Make “Poor” Contact to Control Quick Pitches, Putts, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Make “Poor” Contact to Control Quick Pitches, Putts, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

It’s a pretty fundamental rule in golf that we are always going to try and hit the ball in the best part of the club, hitting the sweet spot. The sweet spot is the bit that sounds good, feels good and hits the ball the furthest. But are there ever occasions when you don’t want to hit the sweet spot? Let’s imagine that you got a chip on a downhill slope, on a downhill green on a very fast green and you’ve got water on the other side of the green, and if you hit the ball out to the center the golf club, it can come out a little bit too hot as we would call it; it lands on the green and shoots off. Or imagine putt that’s straight down the hill, down the green, down the [brake] and again and again it runs off down the slope. Are there times when we could deliberately mishit that ball to make it come up and stop a little bit shorter?

Let me just show you how this could happen. If I bounce the ball on the club face here, you’ll see that when I’m bouncing it in the middle, it bounces up fairly consistently; but if I bounce it off the toe end of the golf club, you’ll almost hear the noise change and it will sound a little bit dead and it won’t fly as high. So if I can bounce that nicely in the sense where it comes up to the same height each time and then I put it in the toe, it gets a lot more dead and then I put back in the middle it comes up to the right height again and the toe again it dies. So if I play a ball off the toe of my wedge as I’m hitting it, it’s going to come out a little bit more dead and not fly anywhere near as far, which on that downhill environment, [Indiscernible] [0:01:30] before down the hill, down the green, water at the back edge, the dead shot off the toe will come out softer, land on the green sooner and release a little bit more gently down the hill. So as I set up, I could place the ball towards the toe side, keep a good distance back away from the ball, make my normal approach and chip it from the toe edge. As long as I don’t hit it right on the toe and it scoops off sideway, that will clearly be a mistake but I could chip the ball here in my wedge from the toe side and it comes up maybe five to ten yards shorter than it would have done if I’d hit that from the center. Yes it sounds a bit funny, yes it feels a bit funny and normally that’s a bad thing, but if you’ve got one these lightning fast chips or lightning fast putts, experiment and practice with playing the ball towards the dead part of the golf contours, the toe and see whether that can make the ball come out a little bit slower with a bit more control for you.

 2013-03-28

It’s a pretty fundamental rule in golf that we are always going to try and hit the ball in the best part of the club, hitting the sweet spot. The sweet spot is the bit that sounds good, feels good and hits the ball the furthest. But are there ever occasions when you don’t want to hit the sweet spot? Let’s imagine that you got a chip on a downhill slope, on a downhill green on a very fast green and you’ve got water on the other side of the green, and if you hit the ball out to the center the golf club, it can come out a little bit too hot as we would call it; it lands on the green and shoots off. Or imagine putt that’s straight down the hill, down the green, down the [brake] and again and again it runs off down the slope. Are there times when we could deliberately mishit that ball to make it come up and stop a little bit shorter?

Let me just show you how this could happen. If I bounce the ball on the club face here, you’ll see that when I’m bouncing it in the middle, it bounces up fairly consistently; but if I bounce it off the toe end of the golf club, you’ll almost hear the noise change and it will sound a little bit dead and it won’t fly as high. So if I can bounce that nicely in the sense where it comes up to the same height each time and then I put it in the toe, it gets a lot more dead and then I put back in the middle it comes up to the right height again and the toe again it dies. So if I play a ball off the toe of my wedge as I’m hitting it, it’s going to come out a little bit more dead and not fly anywhere near as far, which on that downhill environment, [Indiscernible] [0:01:30] before down the hill, down the green, water at the back edge, the dead shot off the toe will come out softer, land on the green sooner and release a little bit more gently down the hill. So as I set up, I could place the ball towards the toe side, keep a good distance back away from the ball, make my normal approach and chip it from the toe edge. As long as I don’t hit it right on the toe and it scoops off sideway, that will clearly be a mistake but I could chip the ball here in my wedge from the toe side and it comes up maybe five to ten yards shorter than it would have done if I’d hit that from the center. Yes it sounds a bit funny, yes it feels a bit funny and normally that’s a bad thing, but if you’ve got one these lightning fast chips or lightning fast putts, experiment and practice with playing the ball towards the dead part of the golf contours, the toe and see whether that can make the ball come out a little bit slower with a bit more control for you.