I want to take a little bit of loft off this club.

We want to get the maximum amount of spin, this is a 56° wedge, I want to have about 47° in what’s called the spin wedge. For these shots, again as I said, my angle of attack is going to be very shallow. I’m coming in very level with the ground, so I’m not hitting down into the ground very hard.

I want to get down to about 47° of loft, so I need to take about 9 or 10° of loft off of this wedge and then as I’m hitting down a couple degrees, let’s call it 2 or 3°, then I’m going to have that 47° angle. The angle of attack is how much I’m hitting down, as we said it’s going to be level.

So imagine that level, and then the loft of the club needs to be roughly 44-45, and the difference in these two is going to be that 47°, or that maximum spin.

You can use your 60° wedge to pitch wedge, you can use your 56° wedge to pitch with, those are probably going to be the most common. If you want to use your gap wedge or your pitching wedge, you can also do that. Those are also very common wedges to use when you’re hitting pitch shots.

That’s the general idea of what we want to have happen, and if we do that correctly, I’m going to be able to come in so shallow to the ground, like I said, I can hit it four or five inches behind it, and it’s going to slide right into the ball and be perfect.

If you watch slow motion of really good wedge players, they’ll start brushing the grass a couple inches behind the ball. Or if I came in a little too high and I caught the ball a little bit thin, I’m coming in so shallow it’s going to be nice and solid.

The biggest trouble is when we start getting too steep, we’ve been told to put the ball back in our stance, we put the hands forward, we’re chopping down, no way we’re going to be good pitchers of the golf ball if we’re doing that kind of technique. That’s the goal, that’s the result that we want to get, let’ talk about a set-up and a basic motion that’s going to get us there now.

So since I want to come in nice and shallow, you can imagine the bottom of my swing arc would kind of be on the inside of my left shoulder here, that’s going to be the low point of this circle. I want to have the ball slightly behind that.

If I’m looking from directly face on, I’ll try to get lined up as good as I can here, if I have the club hanging down from my left ear and the logo of my shirt, that’s about where this golf ball is going to be lined up. That’s going to allow me to come in nice and shallow to the golf all.

Another thing with this set up, we want to have our feet a little bit closer together. So if we’re hitting a full wedge, pitching wedge, our feet might be like this. As we go into a smaller pitch shot, anywhere from by the green all the way to 40-50 yards back. Now my feet are going to be a little bit closer together.

A big difference with the pitch shot versus a full swing, in the full swing we want to have that stable fluid spine like we talk about in the Top Speed Golf system, we want to be tilted back. So now we’re angled a way we can really load up and then come into the ball.

With a pitch shot we’re going to stay a little bit more vertical. So our spine’s going to be more up and down. As we go back and through our spine is going to stay pretty vertical, and what that does is that helps us to come in shallower and not to have a lot of moving around.

I start to move off the ball like I would in a full swing, with this little tiny swing like this I could start to hit behind it. If I start to move too far forward, I could hit in front of it.

So I do want a little bit more weight on my left side, I’m probably about I would say 60-70 percent on my left side and let’s say 30 on the right side, that’s not an exact science, that’s the rough idea there, and my spine is straight up and down.

Now as far as the motion, we’re going to keep our hands nice, and wide, and long, so we can create this big shallow arc and come into the ball with that consistent contact. If you look at both of my arms as I go back, and as I go through, my arms are staying nice and wide. They’re staying wide going back and through.

My wrist will be able to set a little bit. As I’m going back my wrist can set to get a little bit of lag, as I’m coming through I have some lag. As I’m coming through the shot, again I said my hands are working higher, and as I release that club, now I’m getting rid of that lag and my club can actually turn up a little bit.

So you can see how my wrists are letting that club hinge forward. If we’re looking from this way, as if I was going to be hitting toward the camera, now from here I’m going to be working back in, my hands are going to finish almost like they’re pointing at my let hip for a shorter shot.

For a longer shot, all I’m going to be doing is coming a little bit farther on around like that. So I just want to have that nice rocking motion, a little bit of lag is good, releasing that lag.

What I don’t want to do, is I don’t want to have an exaggerated amount of forward shaft lean. So as I’m coming back here, I’m getting wide with the hands, I don’t want to get some lag and then really try to pinch down into it like that.

That’s going to cause me to get in a little too steep into the ball, and it’s going to cause that leading edge to start to grab on the turf. So I want to make sure that I’m letting that bounce of the bottom of the club release.

I may feel like after I’ve had my lag, that I’m going ahead and almost tossing the club a little bit here. I don’t want to over-exaggerate that too much, but I’m almost letting the club work, the lag work out of there as I’m coming into contact, that way the bounce can work properly.

Again, I don’t want to get rid of all my lag though, I do want to have some forward shaft lean at contact, that way I can get that good spin angle on there. So that’s the basics of how to hit the pitch shot, that’s the set-up, that’s the basics of the motion. Go ahead and work on these. Let’s go through these check points again.

Feet a little bit narrower, spine straight up and down, weight a little bit more on the left, arms straight as we’re going back, we can get a little bit of lag, and then as we come through we’re going to release that club until it’s pointing at our left hip, or a little bit more around as we’re coming through there, and we want to get that nice shallow divot with a little bit of forward shaft lean at impact.

Go ahead and go through this, make about 100 repetitions going through those check points, knocking each of those out. You can do those in your living room, and practice those perfectly smooth, clean divots.

So go ahead and do the repetitions now, 100 repetitions, and then we’ll go out to the course, we’ll do about 100 practice swings and then hit a shot after each practice swing.

Good luck to you guys, get in those reps, I’ll see you all soon.