Pitch Shot - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer
Pitch Shot - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer

Many golfers would benefit their games by focusing more on their pitching and chipping actions. In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will highlight how a ball position in the rear portions of the stance coupled with a body weight position in the front portion of the stance could improve your ball striking. Added to this an accelerating swing motion and a keen eye for improved practice should result in an all round better pitching game that would make the pros envious.

So one of the key to having a really good golf game is having go great short game and that's going to really take some shots off score card Pete and would you agree that if we can chip it closer we're going to be lowering those scores. Yeah definitely I think so I think where what we see is that if you were to offer the opportunity with any club golfer to swap a certain part of their game with a tour pro most of us would probably choose driving. We would say we want to drive the ball as far as these guys I know and enjoy the ball 300 yards down the middle of the fairway brilliant and then you do a few chips trying to the bunker over there like you always do I need still got back at 6 though you've driven the ball 300 yards down there. We want to chip in like a top pro is what you're saying it might be more pertinent to suggest that if you could swap any part your game with at all prior relieve the drive but swap the short game. If we pick out a 75 yard flag over there and we sort of measure the average distance for the tour pro away from the flag we'd be measuring it in feet and inches but if we have measured the average club golfers distance away from a 75 yard pitching flag would be probably using yards and for a few miles. Depending on how good they are I put my money where our mouth is now I've got a left to right wind about 54 degrees which is just about enough I need lots of this. A little bit big and left a little bit big and left. As well I think a good point your point you put switched on now if we get in trouble as well as an amateur if we've got a good reliable short game even once you come back out of trouble and you can chip it close your not going to waste that shot.

So if you could give us a few tips to make us chip and pitch like the pro where would we start? I think the first place so much we're going to start is with that last ball and that contact that I made on the golf ball there you could see a fair old chunk of turf flew up and flew quite a long way down here and I think whenever you see the good players the tour players particularly on the T.V. they have got this a 75 yard wedge shot in their hands. It is always accompanied by a big chunk of turf and the caddie goes scattering off afterwards to bring it back in stick it back in the fairway. So I think the quality of ball strike is one of the big differences between the tour pros and club golfers is how we strike down on the golf course. Now my shot wasn't a particularly close shot to the flag but I would always walk up there and two putt that on I think certainly 75 yards if I can two putt then I am onto a winner. Definitely see a lot of amateurs and those public people watching this at home that they're faced with that 75 yard shot and it becomes a little bit nervy thinking am I going to get this in the air am I going to duff it in front of me and I'm going to run it through the green. So you know no one getting that strike is crucial from there where would you lead on to next Pete? I think it's important that we have the ball set up in the right place so we are going to have the ball setting up around about the center of the stance and that should encourage therefore the body weight to go slightly less of the golf or slightly ahead of the golf ball for the right handed golfer, and that puts my body weight more into my my front leg to enable me to turn back keeping my body weight here, and I think that's quite crucial is that I don't sway off the ball like I would do in a full swing. More full swings were going to have the ball more forwards we might have the body weight moving off the back of the ball here and then there's a feeling of trying to either slide a long way forwards or stay back to it that generates power but I don't need power here. What I need here is control. Yes one of the things as you touched on the put weight forward would you agree that probably the most common what we're seeing is this is a setup position where Pete's actually got his sternum behind the golf ball here now and most likely you're going to bury that club early into the ground aren't you. I think from there I would probably hit the ball fat might take a divot it might be behind the ball or I'd be scared of taking a divot and top the golf ball. I think you're exactly right there with the ball position central the body weight left and then stay left stay a left to play left stay a left left left and then more left it heel is up early body weight is over and although we know the ball is going to go high and we've seen tour players hit the ball high we've got plenty of loft. The feeling within the golfer should actually be trying to hit the ball low we shouldn't be trying to get behind this and scoop it up and we should feel like we're getting all I was trying to hit down. If you can take that approach to your chipping and pitching shots of try and hit this ball as low as you can will still go and yet still a really nice. Little 2 degrees of loft there so I would hope it's going up.

If you could cap it off with a third tip what would you be looking at what would you try to do? I think it's always about accelerating accelerating to a full finish the danger is that the golfer sees this shot as not a full shot they think well my full swing would go a 100 I need to back off I need to take power away and sometimes we take power away by making a full back swing and stopping and it doesn't go hardly any distance at all if we're going to remove power we really need to remove power from all aspects of the swing not just the follow through. Would you say if you were to swing back like today to 3 o'clock for me here now would it be something where if you're coming through into the follow through but you're actually going to go a little bit past 9 o'clock you're going to get maybe a little bit further up there to help with that lack of acceleration through the golf ball? I think that's a fantastic swing thought for a lot of people is to think one third back two thirds through in reality 50/50 might work for us but what better it doesn't work is two thirds back and a third through. So therefore one third to two thirds keeps the acceleration. Now that can work whether you're pitching like it or pro to 75 yards or hitting it 20 yards over a bunker where one third to two thirds is a great way of accelerating through the golf ball let the club travel on its journey. One of the things we'll see is that quitting sort of apprehensive away from target please don't let anything go wrong sort of swing. That is a great point to just let the club follow on a little bit lower that to allow it and that will generally accelerate through to target. So some really really good stuff so if you're just going to pitch one off for us now just put all that into motion we've got a good set up we're going to feel that we're hitting down on it and slight acceleration towards target. Lovely strike better than the first one about 10 feet. Excellent so some really good tips there guys to help you with your pitching and help you pitch it like a tour player see if you can incorporate those into your technique and hopefully going to see some shots that are close towards the flag.

