Why You Need This: Today you'll discover "How to Pitch Like a Tour Pro"

If you've ever wondered how the pros are such magicians around the greens...

...well, today I'm going to let you in on some secrets that help make them so darn consistent (so YOU can be too)!

There are 3 main keys that I'll walk you through...

...so you'll be able to spin your chips to check close to the hole consistently.

I'll even show you how a mound of sand can stop you from chunking and thinning your chips for good!

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 16:21

Video Transcription:

In today’s video I’m going to share with you some absolute secrets on pitching like a pro. I’m not talking about pitching it OK, or decent, or pretty good.

I’m talking about absolutely being a magician around the greens and being able to feel like you can set up over a shot like this and hit every single one of them with spin, close to the hole, to almost feel like you could just toss it up there within tap-in range every single time.

It can be that easy. I’m on a fairly tight lie here, some people might get nervous on this. This isn’t really long fluffy grass. You’ll see all these are coming out clean and I’m just chopping right up there by the hole.

It can be easy once you learn the right technique. Now there’s a couple things I’m going to go over in this video.

I’m going to go over what I call the Front Shoulder Pivot, and we’re going to talk about how to get absolutely laser dialed-in on your low point.

You notice all those look like I was barely just brushing the grass and I had an open space 60° wedge when they’re coming out low with a lot of spin.

I want to share with you the secrets on how to make that happen. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump into the details on this, I’m going to break it down for you piece by piece.

Now as I started to dive in more and more in the short game, and really trying to master it myself, I realized it is extremely frustrating because there’s so many different styles.

You see some people saying to lock the hips and the lower and use more of an upper body like a putting-type stroke.

You see some people talking about rotating the body. Some people are going to tell you that you need to have a little more of a cut swing.

Some people are going to tell you you need a little bit more of a draw swing, play it off the toe, play it off the center. Have the hands low, have the hands high.

You’re hearing all this different stuff. I’m not saying that a lot that doesn’t work, and really I think you can do a lot of different styles and make it work.

I’m going to share with you the style that I have found works the best and I’m going to break it down for you piece by piece. I’m going to give you some drills that are going to seem a little counter-intuitive, honestly.

Once you try those out, you’re going to see the results first hand. You’re going to see me hit some great shots here, and I know if you follow this, you’re going to have a lot of success with it.

So this isn’t the only style that works, but this is a style that if you practice this, you do the drills that I’m going to give you here, make sure you bookmark this because you’re going to want to refer to it, because you’re going to be chipping and pitching it awesome when you’re doing this.

First off, I want my feet very close together. If my feet are farther apart and I’m using the kind of locked lower body style where I let my upper body do most of the work, I do not like that at all.

The reason is once you get a little farther away from the green like this, then locking your lower body, you really have to use so much upper body, and hands, and arms, like you really start to jab at it.

It can be not that good once you get farther away. Now if I have a little 10-12 foot chip, that can work perfectly fine.

But as I get a little bit more distance, I want to go ahead and let that body rotate. I want my knees really close together. I want my feet really close together.

I like to have my stance a little bit open as I go over here in a second, but I want them close together, that way I can pivot and rotate back and through just as I was going to toss the golf ball up to the hole.

So that’s the first piece. Almost feel like your heels are within two or three inches of each other, would be really good on a shot like this.

I really want my body to rotate back and through so that it’s creating a momentum. That’s what we’ll go over a common theme in all of this, is that you want to have a momentum to your body and let it go back and through rather than trying to get jerky or jabby.

Number two, I want to have the face a little bit open. Simply for this it gives me a little bit more margin for error for a couple reasons.

As I open the face, this flange on the bottom of the club starts to get exposed and it helps it glide through the turf, which means less chunking and less thinning.

It also allows me to get a little more forward shaft lean without delofting the club too much.

So here I have a 60° wedge, I’m going to open the face a little, that probably turns it to let’s say 65°, something like that.

Then I’m going to lean the shaft forward a little bit which turns it back to it’s a little less than 60° at address.

So that way my hands can be leaning in front, my hands can be leading the way as I make contact to this which will make the contact more consistent and I’ll still have enough loft there to generate some spin.

Here a little bit open, the hands are leading the way, and again, I’m rotating my body every single time, get in that nice, clean contact. Even made one.

All right, so this is going to be pretty good. I feel like this is going to be a nice video where everything’s going to start to come together for me.

We’re off on a good start here. Feet close together, body rotating. Play the face a little bit open, play the hands a little bit up.

Here’s the part that is the most important of any of it. It’s contact. You’ll notice when I’m hitting these shots, that I’m brushing the turf. I’m not digging down into it.

I’m not playing my hands forward with this late leading edge square, and hitting down into that where I’m really chopping down into the ground.

If I do that, I could start to lay the sod over it. I could start to chunk some and thin some. So we definitely don’t want that to happen, because we’re going to be inconsistent if we start hitting down into the ground too much.

