How To Strike Your Pitch Shots From 30 - 80 Yards Every Time!

Get This Free Practice Plan

Transcript Summary-

If you’ve got one of those awkward 40–50 yard pitch shots, you’ll know exactly how it feels—it’s not a chip, not a full swing, and it can really bring a bit of tension into your game. But actually, this is a huge opportunity. The best players love these distances because they know how to control strike and distance. So in this video, I want to give you a simple, repeatable way to make your pitching feel effortless and confident.

The first key is creating a calm, stable motion. What you’ll notice with great players is their upper and lower body stay beautifully stacked throughout the swing. There’s no excessive sliding or spinning—everything moves together. If you’re someone who tends to slice, you might feel your lower body moving away and your upper body coming over the top. If you hook it, you might drive the lower body too early. Either way, that disconnect creates inconsistency. So instead, feel like your body stays centred and stacked, almost like your lead side is anchored in place. That alone will massively improve your strike.

Now the second piece is rhythm. This is where so many golfers go wrong—they get a little bit “jabby” at the ball. What we want instead is a smooth “tick-tock” motion, like a grandfather clock. As the club swings down, the handle gently works up. You’re not forcing the club into the ground—you’re letting gravity do the work while you stay balanced. In fact, you might even feel like you’re standing slightly taller through the strike. This helps you control the depth of the club and avoid those heavy or thin shots.

And the third piece—this was a real game changer for me, something I learned from Joe Mayo—is how the clubface behaves. Great pitchers often start with the face slightly open, but allow it to naturally close through impact. They’re not trying to hold loft and lift the ball. Instead, they let the club fall, the thumbs work down, and the face squares up beautifully. As that happens, the body simply rotates with it. Everything blends together—no manipulation, no flicking, just a smooth, coordinated motion.

When you put all three together—stacked body, smooth rhythm, and a naturally closing clubface—you start to get that effortless look you see in great players. More importantly, you get consistency. And when your strike becomes repeatable, your distance control improves, and that’s when confidence really starts to build. Suddenly, these awkward pitch shots become a chance to get up and down, rather than something to fear.

