Golf Ball Surrogate Pitch
When I was going to Robert Louis Stevenson High School, located right off the 17th green at Spyglass Hill on the Monterey Peninsula, I would often take my books and study in those lovely light-dappled woods. Well, in addition to books, I’d also take my sand wedge in order to execute the pitching drill of hitting pinecones with a pitching swing (the Golf Ball Surrogate Pitch). As we’ve said, it is often an over-focus on the ball and the clubhead that causes us to release the club too soon, which results in a broken, rather than a flat left wrist, and a rearward instead of a forward swing bottom.
If you have no pinecones at your disposal, you can hit tennis balls, plastic whiffle balls, pieces of paper on the ground, cigarette butts, anything that represents a target other than a golf ball. You’ll be amazed at how removing the ball from your gaze and consciousness re-establishes your mental attention back into your hands where it belongs in order to load and save the power of your swing as long as possible before impact.