I’m also letting the momentum dictate my low point. So as I swing back and through here, as I go back and through, I’m feeling almost like I could take two fingers and just barely kind of let the momentum of the club swing, just let it fall out of my hands.

That’s how loose I’m holding it here, but let the momentum of this club swing, and I could brush the turf.

I’m actually going to do that. Open the face slightly, I’m going to let my body pivot, and I’m just going to take a couple fingers here in my left hand and I’m going to feel like I just brush the ground.

That’s the feeling that I want to have to create that.

So the reason the ball’s coming out low is not because I’m delofting the club. The reason the ball is coming out low is because I do have a little forward shaft lean, but I’m hitting it so clean, what’s happening is this club face is grabbing the ball.

There’s a lot of friction there, and because I’m hitting down on it slightly or level with the ground, that ball’s grabbing the club face and coming out lower. It’s not the loft on the club that’s making that go fairly low.

On this one, I’m actually going to play the face open again. You’ll see just by looking at my club face, it’s fairly open. I’m going to try to hit one really low just with a lot of really good friction.

There you go. You see that never got much higher than pin high. I hit it a little hard trying to get more spin on it, and you’ll see it checked up. Almost landed at the hole, and only rolled out five or six feet.

Same thing there, not really getting much above pin high, and you can see those checking up right by the flag.

So the only way that can happen, is getting good friction on there. The only way that you can get good friction, is really control your low point by letting the club momentum dictate where you ground out.

You can see that one was nice and low there, too. Let me hit one more, and then I’m going to show you the best drill to get the feel of this momentum for yourself and to realy dial in on how I can come down and make the cleanest contact possible every time.

So let’s jump up on the green, I’m going to show you a drill that’s worked great for this.

All right, now here’s the part that I warned you about, that’s going to seem a little bit odd. I’m here on the putting green, they just recently aerated the green. I wouldn’t recommend doing this on the course like I am today, but the green’s a little bit rough anyways.

I do this on the chipping green. Find right by the edge of the green where you’re not really going to mess anything up, even if you take a little bit of a divot as you’re first learning this.

But after you’ve done it a while, I’m telling you, you’re going to get just so precise, laser-like precision on your low point. I’m going to show you exactly how to do that.

So what we’re trying to be able to do here, and if you’re going to be a fantastic pitcher and chipper of the golf ball, is I have to be able to control when my club comes down, I need to be able to have it hit the ground in the same spot every single time and at the same depth.

You can see I’m swinging hard enough there to where I’m actually roughing up, I’m getting a little bit of a smack, you can see some sand kind of popping up as I’m doing that.

Because my club face is a little open, it’s just the bounce of the club, just kind of skipping on the turf, it’s not that leading edge.

If you expose that leading edge, you’re going to have difficulty digging into the ground. So if I expose that leading edge, I can hit a little too far down, chunk it, and it pops up.

I can hit it a little thin and it shoots across the green. If I have the face a little bit open like this, I can still get a little forward shaft lean, and that leading edge just isn’t quite exposed there.

I’m never going to dig. You can see if I’ve hit this ground 10, 15 times, and I’m not digging down there.

Now there’s a difference here in how you’ve probably seen people say that before, and you probably think well, you know Clay, I would just do that. If I could control it like that, I’d just do it.

I’m going to show you the technique that makes that possible. What you want to do is almost feel like you focus on your left shoulder, almost feel like you have a little reverse pivot.

So as I come back, I’m almost leaning left as I’m going in my backswing. I’m going to exaggerate so you can see that, and you’ll notice I’m doing that a very small amount in my normal swing.

So here, I’m leaning left and then as I come through, I’m falling a little bit back. As I all back, my hips extend so I’m not doing this. That’s the death move, I was keeping my chest down, that’s the death move for chipping.

I’m doing this, I’m leaning left and as I fall back, now my body’s moving back, my hips are moving forward.

My hips are toward the target, because I’ve rotated and because I’m falling back a little bit, that controls my club from digging in the ground.

I can feel like I’m throwing this thing in the ground as hard as I want to, but as long as I come back this way, what happens is that left shoulder rises and I feel like I couldn’t chunk this thing if I wanted to, because as I fall this way it just levels it out.

It’s like taking this club, imagine I was going to drop it into the ground like this, so I have the club here and I’m just going to let this thing fall into the turf. But what happens when I lift my hand up?

As my hand starts to turn back up, it levels it out like a plane coming into a runway, it comes down and it levels out, then it’s going to come back up if it wants to. Same thing’s happening here.

I’m letting the momentum of the club swing and I’m letting the pivot of my left shoulder and my body make sure that that never digs down in the turf.

That’s why I can take just with one hand, I’ll move this ball so you can see, I could take just one hand and I could just brush the turf there every single time.

It’s not like I’m some fantastic athlete, I’m just using the momentum of the club and the pivot of my body to control that low point.

