What caused bladed pitches?

[dchoye]

I did this twice this week. I will playing well. Hit a long cut drive on a really short par 4 and it leaves only 40-50 yards left for an easy pitch shot. I would have no problems with my 50 yard pitch shot earlier in the round. Then all of a sudden I blade it over the green. My setup feels the same as before but for some reason when I try to roll my wrists my LW hits the ball either at the leading edge or the last groove and the LW face doesn't turn over. Any ideas?

[boogielicious]

For me it happens when I don't let my legs do the work.  Per Dave Stockton/Stan Utley, the pitch is a right hand controlled shot, but the leg motion provides the power and club speed.  If you want Erik and Dave's Pitch video, the legs do the work and the club head almost moves by gravity only.

[saevel25]

I did this twice this week. I will playing well. Hit a long cut drive on a really short par 4 and it leaves only 40-50 yards left for an easy pitch shot. I would have no problems with my 50 yard pitch shot earlier in the round. Then all of a sudden I blade it over the green. My setup feels the same as before but for some reason when I try to roll my wrists my LW hits the ball either at the leading edge or the last groove and the LW face doesn't turn over. Any ideas?

Stop trying to roll your wrist, doing so decreases the bounce on the LW and brings the edge into play.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/39411/quickie-pitching-video

embrace the bounce on the wedge.

I also like what Stan Utley mentioned in a golf video once. He would have his students flip the club over and hit balls with the grip. He would just have them do this with there right hand if right handed. What he was trying to do was, get them away from worrying about the clubhead, worrying about the ball, just make an athletic move, something with rhythm, balance.

I always found my best short game shots came when i had great rhythm to my pitches, and just let the club do the work.

I told my dad once, you can hit a 3-wood off the the fairway and you can't chip, how can you trust 15 degrees of loft to get the ball up in the air and not trust 56 degrees of loft. Trust the club to do the work.

[Stretch]

Practice pitching with just your right arm. This really helps with keeping the loft and bounce on the club and not getting the leading edge into play, which is when you start knifing it across the green.

This sort of thing:

[lumpuckeroo]

If I blade a short pitch, 99% chance I pulled my head off the ball.  This is true for all of my shots, I MUST have my right shoulder push my chin left, if I don't, I will not make clean contact with the ball.

[birlyshirly]

I've always struggled to put a good strike on short pitch shots - I hit the ball and control lowpoint better on full swings. This year, I feel I've finally started to improve matters by sorting out my backswing plane. In my case, this has involved getting the club up steeper, earlier.

I think there's time in a full swing to work in some compensations to get the club squarely on the ball. Short pitches give you less time to manipulate the club, so you need better technique.

[PirateJim]

My pitching has improved a lot since I embraced the concepts in Erik's pitching video linked above, and mixed in some Stan Utley (not much difference in the approaches, but Utley made a book out of it).  Now, when I blade a pitch (or chip) I believe it is almost always from trying to over control the club head instead of letting my turn and gravity do most of the work.  Easy to identify, tough to stop doing it seems.