How Can I Chip The Golf Ball Closer? (Video) - by Pete Styles
How Can I Chip The Golf Ball Closer? (Video) - by Pete Styles

How can you chip the golf ball closer to the flag? Now there’s a couple of issues there because first thing we can look at your technique then we can look at your decision making process. So in order to get good technique when we’re chipping, I would like to take the golf ball in the center or just an inch behind the center of your stance. Now you will notice stance is also a lot narrow than a full swing and I going to grip the club nicely down towards the bottom of the grid. Now what this will allow is we’ll change the way I play the shot because they give me a lot less power but they help me focus a lot more on my control. So a wide stance is powerful and a narrow stance is controlled. A big grip at the top is powerful gripping down is more controlled. I’m also just going to shuffle myself a little bit nearer to the golf ball. Again less power slightly more control.

From here I’m now going to position more body weight on my left hand side. So I lean my body weight into my left hand side at least 60% and also taking the handle slightly ahead of the golf ball. This allows me to have a nice strike down on the ball to make sure I get good clean contact. It’s not a very powerful position but it is going to give me a good contact with a decent amount of spin. We then have my back swing and my follow through appropriate for the distance of shot. So a bigger back swing for a longer shot, a shorter back swing for a shorter shot maintaining the follow through to be about the same distance as my back swing. So there’s no point having a great big back swing and then decelerating and stopping likewise no point in having a short back swing then has a big follow through, the length of my back swing, the length of my follow through need to copy each other and be appropriate to the length of shot that’s the best way to get a perfect chipping technique. The next thing we could consider is your course management, so basically thinking about your club that you’re taking and the landing area that you want to have. The easiest way to consider this when you’re out in the golf course is imagine you have the ball in your hand and you’re going to think about throwing it on to the green. If there’s a big bunker in the way the flag just on the back of the bunker and a short flag or a short green position, we would end up throwing that ball high up into the air to clear the bunker to land quickly next to the flag so it is rolled into the back of the bunker over the back of that short green. There might also be a shot where there’s no bunker in front, the flag is way up at the back of the green; I’ve got loads of room to work with. In that case I would roll the ball very low and run it all the way up. And then you can choose the club that’s appropriate. The low rolling running shot that might be a seven aim played in the same fashion, nudge it down what we call a chip and run shot or a bump and run shot. Then if the high throwing it up in the air landing and stopping it quickly that might be your sand wedge or your lob wedge. So we can play this chip shot with a myriad of different clubs but we play them all with one similar technique. We’re narrow, the ball is back, hands are down, the body weight is left, easy back, easy through and let the club change the height of the shot but keep your technique the same. 2014-05-12

How can you chip the golf ball closer to the flag? Now there’s a couple of issues there because first thing we can look at your technique then we can look at your decision making process. So in order to get good technique when we’re chipping, I would like to take the golf ball in the center or just an inch behind the center of your stance. Now you will notice stance is also a lot narrow than a full swing and I going to grip the club nicely down towards the bottom of the grid. Now what this will allow is we’ll change the way I play the shot because they give me a lot less power but they help me focus a lot more on my control. So a wide stance is powerful and a narrow stance is controlled. A big grip at the top is powerful gripping down is more controlled. I’m also just going to shuffle myself a little bit nearer to the golf ball. Again less power slightly more control.

From here I’m now going to position more body weight on my left hand side. So I lean my body weight into my left hand side at least 60% and also taking the handle slightly ahead of the golf ball. This allows me to have a nice strike down on the ball to make sure I get good clean contact. It’s not a very powerful position but it is going to give me a good contact with a decent amount of spin. We then have my back swing and my follow through appropriate for the distance of shot. So a bigger back swing for a longer shot, a shorter back swing for a shorter shot maintaining the follow through to be about the same distance as my back swing. So there’s no point having a great big back swing and then decelerating and stopping likewise no point in having a short back swing then has a big follow through, the length of my back swing, the length of my follow through need to copy each other and be appropriate to the length of shot that’s the best way to get a perfect chipping technique.

The next thing we could consider is your course management, so basically thinking about your club that you’re taking and the landing area that you want to have. The easiest way to consider this when you’re out in the golf course is imagine you have the ball in your hand and you’re going to think about throwing it on to the green. If there’s a big bunker in the way the flag just on the back of the bunker and a short flag or a short green position, we would end up throwing that ball high up into the air to clear the bunker to land quickly next to the flag so it is rolled into the back of the bunker over the back of that short green.

There might also be a shot where there’s no bunker in front, the flag is way up at the back of the green; I’ve got loads of room to work with. In that case I would roll the ball very low and run it all the way up. And then you can choose the club that’s appropriate. The low rolling running shot that might be a seven aim played in the same fashion, nudge it down what we call a chip and run shot or a bump and run shot. Then if the high throwing it up in the air landing and stopping it quickly that might be your sand wedge or your lob wedge. So we can play this chip shot with a myriad of different clubs but we play them all with one similar technique. We’re narrow, the ball is back, hands are down, the body weight is left, easy back, easy through and let the club change the height of the shot but keep your technique the same.