The Art of the Pitch: Five Methods That Transform Your Short Game

There's a particular feeling when a pitch shot comes off just right—that soft, controlled flight that lands like a butterfly with sore feet and checks up beside the pin. It's the shot that separates the golfers who card 85 from those who break 80, and it's more attainable than most players realize.

GOLF Top 100 Teacher Kellie Stenzel has been helping players discover this truth for years, and her approach to pitching cuts through the fear and overthinking that sabotages so many short-game attempts. Her methods focus on something beautifully simple: letting the club do what it was designed to do.

The Foundation: A Setup That Invites Confidence

I've watched countless golfers address pitch shots as though they're preparing to defuse an explosive device. Tension everywhere, weight distribution off, the club shaft leaning forward like it's trying to escape the scene. Stenzel's first principle corrects this fundamental error.

Position the club centered in your body so the clubhead sits in the middle of your heels. Keep the end of the grip pointing toward your center, avoiding excessive shaft lean that de-lofts the clubface. This setup allows the bounce of the club to glide through the ground correctly—and here's the liberating part: when the club moves properly through impact, there's no reason to fear hitting the ground.

The club is designed to interact with turf. When golfers set up in ways that cause the club to dig, they become hesitant to strike down, which makes it nearly impossible to hit those high, soft shots that stop quickly.

Trust the Engineering: Let the Club Do the Work

Every wedge in your bag has loft and bounce engineered specifically to launch the ball skyward while the clubhead moves through the grass. The problem arises when we try to help—scooping, lifting, manipulating the clubface in ways that defeat the design.

Stenzel recommends what she calls the "scrape drill." From your setup position, make no backswing and simply scrape the club along the ground through to the finish. This reinforces the feeling that the club should contact the ground and continue moving through it. There's no scooping. No artificial lift. Just the natural physics of a lofted club face doing exactly what the engineers intended.

Distance Control: Backswing Length, Not Forced Speed

Here's where I've seen so many golfers go wrong, myself included in my early days. You need a forty-yard pitch, so you make a thirty-yard backswing and then force speed through impact to cover the extra distance. The result? A blade that sails over the green or a chunk that barely reaches the fringe.

The solution is elegantly simple: adjust the length of your backswing and allow the club's speed to change naturally. A shorter backswing creates less speed and less carry distance. As the backswing lengthens, potential speed and distance increase automatically. No forcing. No manipulation. Just proportional movement producing proportional results.

Calibrate Your Landing Spots

Landing distance in pitching isn't optional—it's essential. Think about every pitch shot that requires you to carry a bunker, a collection area, or thick rough. The difference between landing five yards short of your target and five yards long might be the difference between birdie and double bogey.

Stenzel advocates for charting your carry distances in ten-yard increments, recording which club and swing length produce each distance. This calibration transforms vague feel into reliable knowledge. When you stand over a forty-five-yard pitch, you know exactly how to produce it because you've done the work.

The Path Forward

What strikes me most about Stenzel's approach is its emphasis on removing obstacles rather than adding complexity. Fear of hitting the ground? Proper setup eliminates it. Urge to scoop? The scrape drill retrains your instincts. Distance anxiety? Calibration replaces guesswork with confidence.

Great pitch shots combine proper technique, consistent contact, and confidence—and the latter grows naturally when the first two elements are in place. These aren't quick fixes. They're fundamental improvements that compound over time.

Key Takeaways

• Center your setup with the clubhead between your heels and the grip pointing toward your body's center
• Practice the scrape drill to feel proper ground interaction without scooping
• Control distance through backswing length, not forced speed through impact
• Calibrate your carry distances in ten-yard increments with each wedge
• Trust the club's design—loft and bounce exist to do the heavy lifting for you