06/11/2015

Hello golfers, PGA Teaching Professional Todd Kolb here with another segment of On the Lesson Tee, and today I want to talk to you about hitting a quality pitch shot. So first of all, let’s define what a pitch shot actually is. A pitch shot is any shot of roughly 25 yards all the way up to 100 yards. Now how do I hit a good quality pitch shot?

Well the first thing—and the most important thing—is distance control. So the tip I want to give you is first of all, when you’re practicing your pitch shot technique, you want to practice how far the ball flies. Not how far the ball travels, but how far the ball flies and lands; because that’s the key to hitting quality pitch shots.

So let me give you an example. Let’s say that you’re playing a golf course, and the greens are nice and soft, and you have the ability to really spin the golf ball. Well in that particular situation, you want to know how far exactly that it is to the pin, because you’re going to land it right there, it’s going to spin and it’s going to check right up.

But maybe the next day, you’re playing a golf course where the greens are really firm, and you want to be able to land the ball in the front and roll it to the back. So therefore, of course, you need to know how far you need to fly that golf ball. Although the distance might be the same to the pin on both of these shots, you’re going to land the ball in two completely different locations.

So when you go practice your pitching, practice the distance that the golf ball flies. Then you can take that information to the golf course and of course hit the type of shot that you’re looking to hit. So the tip here is understand how far the golf ball flies when you are hitting pitch shots, and if you can do that, you will see those shots finish on the course that much closer to the hole.