Do you Chunk or Skull your Pitches?
Making bad contact on pitches cost you strokes. It hampers distance and direction control. With pitches, you have a slim margin for error, so missing by just a few feet can land you in trouble, like coming to rest in the deep grass just of the green. It’s hard to make par from there.
One reason for poor contact on pitches is a complicated technique. When you have this type of pitching technique, you have a hard time repeating it. Other players have a simple pitching technique but execute it poorly. Either way, you’re adding strokes to your score.
Five Key Techniques For Hitting Pitches
- Assume your typical setup
- Place your hands close to front thigh
- Hinge your wrists
- Turn your body forward
- Straighten your arm at impact
The four-step process below eliminates the two most common errors when hitting pitches: locking the arms and becoming too rigid.
Take your normal address position for hitting a pitch shot. But make sure your hands are close to your front thigh., which makes you feel like your arms and club are one. This move encourages your arms and hands to work together.
Hinge your wrists from this position. You want to do it without rotating your body or turning your shoulders. Hinge them more for longer shots. Hinge them less for shorter shots.
Turn your body forward. This move drops the clubhead down onto the ball, which produces crisp, ball–first contact—the type of contact that fosters distance and direction control.
Keep your wrists hinged through contact. Allow your arms to straighten in your follow-through so that the clubshaft lines up with your forward arm. This move stops you from flipping the clubhead through impact.
Practice this simpler method of pitching at the range before using it during a round. This method produces pinpoint pitches that save you strokes.