Full Transcript- So, I'm about to approach a shot that is not a chip shot. It's not a full swing. It's kind of, we call it a pitch shot. It's kind of between 40 to 50 yards. It's a really, really awkward distance. And we've all, me included, been a bit nervous over these ones. How do you get consistent contact? How do you judge distance control? How do you make sure that this isn't a source of nerves, but actually an opportunity like the best players do? So, we can get it maybe up and down from here. Imagine that. In this video, I want to share with you a wonderful drill that my uh one of my mentors gave me that completely transformed my consistency in this area. I had to adapt it slightly to some of my students who had some slice tendencies in in their swing. But I promise you, the simplicity of the drill makes the pitching feel a lot more effortless and more importantly repeatable. And when you have a repeatable motion, you have a repeatable strike. And then with some practice, you then build that confidence up and you start enjoying these. I'd love to share it with you in this video. But before I do, look, if you're new to the channel, when your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. Plus, you never have to remember a thing. Everything I do here, I'll put into a free download or practice guide, and I'll pin it to the top comment below this video. So, if you watch these great players on TV, don't they make the shot look so easy, so effortless? their bodies look as if it's just beautifully coordinated and flowing, but yet you might find that yours feels jerky and I'm like jabbing at the ground one minute, fattening it, thinning it the next. It just isn't smooth. And how are they doing it? Well, they're doing three things I'd love to share with you in this video. The third thing, by the way, is something I didn't even know, and a good friend of mine, Joe Mayo, shared it with me, and it's gamechanging for your pitching. So, I can't wait to share it with you. But the first thing what gives them this kind of consistency of strike a distance control well they need a very calm motion. This is the ultimate goal in pitching. Everything is about controlling strike and distance. So we don't want any violent motions. One of the key things and this is the first thing I want you to look at in your golf swing. The lower body and the upper body are stacked on top of each other pretty much through the entire swing back into impact here and through. This is the first step of creating calmness and stillness and consistency. Now, if you happen to be in the hook family or sliced family, you're going to be slightly different. We tend to bring some of our full game mechanics into the short game. For those of you who are in the hook family, that would be me sometimes. Your tendency would be to probably drive the lower body too much early in the down swing. Now we get misaligned. Do you think that's going to create smoothness? No. We're going to have to catch up with our hands. Great for speed potentially in the long game. Terrible for pitching. If you slice the golf ball, the opposite's true. You tend to be the over the toppers. So look, look what happens now. Your lower body goes the other way and your upper body goes over the top. Now what you going to have to do? Well, now we're heading in the wrong direction. You might have to move your arms to try and correct it. Again, is that going to create smoothness? No. So, we need to be really good at being aware where our bodies are in space. We want them stacked on top of one another here. So, when I'm setting up here, club width apart, two club widths apart, ball position maybe forward of forward if I want a high shot, back if I want a low shot, but I want these bodies stacked on top of one another here. And then when we're swinging, we want to in a sense try to maintain that stack all the way through. And with a recent student of mine, Spence, this week, um, who was slicer in his long game, he had some of those kind of faults coming into his kind of short game, I got him to imagine almost like his lead side is like a stake, a stake in the ground. And I actually got him to use his trail foot here to prop that stake upwards because what was happening is is even though he understood this, his long game swing, which would be to spin out and over the top, the legs would go this way. Now he would create this kind of jab on the ground to kind of strike kind of strike it. I didn't want him didn't want him to do that. I wanted to keep that smoothness. So, I got him to prop up the lower body and the upper body on top of one another here and start to make swings. He felt a little bit restricted, but look at the difference. I'm keeping the lower body underneath the upper to make sure that I land the club in the correct spot every time. So, if you're in the slice family, that would be a really good place to start. So, that is stage one. Make sure your bodies are nice and stacked on top of one another to start with and then kind of maintain that through the swing.

Nice. Now, it's interesting there. Can you see here? That's I mean, look, I've hit a pretty good shot there, but can you see that I've kind of created quite a big divot, and that would that's not necessarily going to give me consistent distance control time and time again. And I got away with that a little bit there. But that would be again one of my own personal faults. And this is where rhythm, which is step two, comes into actually the motion. When you're playing a shot like this, we want to be able to control not just where the club lands, i.e. keep these dots on top of one another like this. What we want to be able to do is create a beautiful tick tock rhythm. Now, if I look back at my last swing there, I really felt a little bit of a drive here with my hands. I'm going almost downwards a little bit too much and that's what got me going too far under the ground. Again, I see this a lot with people who kind of struggle with uh inconsistent contact. Now, again, think of the best players making it look effortless. How do they do this? They don't have jerks like this. They have rhythm. So, imagine this big grandfather clock. Tick tock. Tick tock. But this is the important bit. The butt of the club is going upwards. Tick tock. Tick tock. So, as the club goes down, the book goes up. Really important. Now, notice this. This is what's going to help you control your depth. We as the club comes down, we don't go down with it. We are counterbalancing this club. Now, you don't have to stand up, but you certainly don't want to go down. So, I'm almost you can either maintain your height or I sort of like the sensation of just standing up a little bit here as the club's going down. This is the pattern of motion that we're after. And this is, can you see how effortless and natural that looks compared to everything going this way? Again, we're starting to form now this effortless look that you see with these best players. So, we get ourselves set here. We're keeping those bodies stacked on top of one another here. Yeah. For the slices, you're going to really feel like you're keeping that back pocket pushed forward. Don't let that right leg start to bend here. Keep it kind of locked out a little bit here. Keeping that underneath your torso. And as I'm coming down now, I'm allowing myself here to let the club just fall under gravity. As it's falling, look, tick, tick, tuck. I am feeling like I'm standing up through the shot. Okay, let's have a look at this in action.

