Chipping Vs Pitching

chipping tips pitching tips Nov 05, 2021

Full Transcript 

Hey everybody Danny Maude here head professional at Canterbury golf club in Kent this week we're going to deal with a very popular question which is what is the difference between chipping and pitching in this video we're going to talk about exactly what is that difference and the specific techniques that you need for both chipping and pitching they are similar but they require a couple of little changes which we're going to discuss in this training so without further ado let's get cracking so a chip shot a chip shot spends most of its time on the ball spend most of its time on the ground where a pitch shot will spends most of its time in the air so there are one way I know we're looking at this is that a chip shot doesn't and what we're trying to do with the chip shot is we're trying to eliminate as much bats being as as possible what we want to do is get the ball rolling much more towards the flag as opposed to a pitch shot where we want to flight it and we want to maximize the spin so let me show you exactly what this looks like so with a chip shot what we're doing is we are generally going to be taking a much less lofted golf club so I've got a 9-iron here because again I want to limit net as much backspin as possible and all I'm gonna do is pitch the ball onto the green and look at how that just simply rolls out to the flag so it spends a lot more of its time rolling along the ground with that pitch shot what we're doing is I immediately go to something that has a lot more loft this is my 60-degree and the purpose but with this particular shot is to maximize the backspin so what I'm doing here is I'm gonna play a shot I'm going to land it a bit further and watch this that'll grab a bit ones a bit further similar results but in this situation which is a pretty straightforward shot there's not a lot to get over but if I had a bunker here or I had a bit of rough to go over a pitch shot which is flighted more I would need a lot more spin then if I was to take a pitching wedge and had to flight it it would roll too far so the main difference between the two chipping and pitching is is we're chipping we want the ball to roll wanna minimize the amount of backspin with a pitch shot we want to maximum they might backspin right so let's look at the techniques between the two between chipping and pitching we said we want to minimize the amount of backspin that's created on the chip shots so the first thing you need to do is make sure you choose the right Club Tammy uses sandwiches in lob wedge because they've got too much loft on and they'll create too much spin so move down to things like nine irons 8 iron seven eyes it all depends on how much roll you want if we take a look at this hole here the flighting in the middle of the green so if I were to take a 7-iron it may roll too far past the flight but a 9-iron should do the trick how do you know what you want to take it just comes through practice so that's the first in choose a club that in essence minimizes the map backspin the second thing to minimize backspin is we need to make sure we don't generate too much club head speed through the shot too much club head speed creates too much backspin how do we do that well we try to eliminate quite a lot of the wrist action that's the first thing we don't have too much wrist action because they look at this wrist action creates club head speed right and if we do that we create too much spin with that in mind rhythm is very important I find a lot of people wind up trying to play a chip shot there's a often a speeding up through the impact area and again that will create backspin we don't want that right so we want to keep the action really really smooth we very little wrist hinge you may feel them softening a little bit and that's fine but we want very very little so we can minimize enough spin and get our ball releasing out what do we do in the actual setup and the actual action itself to kind of help this along well when we're chipping what we want to be I do is we want the ball fairly central in our stance we want the handle the golf club very vertical maybe a fraction almost opposite is our left thigh but quite vertical and I like to sound quite close to my tube because I want to try and get quite vertical so much more over the golf ball and I let my arms just hang down like this almost forming this triangle now what I'm chipping what's very important what I like to do is just start to swing this triangle backwards and forwards and make sure there's a little movement and a little turn going through so you can see here with my knees and my body and my hips everything's turning through very very important if you don't allow this turn to go through what will happen is your stay still like this and unfortunately the wrists will start to flick and it will compromise your strike so when you're playing we want to keep this lovely rhythm going backwards and forward so let's see what that looks like so from here I'm quite cross the golf ball clubs very vertical and for me it's nice simple triangle here and I'm just letting that release beautifully Attucks it's continued to roll beautifully out to the flag notice a rhythm of that it's nice and smooth so that's what we try to do very very basic technique one thing however to look out for which I've noticed when people do this is again just a couple of things to be aware of when you're setting up you may have been told to put your weight on your left side I'm happy with that but a lot of people put it on the left side incorrectly they tend to slide their weight to the left side like this and that sends their sternum look at my zip here over to the right-hand side so we want to minimize backspin but we need to make sure we strike you as well how do we do that well we've got to keep our sternum directly over the golf ball and the way to do that is to keep almost your shoulders feeling at a level or you may even feel like your left shoulder is lower than your right shoulder well this enables you to do is always make sure that you're getting this downward strike on the golf ball if I was to move my hips forward I'll get my weight forward and get this falling back I'd then my sternum falls back and I end up hitting almost behind the ball and thinning it all right there's the first thing to watch out for make sure you get what may feel like your left shoulder is lower but you know if