In this pitch shot lesson, I am going to help you stop your golf ball on the green near to the pin. This shot is perfect when you are close to the green but not quite close enough to run out a chip shot out and not far enough away from the hole to fly the pitch shot really high in the air and stop it.

The solution is to stop it with a short pitch shot, what I call a chip pitch. In the video below I take you through how to play the shot, but before we start, you need to make sure that you have very clean grooves on your clubface. In fact, it’s important to have your grooves on all your wedges clean, so make sure you clean them out after every shot – use a tee or a specialist club cleaning brush to get the job done. In fact, if you take a practice swing before your shot and you get some grass in those grooves, go ahead and wipe off that grass before you hit the shot. Now, to the video

How to Play the Pitch Shot that Stops Close to the Hole

The first step is to open up your clubface just a little bit. I’ve got my 58-degree lofted wedge and I’m going to open it up because I want some major spin with this short pitch shot.

Then I’m going to put more weight on my front foot toward the target. I like 60% of my weight toward the front.

When I bring this club back, you’re going to notice that I’m going to have it open with a little bit of forward hand press. Then I’m going to bring the club back with some hinge in my wrists. Then I’m going to hold this same angle as I hit the shot. That’s going to produce the spin to stop this ball on the green.

So to summarize I take a practice swing, then I clean the grass off the grooves, then I open up the clubface just a little bit. I put my hands a little bit forward of the ball and also shift my weight a little bit forward, and I swing back with have a little hinge and hold. As you can see in the video, the ball stops really, really close to the hole because of the major spin on that little chip pitch shot and now you are set up to make that putt or maybe even chip it in.