The Basic Principles of Good Pitching

This is the next step up in my progression of how you carry the good practices you learn in a putting stroke into your full swing. We’ve moved from putting to chipping to punching… and now to pitching.

These are basically the same as the Basic Principles of Good Punching. The principles in italics are the ones that have altered slightly as the stroke lengthens and new techniques are employed.

1. The clubface should remain square to the stroke path; the forearms should NOT rotate during the execution of the stroke.
2. Unless we have a good reason to do otherwise, the club should be held in a slant-parallel grip where both palms are parallel to each other but the grip is turned slightly strong. This allows us to keep the wrists firm through impact without tensing the hands and forearms.
3. The club should be held no tighter than necessary, without tension in the arms or shoulders or hands.
4. The club handle should be held more in the fingers, so that the wrists can cock freely. Some people will still keep the forearms close to parallel with the shaft, but this becomes less important. The uncocking action at impact, coupled with the length and speed of the swing, governs the actual position taken at setup.
5. Unless making a specialized stroke, the club should never follow an outside-to-inside path (a cut stroke).
6. The clubhead should travel on a slightly upward path on the backswing and more downward on the downstroke, in order to trap as little grass as possible between the ball and the clubface.
7. The lower body should not be rigid, neither should it be consciously moved. It should move no more than the natural execution of the stroke requires.

Principle 4 changes because the pitch also adds a new technique to the swing: Cocking the wrists, which adds power to the shot. In order to get the maximum advantage from cocking the wrists, we move the grip from the palms down into the fingers; this also allows us to hold the club more firmly during a longer swing without having to tighten the grip much.