we put on camera you probably have level shoulders the second thing we want to I've often found on people with chipping is is they are a little bit floppy all right so there's too much movement going on the risks of flying all over the place so there's a compromise here but we want trying to life them assertive people that just sends a measure of strength here so if I were to just get a little bit strong here where my arms a little bit strong here and a formas good unit a good triangle what we want to do here is then what we do is we're holding this unit together all right now clearly there's going to be a difference between different more hot and relaxed we're trying to find that compromise unit it needs to be soft but it needs to feel strong it still fit nice to feel like a strong unit that isn't breaking down this would be breaking down a lot I can you see this I know it's literally because I see this a lot all the legs all the car all breaking down nice strong unit backwards and forwards yeah now when we move on to pitching there are some similarities we said look what do we do with pitching we want to maximize them at backspin when we get on pitches so what do we do first thing we choose the most lofted Club in our bag I've got a 60-degree wedge here and then the action is similar in the sense that I'd like to kind of get set the ball up maybe this time with a pitcher I want to get a little more height so I just pushed the ball a fraction forward in my stance I don't change the width of my stance in any shape or form but what I'll find now is that when I start to swing the club backwards there's a strong unit again where I'll find now is a swing generally is a little bit longer because I'm hitting the ball further and there starts to be a softening of the wrists now we've got to be a bit careful this because why find what when people if I incur tamir seen some videos where they say look [ __ ] your wrist with picture and it's true we do you want more wrist [ __ ] actually in a pitcher why because it generates more club head speed I do find however when people if you're really struggling with your pitching the first thing to do is actually just to focus on the basic almost I feel like there's no risk going on in a solid unit but just using a more lofted Golf Club because that will be an easier way initially to pitch you won't get as much backspin but it's still really really effective and that's a wonderful transition before you then start to get to safe where you maximize the backspin so it does depend on what level you're at right now whether you're not very good at pitching and you generally choose chipping over pitching so if you're at that level the technique you want to use is a chip shot chipping technique with very little risk but you're using more loft and a slightly longer swing yeah but if you're more advanced and you think though my picture is pretty good but I struggle to maximize the bats then then yes start to let the rift set a little bit here because if the reset we can basically generate more club head speed through impact we can generate more and more spin so that's up to you to decide right the difference between the two what I will talk about now that is the type of strike that's required so with chipping we denry strike the ball first and we're trying it we want to strike the ball and let it release with pitching or what I often do is is we tend to use a little bit more of the bounce so what I'm doing now when we're pitching is we want to start to strike the ball or the ground slightly behind the ball just a fraction a millimeter to behind the ball and letting the bounce bruise the ground so it looks something like this when I'm pitching here I'm allowing the club to bottom out behind the ball slightly with the bounce it releases a bit higher and watch this particular not bad a but well that doesn't float higher grabs a little bit quicker and is a far more efficient way of generating that backspin let's summarize so what have we done today with discuss the difference between chipping and pitching what is the difference chipping we're trying to minimize them our backspin and pitching we're trying to maximize the amount of backspin what's the first thing you need to do to kind of get this going choose the right golf club choose a lofted Golf Club if you want to maximise spin and elite a lower lofted Golf Club if you want the ball to release the second thing we want to do is if you want the ball to be rolling out a little bit faster so its proper chip you want to minimize the mat club head speed that you generate how do you do that well you keep the action nice and smooth and you have very little wrist hinge if you want to maximize backspin then what we do is we have more acceleration through the impact area and we start to add a little bit more wrist hinge here but remember there's a caveat with this it all depends what level you're at if you generally choosing chipping because you're scared of using the most lofty clubs and the first thing to do is to take what we've done in the training use a lofted Club with a pitching chip sorry a chipping action and you'll find it far easiest you'll start to get a nice bit height on the shot the ball will land a little bit softer and you'll still have some control you don't have the maximum out backspin people have a lot more control than if you were to just take a nine or a pitching wedge but if you have slightly more advanced and you're pitching pretty good but you really want to maximize that backspin so when you've got the pins quite close to the green and you want the ball to stop then you by all means take the chipping action and now start to add a bit of softness here I just swinging backwards and through so we can generate more speed through the impact area remember the strike is subtly different to a chip shot we're trying to catch a few millimeters behind the ball with the balance of the club we want that bounce sliding through under the ball so we can generate that speed and it also makes the elevation a lot easier to get so I hope you find this training really really useful if you did and you think somebody else is really struggling they're chipping up pitching please share it it really it really really helps and of course if you're enjoying the training and you kerley not see me receiving in your inbox every week don't forget to subscribe to the channel and press the bell at all next week have a great golfing week.