2018-11-13

Many golfers would benefit their games by focusing more on their pitching and chipping actions. In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will highlight how a ball position in the rear portions of the stance coupled with a body weight position in the front portion of the stance could improve your ball striking. Added to this an accelerating swing motion and a keen eye for improved practice should result in an all round better pitching game that would make the pros envious.

So one of the key to having a really good golf game is having go great short game and that's going to really take some shots off score card Pete and would you agree that if we can chip it closer we're going to be lowering those scores. Yeah definitely I think so I think where what we see is that if you were to offer the opportunity with any club golfer to swap a certain part of their game with a tour pro most of us would probably choose driving. We would say we want to drive the ball as far as these guys I know and enjoy the ball 300 yards down the middle of the fairway brilliant and then you do a few chips trying to the bunker over there like you always do I need still got back at 6 though you've driven the ball 300 yards down there. We want to chip in like a top pro is what you're saying it might be more pertinent to suggest that if you could swap any part your game with at all prior relieve the drive but swap the short game. If we pick out a 75 yard flag over there and we sort of measure the average distance for the tour pro away from the flag we'd be measuring it in feet and inches but if we have measured the average club golfers distance away from a 75 yard pitching flag would be probably using yards and for a few miles. Depending on how good they are I put my money where our mouth is now I've got a left to right wind about 54 degrees which is just about enough I need lots of this. A little bit big and left a little bit big and left. As well I think a good point your point you put switched on now if we get in trouble as well as an amateur if we've got a good reliable short game even once you come back out of trouble and you can chip it close your not going to waste that shot.

So if you could give us a few tips to make us chip and pitch like the pro where would we start? I think the first place so much we're going to start is with that last ball and that contact that I made on the golf ball there you could see a fair old chunk of turf flew up and flew quite a long way down here and I think whenever you see the good players the tour players particularly on the T.V. they have got this a 75 yard wedge shot in their hands. It is always accompanied by a big chunk of turf and the caddie goes scattering off afterwards to bring it back in stick it back in the fairway. So I think the quality of ball strike is one of the big differences between the tour pros and club golfers is how we strike down on the golf course. Now my shot wasn't a particularly close shot to the flag but I would always walk up there and two putt that on I think certainly 75 yards if I can two putt then I am onto a winner. Definitely see a lot of amateurs and those public people watching this at home that they're faced with that 75 yard shot and it becomes a little bit nervy thinking am I going to get this in the air am I going to duff it in front of me and I'm going to run it through the green. So you know no one getting that strike is crucial from there where would you lead on to next Pete? I think it's important that we have the ball set up in the right place so we are going to have the ball setting up around about the center of the stance and that should encourage therefore the body weight to go slightly less of the golf or slightly ahead of the golf ball for the right handed golfer, and that puts my body weight more into my my front leg to enable me to turn back keeping my body weight here, and I think that's quite crucial is that I don't sway off the ball like I would do in a full swing. More full swings were going to have the ball more forwards we might have the body weight moving off the back of the ball here and then there's a feeling of trying to either slide a long way forwards or stay back to it that generates power but I don't need power here. What I need here is control. Yes one of the things as you touched on the put weight forward would you agree that probably the most common what we're seeing is this is a setup position where Pete's actually got his sternum behind the golf ball here now and most likely you're going to bury that club early into the ground aren't you. I think from there I would probably hit the ball fat might take a divot it might be behind the ball or I'd be scared of taking a divot and top the golf ball. I think you're exactly right there with the ball position central the body weight left and then stay left stay a left to play left stay a left left left and then more left it heel is up early body weight is over and although we know the ball is going to go high and we've seen tour players hit the ball high we've got plenty of loft. The feeling within the golfer should actually be trying to hit the ball low we shouldn't be trying to get behind this and scoop it up and we should feel like we're getting all I was trying to hit down. If you can take that approach to your chipping and pitching shots of try and hit this ball as low as you can will still go and yet still a really nice. Little 2 degrees of loft there so I would hope it's going up.

If you could cap it off with a third tip what would you be looking at what would you try to do? I think it's always about accelerating accelerating to a full finish the danger is that the golfer sees this shot as not a full shot they think well my full swing would go a 100 I need to back off I need to take power away and sometimes we take power away by making a full back swing and stopping and it doesn't go hardly any distance at all if we're going to remove power we really need to remove power from all aspects of the swing not just the follow through. Would you say if you were to swing back like today to 3 o'clock for me here now would it be something where if you're coming through into the follow through but you're actually going to go a little bit past 9 o'clock you're going to get maybe a little bit further up there to help with that lack of acceleration through the golf ball? I think that's a fantastic swing thought for a lot of people is to think one third back two thirds through in reality 50/50 might work for us but what better it doesn't work is two thirds back and a third through. So therefore one third to two thirds keeps the acceleration. Now that can work whether you're pitching like it or pro to 75 yards or hitting it 20 yards over a bunker where one third to two thirds is a great way of accelerating through the golf ball let the club travel on its journey. One of the things we'll see is that quitting sort of apprehensive away from target please don't let anything go wrong sort of swing. That is a great point to just let the club follow on a little bit lower that to allow it and that will generally accelerate through to target. So some really really good stuff so if you're just going to pitch one off for us now just put all that into motion we've got a good set up we're going to feel that we're hitting down on it and slight acceleration towards target. Lovely strike better than the first one about 10 feet. Excellent so some really good tips there guys to help you with your pitching and help you pitch it like a tour player see if you can incorporate those into your technique and hopefully going to see some shots that are close towards the flag.