Last month, I showed you how to improve your pitching by watching where your shots land on the green and how far they roll toward the hole. This month I want you to take one more step in mastering your pitching game, by learning how high these shots will fly.

Most golfers have no idea how quickly the ball will get up into the air. They've never looked at the launch angles produced by their different wedges, so they can't visualize a shot's trajectory or height, how softly it will land, or how far it will roll after landing. The relationship is simple: The higher the launch angle, the steeper the descent, the softer the landing, and the faster (and shorter) the ball stops on the green. This might seem obvious, yet many golfers must not get it, because they make consistently poor club choices for these shots when they hit them.

In our Dave Pelz Scoring Game Schools, we've found an easy way to improve your ability to visualize a pitch shot's results: know the launch angle (or shot height) of every wedge in your bag. Our method is simple.

Sam Greenwood To learn your launch angles, find a hedge about head-high (above), then find where you have to stand so shots from each wedge just clear it (below).

Find a hedge or other obstacle about head-high (see photo, above, left). Using your most lofted club and normal pitching swing (explained last month), hit shot after shot, moving closer to or farther from the hedge until the ball just clears it. Leave the wedge at that spot, then move a step or two farther away and do the same thing with your next most lofted wedge, until finding the spot where shots from that club just clear the hedge. Do this with all your wedges, leaving them at their respective starting points. (Make your normal pitching swings with no manipulations to lift the ball extra-quickly into the air.)

Once the spots are located, step off the distance from the hedge to each one and write the number of steps on a scorecard. The notation should look like this: "X wedge, 2 steps; Lob wedge, 4 steps; Sand wedge, 61/2 steps; Pitching wedge, 9 steps." Put the scorecard in your bag until your next practice session, when you take one ball and, without any warm-up, see if you remember the right distances to clear the hedge with each wedge. Do this a few times and you'll begin to "see" the launch angle for each club before you hit it.

Now combine this practice with last month's drill, in which you hit balls into a three-foot circle of string to see how they roll after landing. Putting these drills together and becoming aware of how high each shot flies will make it easier to understand and predict how far each shot will roll on the green.

Once you've practiced this way for a while and can see the results in your mind's eye before you produce them, you'll know all you need to choose the right club for shots on the course.

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