Phil Mickelson’s ‘aggressive contact’ trick for sticking 50-yard pitch shots

Having a tidy short game might not be the “sexiest” attribute a golfer can have, but it sure is a useful one. When you can get up-and-down from anywhere, you’re never truly out of a hole.

Pros are a great embodiment of this. Because they are good at everything on the course, their short games can sometimes be overlooked. But their touch around the greens is a crucial ingredient to their success.

Take Xander Schauffele, for example. During his breakout 2024 campaign, he led the PGA Tour in scrambling, saving par more than 70 percent of the time. Think it’s a coincidence he won two majors with that kind of short game?

Average Joes can’t expect to get up-and-down at a clip like Schauffele did, but even saving par once or twice more per round would do wonders on the scorecard. And the first step in getting up-and-down more is creating consistent contact with your wedges.

For more on that, we turn to Phil Mickelson.

Lefty’s secret to solid contact

There’s no one in the modern era of golf who wields a wedge quite like Mickelson. But while Lefty has made plenty of highlight-worthy saves in his career, it’s the little things he does right that impresses the most.

One of the most important “little things” when it comes to the short game is creating solid contact. When you create solid contact on a consistent basis, it helps you control your distance and generates spin. But in order to create that contact, you’ve got to forget a golf myth that you might’ve heard thrown around before.

“I see so many instructors teach a method — kind of like a clock method — where you want to go back and through the same distance,” Mickelson says in the video above. “That’s crazy.”

When you go back and through the same distance, it can promote deceleration on the downswing. But if you want to create solid contact, you want to be making an aggressive, accelerating swing through impact.

“We want to go shorter back and accelerate into the finish,” Mickelson says. “That gives me aggressive contact.”

That aggressive contact will help you create more spin and will make you a more consistent wedge player. Give it a try and you’re sure to get up-and-down more.