The Right Heel Up Pitching Drill

Hello I’m Brian Fitzgerald The Golf Doctor.

Today I’m going to teach you how to improve your pitching.

It’s a little bit of a strange drill, but you are used to me using strange drills now.

Today is one of my better ones. I hope you enjoy it.

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Okay, we are going to do some pitching today.And when I play with amateurs, most people go wrong when they try to hit pitch shots because they are trying to help get the ball in the air and they are lifting up. They are not necessarily lifting their head, that’s what their playing partners are actually telling them.

But it’s lifting the whole body so they are hitting it on the up and I’ve got a 56 degree sand wedge here. There is enough loft on that 56 sand wedge to get the ball in the air. What I have to do is get the club down underneath the golf ball. So provided my golf club can get down underneath the golf ball, I have a chance at getting the ball in the air so I am looking for a downward strike. I am not looking at hitting it on the up. So the drill that I use to teach people how to hit with a downward strike.

Is to take a normal setup and then get their right foot back here with their toe on the ground and their heel up.

That forces your weight to go on to the left foot, it moves my upper body slightly to the left and that encourages me hitting the ground. So you can see there I’m easily hitting down under the golf ball.

And that’s the type of swing we want to use when we play this shot.
So we take our setup and then I just hit down and the ball went up in the air quite nicely.

It’s a simple drill, it’s effective. If you use that on a regular basis I think you’ll find your pitching will improve.

Thank you for letting me help you with your golf.

I’m Brian Fitzgerald The Golf Doctor.

If you like these videos why don’t’ you share them with a friend. You can also find further information on my Facebook page or my twitter page.

The Secret To Hitting A High Soft Pitch Shot

Hello, I’m Brian Fitzgerald The Golf Doctor.

Today we are going to be doing the high soft pitch.

I did try and do this video several months ago. But my video camera was pretty poor and I’m going to have a go at re-filming it today. I hope you enjoy it.

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So here we have a shot of about 20 to 25 meters. It’s going to be over the bunker and not many people like this shot.

It’s bad enough when your ball is in the bunker, but when you have to hit it over the bunker people really don’t like that one.

So the way to play it is to keep your club low to the ground.I have my 60 degree sand wedge here. A sixty degree sand wedge has a lot of loft. I want to use that loft as much as I can.

I don’t want to try and manipulate the club to make something special happen.

If I just swing the club back keeping the club low to the ground. keeping a shallow angle of attack, the loft of the club should get the ball in the air and that will stop the ball.

When I do that, I’m going to be inclined to stop on it. We don’t want to do that. Stop on it and you might hit a good shot but in all probability you won’t.

As much as you possibly can you really want to try and make sure that you keep that club head moving and I try and get my follow through to about shoulder height.

So I swing it slowly, that stops the ball from traveling too far and I’m gripping the club very light. It took me a long time to actually get the confidence to grip the club light when I play this shot. I kept wanting to grip it tight, the ball went a bit lower and when it landed the ball ran on a bit too much.

So I really want to keep it light. I want to keep my swing slow and I just want to get the club sliding underneath the ball.

I’ll see how I go.

[HIT]

So you can see the ball went up nice and high, it landed quite softly and it ran just a little bit past the flag stick.

For the lack of practice that I do lately I’m pretty happy with that shot.

But the ball did go high, I didn’t take a massive divot and the ball did land soft. So first and foremost you want to make sure you get it over the bunker. You don’t want to leave it short.

I’m pretty happy with that, I can get a putter out with my next shot.

So give that one a try at home. Grip it light, have a full swing but a slow swing and keep your angle of attack shallow.

I’m Brian Fitzgerald The Golf Doctor. Thanks for letting me help you with your golf.

If you like my videos, you can get further information from my website which is www.thegolfdoctor.com.au that can be found here.

We also have my Facebook page which you can click on just there.

Or there is my Twitter page which you can click on there.

If you want to leave a comment ah at the end of the video. Just go down to the bottom of the video on the YouTube and you can add comments. I am happy to answer any of them.

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How Throwing A Bucket Can Improve Your Golf Swing

 

Hello there.

I’m Brian Fitzgerald “The Golf Doctor”.
And today we are going to use a drill that is going to help you to combine how you use your hands and how you use your body.
I call it the “Throwing The Bucket Drill.”

I hope you enjoy it.

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Alright, today we are doing the throwing the bucket drill.

And all we do is use a simple bucket. You can substitute the bucket for a basketball. You can throw a cushion inside the house, as long as you don’t break the light  that’s in the lounge room.

You can use anything that’s available to you.

But all we do is we get ourselves in our normal set up position, making sure we have the right posture, spine tilted forward and I’ve actually said in another video how to actually achieve the correct posture.

So I’ll put a link to that video just on that video there. Link to Correct Posture Golf Tip.

So we grab the bucket. Get into our posture. All we have to do here, is try and throw the bucket in a straight line.

You wouldn’t really throw the bucket by doing that. I would call that the discus method. And what is the shape of the field that you throw a discus to? It starts narrow and gets wider.

I don’t know too many fairways that have fairways shaped like that. They are more like corridors. So we want to get the hands traveling away and upwards and away and upwards.

So it looks something like this. By doing that it actually teaches you how to combine your hand movement with your body movement and it gets you swinging on the right swing plane.

Okay, so that’s how we do it. If we do a correct swing. Watch what happens if I do it the wrong way. If my shoulders start pulling my hands down, I’m going to release the bucket that way. So my hands are around the back of me, and you can see my swing is traveling to the left. That could produce a slice but it can also produce a hook. It just depends on where my club face is at the time of impact.

So now I’ve got a club in my hands.I will do the same sort of things. I get into my posture and I try and swing the club back as if I’m trying to throw the golf club down the range. We don’t want to pull the club down. It’s called a golf swing and we swing the club head. So we swing the club through as if my right hand is throwing the golf club.

If you can do that you’ll hit much better shots and you will get more consistent.

So if you like my videos, why don’t you share it with a friend. You can share it by clicking the share button at the bottom of YouTube, or you can email a friend or you can also find further information on my Facebook page or my Twitter page. If you really like them you can also subscribe and that way you get informed when I’ve got a new video up.

Thank you for letting me help you with your golf.

I’m Brian Fitzgerald The Golf Doctor.

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