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Olazabal's Piston Stroke Is Pitch Perfect

Jose Maria Olazabal uses a piston-type pitching motion where the right elbow straightens as it applies force to the ball. This is a very accurate way to pitch because it satisfies two basic requirements of good pitching: (1) It produces an accelerated stroke, and (2) it keeps the face of the club on the swing arc.

Note in the photograph how square the face of Olazabal's club is to the ball. If you use your imagination, you can visualize the ball reversing its flight and returning to the clubface, where it would sit directly in the middle of the face just as it did at both impact and address.

Because Olazabal keeps his left arm and chest rotating, the piston stroke delivered by the right side does not collapse his left wrist, a move that would send the clubface flipping past his hands. The last thing you want in a pitch shot like this is to allow any kind of forearm rotation that would change the loft of your clubface. That's why I encourage my students to keep their right forearm pointing toward the sky during the downswing. This prevents the clubface from rotating, heel over toe.

What is rotating, however, and this is a key to good pitching, is Olazabal's head and chest. He's not moving his trunk up or down, but he is allowing a soft, almost imperceptible chest rotation as part of his overall swing. This allows him to leave the clubhead behind the hands all the way though impact.

Things to note:

― How "softly" Olazabal's hands look on the club.

― The weight starts, stays and finishes on his left side. There is upper-body rotation, but no weight shift.

― The flex in the left arm helps keep the face square.

― His left wrist is square to the target.

― The gentle flex of his legs.

― The slight but perceptible rotation of the chest and shoulders.

― How the hands have swung past the front leg with the shaft tilted toward the target. This forward lean is crucial for great chipping.

―The lower body responds to movement of the arm action.

Jose Maria Olazabal was one of the premier chippers in the world, and even though he’s semi-retired now, his technique is still flawless.

Too many golfers over-do leg movement when they chip, so to quiet your action, use the “cross-legged” drill, which trains your body to react to your arm swing.