Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Absolutely the Simplest Way to Pitch the Golf Ball - Hinge And Hold"

Feeling overwhelmed by the myriad of chipping methods out there?

Well, today I’ll simplify it to a technique that is easy for anyone at any level.

Inspired by the “hinge and hold” technique, this will dial in your swing for consistent, controlled chips.

This will minimize errors and enhance reliability, especially on fast, firm greens.

Boost your confidence and precision around the green!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:33

Video Transcription:

There literally may be 10, 000 different ways that people will teach you to chip. Some people say on the backswing we want to make sure that the club head gets outside the hands. Some people say it's on the hands. Some people say to go ahead and release your wrist to be able to use the bounce or engage the bounce.

You'll see open faced pitching methods and chipping methods. You'll see square faced pitching methods and chipping methods at address. You get all this information and you're like, how in the heck do I know what's going on? Well, There may be a lot of ways to do it, but there's one way that I feel like is the absolute simplest way.

And it's very similar to what we talk about or what you've heard Phil Mickelson talk about with the hinge and hold method. I don't really like the idea of hold. I like to think of it being a straight line as we're coming through. So let me go over what I mean by this. If I set up to this little pitch shot here, when I come through impact, I want to make sure that my hands don't overtake my.

My club head doesn't overtake my hands. I don't want my left wrist really breaking down a ton as it's happening. It's not saying, when you watch PGA Tour players, you'll see sometimes that they do these shots where they're really talking about engaging the bounce. And all engaging the bounce means is this angle on the bottom of the club.

If I open the face, it creates more bounce. And as I release the hands, it creates more bounce. This gets the ball to slide on the turf very easily. And when you watch a lot of PGA Tour players, that's exactly what they're doing. You don't always see them with a lot of shaft lean and keeping that angle coming all the way on through.

The reason is, PGA Tour greens are lightning fast and they're firm. So if you're hitting a normal flighted shot that comes out in a normal trajectory and has a normal amount of spin on it, It's going to be hard to get it to stop on those lightning fast greens, especially when the pins are tucked. And a lot of times you'll see them short sided, meaning that they don't have very much green to stop it on.

Well, the reason they're doing that type of shot that they're trying to say, engage the bounce, use the bounce, all that kind of stuff is because the greens are lightning fast and they're firm and they're short sided. So when you have that kind of situation, you have to open the face a lot. You have to go ahead and engage the bounce and let these hands release.

To get the ball to launch higher. So if i'm doing a shot kind of similar to that I'm going to launch this ball a lot higher It didn't pick it up on my flight scope here because it's too short of a shot But i'm gonna launch the ball a lot higher meaning that if i'm hitting this ball from here When it hit the screen it was way up here somewhere so i'm really Not getting that leading edge toward the turf i'm Throwing the wrist a little bit i'm engaging the bounce i'm getting these really high soft spin shots Now that's perfectly good.

There's nothing wrong with that technique. And when you see pros do that on TV, you think, wow, I mean, a lot of those shots, they, they land up there and have a ton of spin on them and it's all good and great. If you're on a perfectly tight lie from the fairway and you're short sighted and you have to get it up high and have a ton of spin on it, I'd recommend doing that.

Unfortunately, it's a heck of a lot tougher than just a standard pitch and chip shot technique. You see, that's an advanced technique. These are some really good players. And I'll tell you what. If you open the face, release the hands and you happen to be a little too high on the ball, that ball is going to skull right across the green.

You're going to make an absolute fool out of yourself. Or if you chunk it a little bit, it's going to be an absolute disaster. And because I'm releasing the club, it makes it a little easier for a lot of players to start chunking the ball when they're doing that. So you hear all this talk about engage the bounce, use the hands, get that lofted up there again.

Fantastic shot. If you're playing on the PJ tour this week. You might want to turn off this video and go practice, but, but that's a perfectly good shot for you. For the recreational golfer, for the guy that's just going out this weekend and just doesn't want to chunk them, just wants to hit them consistent.

That is not the easiest way to do it. The easiest way to do it, in my opinion, is to set up this shot, get a little bit of wrist hinge in the backswing. So I don't mind if you go fairly straight back or you get a little bit of hinge, but I'm getting a little bit of wrist set. And then as I come through, I'm rotating and I'm not letting this club shaft overtake my hand.

