The most famous double hit must go to TC Chen who left his mark at the ’85 Masters tournament. Nothing could be more devastating to your confidence than double hitting a pitch shot. Too much of anything can be a bad thing and in this case, too much acceleration of the club head through and past impact can lead to the chip yips and the double hits.
If we start measuring the actual speed of the club head during any high quality pitch shot, you will see that the peak sped is at or just before impact. Therefore, the club head should be slowing down as soon as you hit the ball. So where did this magical advice of “accelerate through the ball” come from? As is with many of the golf tip cliches they stem from someones actual “feeling” which can have zero bearing on what actually happened. Take the most used tip in golf, “keep your head down”… when studying tour professionals this couldn’t be more wrong and if applied accurately, it will crush your swing’s freedom of rotation. Please don’t keep your head down and please don’t accelerate the club through impact.
In pitching, actual acceleration of the club head past impact will most often lead to the yips and double hits. The yips is due to the poor impact that occurs when applying this feeling. The player then becomes obsessed with the fear of mishitting the shot and boom! You’ve got the yips! The double hit comes when the player applies excessive acceleration post impact which gets the club head moving faster than the ball.
For the best contact and results, feel a long soft easy backswing and then let the arms/hands/club fall back to earth with the speed of gravity. Allowing the club head to pass the hands immediately after impact will help expose the bounce to the turf which will keep the club from digging. Please note that ‘allowing’ and ‘forcing’ the club to release will have greatly different effects on your motions. Please use the one hand drill in the video below to feel this occur.
If we start measuring the actual speed of the club head during any high quality pitch shot, you will see that the peak sped is at or just before impact. Therefore, the club head should be slowing down as soon as you hit the ball. So where did this magical advice of “accelerate through the ball” come from? As is with many of the golf tip cliches they stem from someones actual “feeling” which can have zero bearing on what actually happened. Take the most used tip in golf, “keep your head down”… when studying tour professionals this couldn’t be more wrong and if applied accurately, it will crush your swing’s freedom of rotation. Please don’t keep your head down and please don’t accelerate the club through impact.
In pitching, actual acceleration of the club head past impact will most often lead to the yips and double hits. The yips is due to the poor impact that occurs when applying this feeling. The player then becomes obsessed with the fear of mishitting the shot and boom! You’ve got the yips! The double hit comes when the player applies excessive acceleration post impact which gets the club head moving faster than the ball.
For the best contact and results, feel a long soft easy backswing and then let the arms/hands/club fall back to earth with the speed of gravity. Allowing the club head to pass the hands immediately after impact will help expose the bounce to the turf which will keep the club from digging. Please note that ‘allowing’ and ‘forcing’ the club to release will have greatly different effects on your motions. Please use the one hand drill in the video below to feel this occur.