Re: Fat pitch shots

Hi David, hitting pitch shots fat can be caused by a number of things but a few of the the most common causes are:

(1) over exaggerating the downward "hit" into the ball and you end up hitting so much turf and very little energy is transferred to the ball (if any) to get the expected distance. A common way of describing this is "chopping" at the ball. You can solve this by hitting pitch shots off a towel for example where you have to "nip" the ball off the towel, with a reasonably shallow divot. If you come in too steeply and try to take an excavation rather than a divot, the towel will absorb a lot of that energy and you'll duff it.

Quite often the chopping is coupled with other swing faults too, but for now, let's keep it simple. The obvious one of these swing faults coupled with a "chop" is too much weight on the left side (if you're right handed) and a steepening of the shoulders with the right being higher than the left at impact.

(2) you are dipping into impact effectively lowering the swing arc to a few inches below the ground rather than at ground level. if this is your problem one of the best ways to coach this from a teacher point of view is to "lock up" the right knee. With just about every golf swing, the right knee remains at the same flex throughout the swing until after impact. If you dip, you're obviously flexing the knees more-and-more through the swing. Try pitching with a rythmical (not full blooded) 3/4 swing, focussing on setting the right knee and keeping it at the same flex until after impact.

Once, I had a "dipper" and we wrapped & stapled a towel around his right knee. It was the only way we could stop him from flexing into impact. But it worked!!

(3) The less obvious problems are:
3a. You're losing power. It's possible that you're not hitting it fat at all. You might be hitting the ball okay and taking a good divot but not accelerating through impact and not getting enough club speed onto the ball.

3b. Your pitching club doesn't have enough bounce. Bounce is the difference in angle between (1) the ground and the leading edge of the clubhead and (2) the ground and lowest point of the sole of the club. It may well be that you're hitting it okay but the club carries on going down into the turf towards China rather than slowing down and "bouncing" upwards like they're designed to do. Generally newer designed clubs from quality manufacturers have a reasonable amount of bounced in the wedges but I have seen some from lesser known manufactureres with no bounce at all.

There is a lot of info here and "general" in approach covering the most common faults. If you refine it a little for us, we could all contribute to refining a solution. Firstly, I'd check whether you are actually hitting it fat (i.e. well behind the ball) and if you are then get a mate to see whether you're dipping or coming in to impact too steeply.

I hope this helps.
G