This is the latest blog post from Jordan Jackson, an avid golfer and college intern at Danburg Properties of Boca Raton. Jordan is very successful on the golf course – and knows what he’s talking about regarding golfing. Read and enjoy his observations…

Pitching in golf is one of the hardest things to master, especially in Florida where the grass is Bermuda and will leave no mercy for your golf club as you try to hit a good shot. In this post we will cover the basics of the technique, but in the short game it is more important really to practice effectively. Thus I will give the basics of the technique, some drills to ingrain these techniques and then some fun games for you to play with your friends that are a lot of fun.

The Basics: Within chipping / pitching the basics are extremely simple, all you have to think about is your chest, club, head and hands. This is to say that you will be able to keep the club head in front of you which will allow you to make solid contact with ball. As you can see in Image 1 Steve Stricker his club head, hands, and chest all in one piece which allows him to nip the ball first and create solid contact.

The How: While all that seems well and good you are probably wondering how am I suppose to do that. Well, I used to feel the same but then I was taught several drills that I could do In order to ingrain these proper techniques so that I would never have to think about them again. There are three main drills that will help you to master this simple technique.

Pitching on your left foot will allow you to get your weight on your left side. This makes it almost impossible for you hands, chest, club head to get out of sequence causing you to chunk it, thin it, or duff it.  The drill is shown really well in Image 2 to the right.

The second drill that is going to help you hit more pure chips and pitches is really a lot of fun in of in itself as you can forget about results. Why? Because there is no expectation to hit a good shot when you only have one hand. Yes, only one hand – once you have mastered hitting the ball off just your left leg you will find that you are hitting shots very solid but you will not have them stopping where you want . You need to learn control at this point which is very important within the short game. My favorite drill for short game control is of course the one handed drill. All you have to do is grab your wedge and go to the short game area. Once you do that you’ll realize that the left hand in golf is the control hand. Though don’t let using one hand take away from the precious basics that you’ve learned. Look at image 3 and to get a visual understanding of how to hit short game shots with one hand.

Now that you’ve hit some shots and mastered hitting chip shots off your left leg only, and with your left hand only you are ready to bring it all together. This next drill is done by the worlds best players to fine tune their chipping / pitching techniques. The drill allows you to have immediate feedback if you are not doing the proper technique. All other drill that I have mentioned have not required that you use anything other than yourself and your golf club. This drill is the exception and it is called the ‘Towel Drill’, the towel drill will change your short game life. All you have to do it put a towel and your arms and make it stay there!

So now you’re hitting chip and pitch shots close and there really pure and crisp when you hit them. All of your friends are amazed, but then the inevitable feeling of the insatiable desire to improve at golf kicks in. So how do you improve? Because there is no point in you repeating thee drill after you’ve mastered them. You play games! Today I will tell you three games that you can play in practice that will help your short game. I can tell you from experience that these games helped me more than anything.

The first drill I will tell you is a distance control drill; once you mastered this drill getting up and down from beside the green will literally be a joke. All you have to do is set up about 10 clubs about 4 feet apart from each other. Then try and fly the ball in between each of two clubs. Set a goal to see how many you can get in a row going up and down the “ladder”.

So you can hit the ball crisply whenever you want and you can control how far it goes; now I think you want to show off. So call a friend and play game number two, game number two is a golf version of the basketball game 21. All you need in this game Is 2 golf balls for each person. The person who hit the best shot of the four shots hit gets 3 points; the farthest away from the hole gets -2 points. The first person to 21 points is the champion!

The last game that I will share with you is a game that I played the first time I ever played golf. Its simplicity should not be over looked and it does more for you than just your short game skills, it also makes your focus razor sharp. All you need is your wedge, lots of golf balls and a bucket. Ladies and Gentleman … “The Bucket Drill”