Pitching

[teach]

Can someone direct me to the best explanation/ demonstration in the gallery of the acquired motion?

Also, can anyone recommend a good commercial video on pitching technique?

Finally, a specific question on the stroke: Should I be doing something consciously to square the club face? Too many of my short pitches squirt out to the right. I'm not certain if they are going off the toe or the heel.

I don't have this problem with full swings.

Thank you.

teach

[Yoda]

Also, can anyone recommend a good commercial video on pitching technique?

Plenty of info and demo in Alignment Golf, Teach. Go for it!

http://lynnblakegolf.com/cmps_index.php?page=proshop

[teach]

Thanks Yoda. I already have the DVDs. They are terrific, by the way. I have already watched the first two, and will undoubtedly view them many times more.

Right now, however, on my short pitches, I can't yet figure out what I'm doing differently from what I see on the DVD.

About 1/4 of these shots squirt to the right. Fore! The rest are o.k., but I can't feel what I'm doing differently on the bad ones.

teach

[Andy R]

By squirt right, do you mean off the hosel?

[teach]

Andy, I'm not sure if these shots are off the hosel or off the toe. I guess that there is about a 55 % likelihood that they are off the toe, because they sort of slither out at about a 30-45 degree angle, rather than shoot more directly to the right at about the 60 degree angle that I associate with shanks. However, I'm not at all certain that my guess is correct.

As I write this, I wonder if I'm bending my left wrist at impact, and therefore allowing the collision with the ball to twist the club face open?

Thank you.

teach

[Andy R]

I had the same thing happen to me about 6 years ago when I first started working on Acquired Motion. I had a lot of tension in my arms, was too armsy, and forgot to allow my upper body to turn properly, which betrayed a lack of understanding of Hinge Action.

So first, before you start practicing Acquired Motion, clean your clubface, and check after each shot where you're making contact. I'm guessing you'll see most hits toward the heel.

If thats the case, for the quick fix, line the ball up on the toe before each shot. It worked for me!

But the real fix was studying and practicing Hinge Actions with Acquired Motion, and in edition, making sure my right shoulder was moving diagonally downplane, on the same line as the hands (which is the Alternate Target Line or the Right Forearm Angle of Approach).

[GPStyles]

Teach, first you need to know for sure why the misses squirt right.

Buy some impact tape and determine where you are hitting the ball.

Hope the advice helps

[okie]

Make sure you are tracing the correct line! Sometimes people set up open-square (open stanc line...square plane line) then trace their stance line i.e. out to in, then they can experience a "crisis hinge response" by opening the clubface to counteract the broken plane line and hit a hosel rocket (uber open face at impact) I think people overdo the open stance line on short shots.

[teach]

Thank you all for the suggestions so far. I will look into all of them.

The one aspect which is still unclear to me is the use of hinge actions. I know what they are, and certainly see how they are useful in order to control trajectory, but...there are thousands of golfers out there who have never heard of hinge actions who can pitch the ball all day to within 10 feet of the pin. Do they *naturally* perform the desired hinge action? Or, is the whole concept of hinge action best left to more advanced golfers?

Believe me, I'm not trying to be funny. To draw an analogy to the full swing, many people on golf forums talk about different methods that they use to shape their shots, Hey, I'm just happy to make solid contact

teach

[GPStyles]

teach, since discovering the wonderful world of TGM i have often wondered the same thing - how do golfers play certain shots without knowing they are playing horizontal, angled or vertical hinges?

After pondering it for a while, I thought of how Harvey Pennick would teach. I remember reading a story of how Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw came to him and asked him how to hit a shot over a bunker that would land softly on a green. Harvey told them to picture a little tree in the bunker and to make a swing that made the ball go up over the tree. After they had mastered that he had them visualise the tree getting taller. And taller. And taller. Until finally they could hit cut lob shots. When they asked 'how' they did it, he just said 'I dunno, you just do what you did jsut now'.

In Harvey's wonderful way, he taught them how to play a cut lob shot using a vertical hinge - but he would never call it that because he didn't speak 'TGM'.

Similarly, I used to play a fade using what I would describe to you then as an action were I felt I was 'holding off' the face. Basically I was preventing it from closing to a horizontal hinge, or using an angled hinge. Again I did not know how to describe this using TGM speak until recently.

What I think is really great about TGM is that once you know how to play the various hinges and once you know the various shapes each hinge will produce, you can then have an intention for your golf shots that gives you precision or the potential of precision that your competitors can only dream about.