The Simple Pitch Shot

Five years ago, I published Better Recreational Golf. Several pages were, and still are, devoted to a short game shot I called, and still do, the Hard Chip. It is played just like your greenside chipping stroke, the essential feature being no wrist break, but with a much bigger swing. It functions as a pitch shot.

I developed this shot on my own because all the books I read about pitching talk about playing a mini-swing for your pitch. That's a difficult stroke to play, and is one reason why so few recreational golfers I play with pitch the ball very well.

I have found, over the years, that if you make this wristless stroke in two forms, one taking your hands back to hip height, and another taking your left arm back to parallel with the ground, you have eight pitching distances locked into a stroke that can hardly go wrong.

Now what happens? The December 2012 Golf Digest has an article titled "The New Big Thing on Tour." You know what it is? The Hard Chip! Except in the article it's called the "straight-arm" chip.

Tour pros are apparently hitting their pitch shots this way, and why not? The swing itself has no variables, so it is easy to repeat. You can change the shot by varying ball position at address, the club, or the length of your swing, but the stroke doesn't change.

The greatest benefit for recreational golfers is that it is easy to bring the club back to the ball to make clean contact. In a pitching stroke where the wrists break, this isn't easy to do.

So what I would recommend is rushing out to buy a copy of Better Recreational Golf so you can learn how to hit this easy and valuable shot. Besides, who knows what else is in there that will take the Tour by storm? And you will have been there first!

You can find it at www.therecreationalgolfer.com.