Pitching Grip

Anyone of you short game wizards use a weaker grip for pitch shots? I'm trying to find out why my pitching has been all over the place and I've noticed I'm taking my typical slightly strong grip when pitching as I would with full shots. I'm not sure if this is advisable.

Any comments on this idea?

I use the same grip. Weaker is probably better to go towards for a higher lofted shot, and stronger for the bump and runs...but I would keep it in the very slight category of change. Anything too extream will cause too much wrist rolling and manipulations.

just to add, when you take a stronger grip, you are in a sense hooding your club closed. when this happens, you may have a tendency to aim the clubhead right of the target. this requires a lot of manipulation to get the ball on target. remember railroad track alignment - club head on the outside track towards the pin and feet on the inside track parallel to and left of the pin.

I would suggest the same grip AFTER you have aligned the club face. If you want to open the club face, set the clubface open and square to the target, the grip the club with your natural grip while it is in the square position. Same goes for delofting your club, close the face up, square it to the target, THEN grip the club. That way your club should be square to the target every time and you won't have to worry about the strength of your grip.

Ideally you don't want to create a different grip for certain shots, irrespective of whether they are longer of short chips. You want the same grip throughout ... BUT:

a weaker grip does help to keep the wrists quiet, which is not always a bad thing when you chip. You don't want too much wrist break on pitch & runs or little chip shots ...

Try it, practice with it and if it works for you by helping you pitch & chip more accurately, go with it.

Yesterday on the Golf Channel "Playing Lesson's from the Pro's" Neal Lancaster was on. He said he pitches with a weak grip and "dead hands it" can someone explain why he does this and what it does to dead hand it?

Dead hand means that you keep your hands and wrists quiet through the shot.