So if I take a line, For my lead arm and draw it down there. I don't want to see the club on this side of my arms. I want it to be in a dead straight line. I also don't want to see it way back here like this held off. See if I hold off, then I'm leaning the shaft forward. I'm getting this leading edge closer to the ground and it's easy to chunk.

So if I'm trying to do this and I'm thinking hinge and hold like that, that's going to make it easy to chunk and the balls are going to come out very low and hot. Tough to get your distance right. Tough to keep from chunking it. That's a real low nipper type shot. Not your standard, not the easiest. If I'm doing this, like we just talked about, and I'm letting it fold back up and now my left arm to the club is like that.

Great. If you're short sighted, you have to have a lot of spin. Great. If you're on tour, but for the regular golfer, that's a tough one to get down to the best way to do it is to simply go back and keep your momentum going forward so that your left arm and the club shaft are straight and aligned together.

Now the right way to do this with the technique or the easiest way, mistake I see is people get their stance way too wide and now we start moving around on it. I like to go ahead and get the ankles together. If I put both feet square, you'll see that golf ball is on my lead foot. Now all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep the heel of my lead foot on the ground and I'm gonna rotate this lead foot open a little bit.

So you'll see it looks like there's six inches between my feet, but if you look at my heels, there's about an inch between them. That's a great little way to set up for a basic pitch shot. Now from there, let's make it as easy as possible. Let's get a little bit of bounce. We don't want that leading edge digging in the ground, so let's open the face a few degrees.

So just like this, a few degrees open. Now when you open the face like that, if I swing straight and do nothing else, the ball's gonna go slightly to the right. If you cut your pitch shots a little bit, meaning that I'm coming slightly across the ball, That makes it even easier to be consistent with my contact.

That's why you're hearing like we talked about in the very beginning of this video, people are talking about getting the club head outside of your hands. You see what I find sometimes we've been taught to keep this club set out outside of our hands, but we don't realize that these pros are cutting the ball slightly when they use that technique.

If I go outside of my hands and I try to draw the ball or try to hit it straight, all of a sudden it's like a lot of rerouting, a lot of manipulation. So my hand, my club head is going to be slightly outside my hands, but just realize that I'm cutting it slightly as I'm doing that. And then as I set up to here again, I don't mind if you set the club a little on the way back.

I don't mind if you keep it fairly straight, like Steve Stricker, whatever technique you want to do. I'm okay. I haven't found that that makes a ton of difference. There's great pitchers that have a little set. There's great pitchers that are fairly wide with the club head. Personally, I like to stay fairly wide.

And then as I come through, all I'm doing is rotating my body together to keep this in a straight line. If my body stops, so if I come to here and I'm trying to go all rock the shoulders, upper body, what ends up happening is I can only get to about here and then I have to fold up. So it looks something more like this, right?

If I rotate the body, now I can keep this in a straight line. So ball off the lead ankle, a little open with the foot. So I'm playing a very slight cut shot here. So my club will be outside my hands. And then I'm just finishing with that in a straight line. And man, it is easy. Nice, clean little pitch shots.

Notice when I'm doing this, I'm keeping my weight roughly on this lead ankle the entire time. So I'm not feeling like I'm getting big weight shift. I'm not feeling like what's on the right foot. I'm just over that lead foot. And it's almost like this is my pivot point. And I'm just rotating around that single pivot.

So if I keep my weight in the same spot, it keeps my low point in the same spot. And man, does it make things a lot easier. There we go. In my opinion, the easiest way to pitch a golf ball. One last time here. I want you to hold your finish. Check that left arm to make sure it's a nice straight line. There we go.

That looks perfect. I hit that really nice and solid. Now you may be wondering, that's great. I have the basic technique down. I'm hitting the ball cleanly now. How do I get my distances dialed in? So I'm watching the pros, they're 40 yards out and they hit it right at 40, or I'm watching them 60 yards out and it's right at 60.

Well, I like to teach a clock system or a backswing link system. So this would be a certain distance. This would be another distance. If I do that, I can really get dialed in on my distance control and get very sharp with the wedges. Most people though, when they're teaching this, they just focus on the positions.

And they don't talk about what I go over in this video. That's going to be how you actually get the consistent distancy from those positions. There's actually one little tiny trick that I show you in there that makes all the difference in the world. So if you're a member of Top Speed Golf, go into the instruction tab, go to the Top Speed Golf system, short game area, work on this clock method, and you're going to have tremendous success.

I can't wait to hear about your latest round where you knocked him stiff a bunch of times and just had a blast on all your pitches. Let's go and get started.