There we go. Oh, almost into the hole. Almost in the hole. So, you see a gentle ride. You see a very very very shallow divot compared to my last one. Okay. So, this is a rhythm that I really want you to get a feeling of. And it's like like all things, rhythm and timing are something that we practice and work on. But this is a pattern of motions. the club's dropping, you'll feel it's just the most natural thing in the world to just just avoid going down with it. We're kind of counterbalancing this club. And this is again part of the the the rhythm. So, third thing, this was a game changer. Joe Mayo gave me this one. Absolutely amazing. I wasn't aware of this, but it completely gave me a very different perspective on uh on pitching and and even, you know, many many shots. Great pitchers, get this. They often start with their fist slightly open. But at the moment of impact, that club face is closing. This is a pattern of movement. Starts open, moves to closed. Starts open, moves to closed. If you're in the draw hook family like I would, I would be more like this. Drag very late hit. No control. No control of my striking and my distance control. Slices tend to be flickers. Yeah. Like this. Getting elbows. Notice what I'm doing here. Look, my thumbs are working down. Why is this useful? Well, now what I'm doing this is as the thumbs go down towards the ground, the face is closing. I'm allowing gravity of the club to fall down to the ground. So, when you start with a face that's slightly open and then allow gravity to work to let those thumbs fall point down towards the ground, what you're doing here is you're giving time and making it so easy and natural for the club face to close down through impact. So many of my students because they're bringing out I've got 60°ree wedge here are often trying to hold loft on the club like this, try to lift it up in the air. But the best players, they're actually taking loft off the golf club. Does that make sense? It's very, very counterintuitive, isn't it? They're taking loft off the golf club through the impact area. Now, watch this. As I'm doing this, notice how as I'm letting this club just fall down to the ground and close, my body then calmly goes with the motion. You can see now how we get this effortless motion. If I just let my arms go down and didn't move, it would shut down like this and I'd look flicky. But as I'm allowing the club face to close, I am now literally allowing my body look to then close with the club. So everything's beautifully working together. You see how it all starts to blend now? They're stacked on top of one another. The rhythm tick tock. And now we don't want trying to get the club up in the air. We let the club naturally close because it's now working with the body and you start to see that kind of effortless motion all working beautifully in harmony. So let's have a look at this in action. So I get myself set here again. Ball going to play mid-trajectory shot here. Start with my club face slightly open. Yeah. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to imagine this club just beautifully closing down through that impact area. Not by me doing this, just by the natural my thumbs pointing towards the ground and then I'm picking up that turn on the way through.

And look at this. Beautiful. Come on. Almost another one in there. Simple as that. So, like all things when I'm pitching, do you know what? Maybe even on that one there. Still pretty good, isn't it? My timing wasn't right. Sometimes I get a little bit here, then the hands come in a little bit too late. This would be typical of someone like myself who would be uh in the hook family. So, I have to practice all of the timing where my body everything's working right beautifully to impact together and through. That's timing. If you're in the slice family, you're going to avoid this right. So, you have too much twist in your game. You need to make sure that these legs stay stacked underneath. And they need to time this. And the timing comes through practice. But once you get it, you start to have this effortless coordinated motion. And that's really all they do. When they make it look easy, everything is just coordinated beautifully together. I would love for you to have that. Okay. But this, by the way, letting that club just close down and then go with it. That for me, beautiful game changer. Thank you, Joe Mayer. Um, so I hope you enjoyed the video. If you know somebody who is struggling with their pitching, please share this video. And if you haven't already, make sure you press that subscribe button. And if you'd like more personalized ad advice from myself to help you with your game, head on over to dannymod.com. I'll put all the details in um the description below. Remember, you can download a free practice guide by the pinning I'll pin it to the top comment below this video or just scan a QR code somewhere on this page. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.