So what I’m feeling there, little forward shaft lean, I’m leaning this way, my left shoulder’s coming down. I’m exaggerating here on that, you’ll see me doing it more to a smaller degree in the real one.

Then as I come through, my shoulder leans back and that keeps me from digging. That’s how you can get this low point control really, really good.

Eventually what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to hit these golf balls off this green and feel like we’re never going to take a divot. I hit that one about 30 feet in the air.

I’m never going to take a divot, I’m never going to dig, and I could just sit there and hit them all day. I’ve hit two in a row, both of those flew at least 30 feet.

They ended up almost 50 feet from me, and I didn’t dig anything into the ground. I still hit the turf, I still brush the grass a little bit, but you can look on the camera you see there’s no digging. I’m not roughing up that turf at all.

So I’m making really nice clean contact. Now I’m going a little farther, that one flew about 50 feet in the air, and I’m going to go even farther than that here, and make a little harder swing just to show you, you can ramp this up and go faster and faster once you get it down.

That’s about the max I can do. That’s about a 70-footer. That was just a little tiny bit thin there, but even for this drill, that would be pushing it.

I really just want to do this, feeling that momentum of the club, and just practice by hitting little 5 and 10-foot chips like that.

Now here’s the way you get your precision in on it. What’s going to happen is if you go straight to the turf, you’re going to get a little bit nervous.

You’re going to feel like you don’t want to dig down in there, and you’re going to pick it up. Or, you’re not going to have that pivot down yet, and it’s going to want to dig on you. You’re going to chunk it one time and you’re going to want to quit this drill.

Here’s how you want to start, with a bucket of sand and I’ll be honest with you. Most people aren’t going to do what I say here. Most people aren’t going to get the success that you get if you do what I say here.

But if you take the time to do this every day, or at least seven times I would say, here’s how it’s going to happen.

The first time you do this drill you’re going to think, dag-gone-it, this is impossible. I’m never going to get this. This is so hard, I don’t know what Clay’s talking about. I can’t feel the pivot, I can’t feel my left shoulder, I can’t feel the momentum of the club. It’s really, really tough.

The second time you do this drill, you’re going to think, man, that was hard, but oh that one I actually hit pretty decent.

By the third time you do this drill, and the fourth and the fifth, it’s going to start to feel pretty good. By the sixth and seventh time it’s going to feel just completely natural, like you can just brush this turf every single time. It’s not going to be that hard for you.

But if you quit after the first one, you’re never going to get to the good stuff. So here’s what I want to feel. Again, it’s like if this club was going to fall down on the ground, I’m lifting my hands up to keep it from digging there.

I’m doing that by letting my shoulder come down. You can watch a lot of great pitchers of the golf ball, they’re going to look like they’re leaning a little left, and then as they come through, they’re falling back this way, away from the target.

So I’m going to set up a little pile of sand about an inch tall here, and what I want to do is I just want to clip the very top portion of that sand.

I’ve hit that sand now, and I’ve made two swings, I barely touched it that time. Three swings, I’m just clipping little grains of sand off there. I missed it that time.

But I’m going to keep on going, and I’m just going to fast-forward here until all this sand’s gone. I’ve brushed now down to where all the sand pile’s gone and there’s nothing left.

I’m going to see how many strikes I can make with an inch-tall pile of sand until I get down to the bottom.

If I can get four, five, or six little swipes where I just take a little bit of sand off, and a little bit more sand off, little bit more sand off, then I’m really controlling the low point.

Now, you don’t have to do that very much. 15, 20 swings, and you’ll be surprised how much better of a feel you have for this. Again, two, three, four days in a row, and now all of a sudden you have a really good feel to where you can just kind of pick it every single time.

Now there’s a couple key things that aren’t included in this video. These are great for shorter shots, but what happens when we get a little farther away?

How do those Tour pros, when they’re 55 yards away, how are they able to land it right at 55 yards, and they know how to do that? How do they not know it’s going to go 65 or 45?

Well, there’s actually a system that you can follow to dial in your wedges, and it makes it very, very easy. So I’m going to go over that and a lot of other things in the Top Speed Golf Short Game System.

So all you need to do is go ahead and click the Instruction Tab, click on Top Speed Golf System, and then click on the Short Game section, and I’m going to show you exactly how to dial in those wedges along with many other pieces of short game that we didn’t cover here.

Basically, if you want to feel like you can jump out of your car, you can just walk up to a short game area, you can be faced with the very first shot that maybe is a little tricky on the first hole, and you’re super confident that you can handle it, that’s what the System’s going to give you.

When you walk through that system, it really builds it for a lifetime, it ingrains it into your game, so you don’t even have to think about this stuff.

You just walk up to that 50-yard shot, you hit it like a 50-yard shot, and it’s nice and tight by the pin. So I can’t wait to share with you that secret along with many other ones, and I’ll see you in the Short Game System.