Pitch Shot from Greenside Rough

25 11 2011

What if I told you that you did not have to be perfect to hit a shot out of greenside rough?  You would then approach the shot with confidence.  Remember Tom Watson’s famous shot on the 71st hole of the 1982 U.S. Open?  Bruce Edwards, his caddie, said “Get it close” to which Watson responded “I’m going to hole it!”  And so he did.  Obviously Watson did it under the utmost pressure as he was battling Nicklaus for the victory and he was tied with Jack at the time.

The truth is that although these shots appear challenging, they are not that difficult.  I teach a forgiving short game technique on these shots where you slide the bounce of the club under the ball.  If you maintain constant loft on the club, the bounce will slide along the grass fro 10-12 inches providing a huge margin of error.  Take a practice swing and you will see the length of the brush mark.

Next time you get this shot, follow these steps:

1)    Take a lofted club like a lob wedge or sand wedge

2)    Play the ball forward in your stance

3)    Weaken your grip which will help keep the clubface open

4)    Firm up your wrists to keep the club from twisting in the grass

5)    Hit behind the ball

6)    Make a big swing

Distance control will come through practice.  Your confidence will grow as you increase your repetitions. Give yourself different lies and targets to simulate real golf conditions.  You have the forgiveness built in to the club and technique.  Go do it!

Josh Zander


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Become a Great Pitcher

21 01 2010

Pitching seems to be one of the toughest shots for the amateur golfer. The shot will become easy when you understand the role of the bounce. The bounce is the trailing edge of the club as you can see in the video. We can thank Gene Sarazen for inventing the bounce on the sand wedge. He designed it to help hit bunker shots and pitch shots. The bounce enables the club to slide along the ground which helps avoid chunking the ball. I actually try to hit the ground before the ball on my pitch shots and the club slides right on through and I get a high soft shot as a result. This is really helpful in deep rough when you can’t contact the ball cleanly. You can hit this shot much like a bunker shot where you hit the ground two inches behind and let the bounce slide right under the ball.

Before hitting this shot, I would recommend that you have a neutral to a slightly weak grip. The reason is that a weaker grip leads to a more open/lofted clubface which will ensure that the bounce hits the ground. Any grip that enables you to close the clubface will hurt you on a pitch shot as this will send the leading edge below the bounce resulting in the dreaded chunk. There is nothing wrong with having a grip for your full swing and another to hit short game shots.

64 degree wedges are fun but if you want to get really good at pitching, try doing it with your 3 iron as I demonstrate in the video. You need some flexibility in your hips to get as low as I do but flexible hips help your all-around golf game so start stretching. You will impress your friends pitching with a low-lofted club and it will make pitching with a lob wedge a piece of cake. Seve Ballesteros grew up with one club. It was a cut down three iron. He became known as the best short game player in the world.  -jz


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Get it up and Down from Greenside Rough

21 06 2009

When it comes to scoring, getting it up and down from difficult situations around the green is crucial. I grew up on a golf course that had a 9 hole par 3 course adjacent to it. All the holes were between 40 and 75 yards. I used to go there with my junior golf buddies and we had competitions all day long. We used to challenge each other and put our balls in ridiculously difficult lies and see who could get it up and down. And yes, there was money on the line.

These competitions helped me learn the valuable skill off assessing a lie and understanding what I could do with it. I learned this from the best teacher I know, trial and error. The shots I demonstrate in this video come from hours of trial and error. I had to learn quickly or my lunch money was on the line. I also liked to compete against the older kids so I needed to be sharp.

The two techniques I show in the video are actually very forgiving. When you use the bounce of the sand wedge, the club slides along the ground for about six inches so you can hit between two and four inches behind the ball and hit a great shot. The key is to hit enough of these to get the distance control down. Since you are sliding the club under the ball and using so much loft, you need to make a pretty fast swing to get the ball to go anywhere.

The second technique where you put the ball well back in the stance enables you to minimize the amount of grass that gets caught between the clubface and the ball. Remember to stick with a sand or lob wedge as well because you will be taking quite a bit of loft off the face with the ball back in your stance. Now that you have de-lofted your club, it does not take much swing to get the ball to go a long way. Remember to only choose this technique when you have plenty of green to work with.

Distance control is the key to short game. You now have two new techniques in your arsenal. Now trial and error will dictate how good you get. Don’t let them win your lunch money!


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Categories : chip shot, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, pitch shot, short game, video


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