Perfect Pitching Conditions To Make The Golf Ball Check (Video) - by Pete Styles
Perfect Pitching Conditions To Make The Golf Ball Check (Video) - by Pete Styles

Quite often I get asked on a regular basis in my lessons about how can I spin the ball a bit more, Pete. I want to land the ball on the green, I want to spin it like I see the TV guys, the pros on TV doing. How can I do that? Well, it actually comes down to a little bit of technical stuff but also a series of conditions that we need to have right. Now, one of the first issues is we need to have the right distance. We can't spin the ball if we’re just chipping the ball forwards five or ten paces.

You know, we see golfers on the side of the green hitting little chip shot saying, “Why didn’t that one spin? Why did that roll off the back of the green?” But a shot like that is not hit with enough force to generate the relevant amount of a backspin that’s going to land and spin back. We’re going to need to pitch the ball 20 to 50 yards out there. So maybe towards that red sign we got right here on the driving range around about 50 paces away. I'm going to start to be able to generate enough spin. The other issues that we want to make sure we’ve got lined up because we need to have a decent lie. Now a decent lie is not just the ball sitting up in the air but a ball that’s ideally sitting sort of quite tight to the ground and not a great deal of grass. Now, a lot of club golfers actually find it easier to chip and pitch the ball when the ball is in the semi rough. So, the ball’s sitting up in the semi rough and the balls got a bit of a cushion underneath it that feels like a good lie. But in reality, for someone trying to spin the ball, that’s not ideal because there’s a risk in that longer grass that the grass get stuck between the golf ball and the club face. And as the club face comes in, the grass in particular, the moisture in the grass don’t allow the club and the ball to react well enough and we don’t get the full-on spin, so a better player who's going to prefer to have the ball on a really tight lie. You can imagine playing a ball off a chipping green or a putting green where there’s no grass at all between club and ball. A better player would think that’s a fantastic lie to be able to spin the ball. One last issue, we want a nice soft golf ball, we want nice clean grooves on the club as well. So clean grooves are going to allow the ball to bite, a soft golf ball is going to allow the ball to grip, no grass between club and ball, and a nice 50-yard shot. If we can get all those things right and we can hold the face open, we should be able to chip the ball up and try and generate as much spin as possible on that ball so when it lands on the green, it backs up and spins nicely for us. 2016-08-17

Quite often I get asked on a regular basis in my lessons about how can I spin the ball a bit more, Pete. I want to land the ball on the green, I want to spin it like I see the TV guys, the pros on TV doing. How can I do that? Well, it actually comes down to a little bit of technical stuff but also a series of conditions that we need to have right. Now, one of the first issues is we need to have the right distance. We can't spin the ball if we’re just chipping the ball forwards five or ten paces.

You know, we see golfers on the side of the green hitting little chip shot saying, “Why didn’t that one spin? Why did that roll off the back of the green?” But a shot like that is not hit with enough force to generate the relevant amount of a backspin that’s going to land and spin back. We’re going to need to pitch the ball 20 to 50 yards out there. So maybe towards that red sign we got right here on the driving range around about 50 paces away. I'm going to start to be able to generate enough spin.

The other issues that we want to make sure we’ve got lined up because we need to have a decent lie. Now a decent lie is not just the ball sitting up in the air but a ball that’s ideally sitting sort of quite tight to the ground and not a great deal of grass. Now, a lot of club golfers actually find it easier to chip and pitch the ball when the ball is in the semi rough. So, the ball’s sitting up in the semi rough and the balls got a bit of a cushion underneath it that feels like a good lie.

But in reality, for someone trying to spin the ball, that’s not ideal because there’s a risk in that longer grass that the grass get stuck between the golf ball and the club face. And as the club face comes in, the grass in particular, the moisture in the grass don’t allow the club and the ball to react well enough and we don’t get the full-on spin, so a better player who's going to prefer to have the ball on a really tight lie.

You can imagine playing a ball off a chipping green or a putting green where there’s no grass at all between club and ball. A better player would think that’s a fantastic lie to be able to spin the ball. One last issue, we want a nice soft golf ball, we want nice clean grooves on the club as well. So clean grooves are going to allow the ball to bite, a soft golf ball is going to allow the ball to grip, no grass between club and ball, and a nice 50-yard shot.

If we can get all those things right and we can hold the face open, we should be able to chip the ball up and try and generate as much spin as possible on that ball so when it lands on the green, it backs up and spins nicely for us.