Pitching to the Green

By Laurie Pierce
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What is the golf meaning of the word “pitching”? Simply put, it’s a shortened version of the full swing. The object is to control the distance the ball travels by changing the length of the backswing. For example, if you hit your pitching wedge 100 yards with a full swing, with a half swing you should hit it 50 yards.

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Swing the wedge don’t steer it

Too often we see golfers take a full backswing and try to decelerate the club to a speed that might hit it 50 yards.  In trying to slow the club down, miss hits can occur because you stop swinging the club and start steering it.  Some of the errors are pulled, pushed, thin, bladed or fat shots.  By shortening our backswing and following through to a full finish you retain stability in your swing and make consistent contact with the golf ball. You want to use your normal tempo or acceleration for all of these shots.

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Think of a child on a swing

If you pull them back and let them go, the farther back you pulled them, the faster they would swing.  This is how you want to control distance when pitching - higher for longer and lower for shorter.  We don’t want to control distance by letting the child go and then trying to slow them down at the bottom.

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The practise routine

To set up for a pitch shot you want to take your normal hitting grip. Place the ball in the middle of your stance and have your hips and shoulders parallel to your target line. Your feet can be pointed slightly to the left and your weight should be evenly distributed between both feet.  When taking your backswing you want to make sure that your wrists hinge and that your thumbs are pointing up. ​

Now, with your pitching wedge, try to use a half backswing.  If you think of your hands like the hands on a clock, a half backswing is about 9 o’clock.  Take a swing making sure that you swing right through to a full finish.  The ball should fly about half as far as your normal full swing.  Once you have mastered a half swing, try a three quarter swing (10 o’clock) and then a one quarter swing (8 o’clock).  This will give you four different distances with one club!  By adding more clubs, a Sand wedge and a Lob wedge, to these backswing lengths, you will develop a bag full of many different distances to use on the course.

With some practice you will be hitting the ball closer to the pin in no time.
See you on the range and good golfing!