Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "This Is The Most Important Thing in Pitching Like a Golf Pro"

In today's lesson...

...you'll discover why you struggle when transitioning from a full swing to a pitch shot.

You'll also find out 4 aspects of your swing that are pretty much the exact opposite in a pitch shot than they are in your full swing!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:38

Video Transcription:

A lot of times I find players that are really good, full swing ball strikers, lots of lag. Getting their body angle back away from the target often struggle pitching because it's almost the exact opposite. Let's go over the difference between pitching like a tour player and swinging like a tour player. So the first one would be your spine angle Now, when I make a full swing, I need power.

In order to do that, I need to be behind the golf ball. So when I look at tour players, their spine angle, so from their belt buckle to the top of their sternum, you can imagine if this is a skeleton. You just saw my skeleton. My spine would be tilted away from the target like that. Now, that allows you to get a bunch of lag as you do that and then release that club out in front and get that club to really accelerate very quickly through contact.

You see, you hit the ball really far. I found I measured 50 major winners on the PGA Tour. The average tilt with a spine was 20 degrees away from the target when they hit their driver. That was it. Contact their 20 degrees, tilt it away Now for pitching, it's very different. If you measure tour players there you're going to see the spanning was much more vertical.

My weight is on my left. I almost feel like my nose in front of the golf ball, which is way different than the full swing. You want to feel like your nose is behind the golf ball. And from there, I'm just going to kind of rotate back and through staying more on top of the golf ball or left like this, not behind the golf ball like that.

Now, this is important in chipping and pitching because it helps you to get your low point very consistent. And to be honest, if you didn't have to worry about hitting it very far, this is probably the most consistent way to play golf. I just kind of bunt them down the fairway 50 or 60 yards at most, and I'd be a great player.

This is technique that you really use probably around 40 yards in the end. But unfortunately with golf, you have to hit it far. It's really important. So you can't use the same technique for your pitching that you do for your full swing. You're going to have some struggle. So again, I'm going to be vertical with my spine my way.

It's going to be left. My nose feels like it's in front of the golf ball. And from there, I feel like I'm just going to toss a ball into this basket here so I don't have the radar on us when I hit some of these short shots and I'm going to feel like I rotate my body and I was just going to toss that into the basket just like that.

I wouldn't ever toss the ball into the basket like this. I wouldn't throw it like that. That's very awkward. I'd want to rotate my body, get my right shoulder to come forward and then toss it in that way. So you'll notice when I'm hitting these little pitch shots here, that's really all you're seeing me do. Very smooth. Going ahead and letting the shoulder come around.

It's almost hard to hit this short. This is really technique that's going to be flying the ball. Maybe another ten or 15 feet than this. So I could hit over that basket, too, would be completely fine. Anywhere from probably 15 yards all the way up to 40 yards. This is the technique that you want to do with this.

Now, from here, again, that little turn as I'm going back in through, let me go ahead and show you where I'd finish. So here I'm going to go ahead and hit one a little bit farther. You see that? That would be more like 25 yards. Now when I did that, my shoulders came out much more level. So I'm hitting it toward the camera here in a full swing.

I would be very much like this, my shoulder. So it's tilted down. I have that lag from inside. I release the club and my shoulders are tilted in a pitch. My shoulders are going to be much more like this, much more level than they would be tilted down in the posture like that. Lastly, they'll also be closer together, which makes it easier for me to rotate on through there.

So again, let me just take a nice little easy hit shot here and you'll notice how my shoulders come a little bit more level as I'm coming through versus full swing would be like that. So that's another really big one. Finally, the right arm in the full swing. This is big. I want to have a lot of leg.

I want that elbow tucked into my side, a big angle between my forearm, elbow and upper arm. This can be bent, my club is going to be bent. Everything is really lagging in here as if I was going to take this club and fling it out in front of me. Now, when you're pitching, you don't really want to do that.

You don't want to change this radius very much because that changes where your low points are going to be. I want to keep this elbow just slightly bent back in through and just let my body turn dictate the power. If I add some elbow been in there all of a sudden that clubs really move in a long way and it's becoming more and more inconsistent for swing, that's great because you have speed, you have power.

It's going to be as consistent as you can be the most consistent in the player. Players in the world do that because you have to do that to get power. But if we can eliminate that in these short game shots, I feel like this doesn't really been very much, and I just use the rotation of my body to make that happen.

Back in through. So you see, I'm going over the basket every single time and I just go a little bit farther and farther. This one, I'll hit even farther than that. You'll notice my elbow doesn't bend too much, very much as I'm doing that. There we go. And that one have been another 30 yards or something like that.

Now, this, like I said, works for those short to mid range shots, maybe up to 40 yards, about the farthest you hit this one. How do the pros hit their distances when they go a little farther than that? So from 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 yards, how do they know how far to hit? It seems like they're landing it right on the button down here every time.

How do they make that happen? Well, that's from the clock swing. A lot of them use this, but you've probably heard of the clock swing before and that's where your arm is like a handle, a clock and you change what time on the clock you would swing back to control the distance that you're going to hit the ball.

But it's more important than that is the timing of that. I'm going to teach you the right timing to use that to use for that in the short game section of our Top Speed Golf System. So if you go an instruction tab top speed golf system, go to a short game and you're going to see exactly what to do to dial in that clock, that clock system to get your wedges right on point.

And again, it's not the clock hand, it's the timing that I'm going to teach you in there. I'm also going to teach you how to hit bump and run shots, which we didn't cover today. I'm going to talk about how to dial in those pitches even more with a better technique there. And the cool thing about this is once you start to practices, it becomes fun because you're just getting up and down a lot more and getting up and down on par fives means more birdies.

 

That's where you going to make the majority of the birdies you make is being fairly close to the green, the par fives, getting that up and down, having a whole heck of a lot of fun on the golf course. So once you're done here head on over to the top speed golf system, go to the short game area and let's get dialed in.

 

And there's distance wedges, the bump and runs and man, you're going to have a blast playing golf. I'll see you there.