Understanding How Wrist Bend Effects Golf Pitches (Video) - by Peter Finch
Understanding How Wrist Bend Effects Golf Pitches (Video) - by Peter Finch

One of the key fundamentals to successful chips and pitches is understanding how wrist bend affects these types of shots. Now wrist bend, wrist hinge, wrist cock whichever way you want to look at it, is a range of motion that the wrists take throughout the backswing, and throughout the swing. With pitching it can have a direct result on the angle of attack and your swing arc moving into the ball. If you have a look at a pitcher, like, Jason Day for example, he uses a pitching technique which requires very little wrist hinge on most of his shots. So he get's setup to most of his pitch shots which are off a decent lie. This can change depending on the type of shot he's trying to play, but he will take the club back with very, very little wrist hinge, and then move the club through with very little wrist hinge as well.

Now what that means is that his angle of attack and his swing arc are very, very shallow. So he clips the ball very much off the surface as that angle of attack is moving very shallow throughout the swing. If you add in wrist bend, and if you add in wrist hinge to a pitching technique, so you take it back, and you start to hinge the wrists up rather than having no wrist hinge at all. What that does it increases the angle of attack moving down into the ball. Now there is no 100 percent correct way for you to pitch. Both these options available are very, very useful. I will go out to the fifty yard zone here, and I will use Jason Day's technique first of all, so very little wrist hinge, much more body movement back and through, and that allows me just to nip that ball off the surface. It's very, very good if you're confident with your bottoming out of your swing arc. Having that little bit of wrist hinge, having that little bit of wrist bend as you move to impact, it's going to allow me to strike down on the ball a little bit more, and also allow me to get quite a lot of control over the overall trajectory. So having that extra wrist hinge will allow you to strike the ball first and the turf a little bit easier. It will allow you to have a steeper angle of attack. It will allow you to also generate that little bit more backspin. Having no wrist bend, but using just the hands and the arms will have a shallow angle of attack and allow you to click the ball off the surface much, much cleaner. In an ideal world you need to go away, practice both, and see which ones work best for you. 2016-10-26

One of the key fundamentals to successful chips and pitches is understanding how wrist bend affects these types of shots. Now wrist bend, wrist hinge, wrist cock whichever way you want to look at it, is a range of motion that the wrists take throughout the backswing, and throughout the swing. With pitching it can have a direct result on the angle of attack and your swing arc moving into the ball. If you have a look at a pitcher, like, Jason Day for example, he uses a pitching technique which requires very little wrist hinge on most of his shots. So he get's setup to most of his pitch shots which are off a decent lie. This can change depending on the type of shot he's trying to play, but he will take the club back with very, very little wrist hinge, and then move the club through with very little wrist hinge as well.

Now what that means is that his angle of attack and his swing arc are very, very shallow. So he clips the ball very much off the surface as that angle of attack is moving very shallow throughout the swing. If you add in wrist bend, and if you add in wrist hinge to a pitching technique, so you take it back, and you start to hinge the wrists up rather than having no wrist hinge at all. What that does it increases the angle of attack moving down into the ball. Now there is no 100 percent correct way for you to pitch. Both these options available are very, very useful. I will go out to the fifty yard zone here, and I will use Jason Day's technique first of all, so very little wrist hinge, much more body movement back and through, and that allows me just to nip that ball off the surface. It's very, very good if you're confident with your bottoming out of your swing arc. Having that little bit of wrist hinge, having that little bit of wrist bend as you move to impact, it's going to allow me to strike down on the ball a little bit more, and also allow me to get quite a lot of control over the overall trajectory.

So having that extra wrist hinge will allow you to strike the ball first and the turf a little bit easier. It will allow you to have a steeper angle of attack. It will allow you to also generate that little bit more backspin. Having no wrist bend, but using just the hands and the arms will have a shallow angle of attack and allow you to click the ball off the surface much, much cleaner. In an ideal world you need to go away, practice both, and see which ones work best for you.