Not sure of when to hit a chip shot or a pitch shot around the green? Never fear, Scott Tanguay of the Coastal Golf Academy is here to offer some guidance! Watch as Scott walks us through the ideal scenarios for executing each type of shot, along with instruction on how to do it.
Scott Tanguay:
Hey, guys. Scott Tanguay here at the Coastal Golf Academy, right across the street from Myrtle Beach International Airport. Stop by and see me! Today, I wanted to talk about when to use a chip and when to use a pitch and what's the difference between the two. A chip is more like a low toss. So you don't even have to use the terms chip and pitch. Let's think of chip as a low toss with a lot more roll, right? So we're throwing it soon. We're allowing it to roll most of the way. A pitch is more of a high toss. Think of Cornhole or something like that, where you're more throwing it more of the way. It's going to roll a little bit. And it really depends on the situation you're in.
Most of the time, what I'm telling people is, how much green do you have to work with? So this shot we have here, there's a lot of green to work with and there's not much of a hill in front of us. So there's really no reason to try and land this up near the hole. Even if you can hit it pretty good, you're just lending yourself to more timing and more things that could go wrong. So if we have all this green to work with, just go with the low toss, the chip. Take your pitching wedge, take your nine iron. What we want to see from the side would be the ball position should be more off the back foot with the handle a little bit forward.
Watch out for doing too much of both. This is going to lead to a lot of stabbing and chunking. So we want it near the back foot and hands forward, but just a little bit, right? We don't want to see this. So I have all this green to work with. Let's use it. Take the pitch or maybe a nine iron, off the back foot, hands a little forward, and let that thing roll out to the hole. That's going to give you much more room to work with and not have to time it so perfectly. If I wanted to hit the high toss, right? We're going to play it a little bit more towards the middle and open the face just a hair. That would be the pitch. Give it a try!