Chip the Ball Closer with this Golf Distance Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Chip the Ball Closer with this Golf Distance Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

Another key aspect of chipping the golf ball nice and close to the flag is understanding where exactly you need to get the golf ball to land and then how it will react and roll out. So I'm going to use two of my toe sticks here to help me. I'm placing one behind the golf ball just to make sure I'm getting a nice crisp strike to encourage me to move my body weight forward, to make sure that I'm not leaning back and scooping. I'm going to take my other stick and walk it 10 paces out there onto the green. I'm going to imagine that’s my landing area, I want to get the ball to land as close to that as possible. So go ahead and take five or six shots landing the ball as close to the stick as possible. Then I would go and look at how far those golf balls have rolled and kind of work out the ratio.

If it flew 10 yards and then it rolled 10 yards, I've got a 50-50 ratio, and I can work out which club I hit that with and how that ball reacts when it lands on the green. I could then change my clubs, maybe go down to a lower lofted club. But still pitch the ball into the same landing area next to the same stick, and then see how that ball has reacted. And I would suggest if you go now to a lower lofted club maybe this time you're chipping with an 8-iron you land it on the stick, the rolling distance would be much larger, so you would have a different ratio. Maybe you'd find with an 8-iron it would fly 20% of the way and roll 80% of the way. And then go back the other way, go to your most lofted club, go to something like a lob wedge.

Play the same shot, still getting into a good strike. Land it on your 10 yard stick and see how that reacts. And you might find it with your lob wedges the opposite way. So it's 80% flight only 20% roll. Then you can imagine how that situation could benefit you when you're actually out in the golf course. Sometimes it calls for the ball to be flying high and stopping quickly. For example going over the bunker but stopping before it runs off the back of the green. Well the time it actually calls to be landed short and rolled up. Let’s say you’ve got a big flat out, the front of the green or even a big fairway that you can land on. And then you could use your 80-20 roll the other way.

So you'd use your 8-iron fly it 20% of the way and roll it the other 80% onto the green. So using the stick on the green as a landing point is a great way of measuring how far you're hitting the ball and also how far it's rolling. Extending that drill you’d actually do what I would class as a ladder drill where once you’ve hit to that stick you then move it back five yards, hit the same again, move it back another five yards, do the same again and just to understand how the length of your swing changes to hit each different step on the ladder. And it's a great way of practicing your chipping and understanding how you can improve your distance control to improve your shot game when your next on the golf course.

 2013-06-27

Another key aspect of chipping the golf ball nice and close to the flag is understanding where exactly you need to get the golf ball to land and then how it will react and roll out. So I'm going to use two of my toe sticks here to help me. I'm placing one behind the golf ball just to make sure I'm getting a nice crisp strike to encourage me to move my body weight forward, to make sure that I'm not leaning back and scooping. I'm going to take my other stick and walk it 10 paces out there onto the green. I'm going to imagine that’s my landing area, I want to get the ball to land as close to that as possible. So go ahead and take five or six shots landing the ball as close to the stick as possible. Then I would go and look at how far those golf balls have rolled and kind of work out the ratio.

If it flew 10 yards and then it rolled 10 yards, I've got a 50-50 ratio, and I can work out which club I hit that with and how that ball reacts when it lands on the green. I could then change my clubs, maybe go down to a lower lofted club. But still pitch the ball into the same landing area next to the same stick, and then see how that ball has reacted. And I would suggest if you go now to a lower lofted club maybe this time you're chipping with an 8-iron you land it on the stick, the rolling distance would be much larger, so you would have a different ratio. Maybe you'd find with an 8-iron it would fly 20% of the way and roll 80% of the way. And then go back the other way, go to your most lofted club, go to something like a lob wedge.

Play the same shot, still getting into a good strike. Land it on your 10 yard stick and see how that reacts. And you might find it with your lob wedges the opposite way. So it's 80% flight only 20% roll. Then you can imagine how that situation could benefit you when you're actually out in the golf course. Sometimes it calls for the ball to be flying high and stopping quickly. For example going over the bunker but stopping before it runs off the back of the green. Well the time it actually calls to be landed short and rolled up. Let’s say you’ve got a big flat out, the front of the green or even a big fairway that you can land on. And then you could use your 80-20 roll the other way.

So you'd use your 8-iron fly it 20% of the way and roll it the other 80% onto the green. So using the stick on the green as a landing point is a great way of measuring how far you're hitting the ball and also how far it's rolling. Extending that drill you’d actually do what I would class as a ladder drill where once you’ve hit to that stick you then move it back five yards, hit the same again, move it back another five yards, do the same again and just to understand how the length of your swing changes to hit each different step on the ladder. And it's a great way of practicing your chipping and understanding how you can improve your distance control to improve your shot game when your next on the golf course.