The Role Of The Left Arm In Controlled Golf Chip Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
The Role Of The Left Arm In Controlled Golf Chip Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we look now specifically at the roll of the left arm during the actual stroke, it plays quite an important part in making your chipping technique as simple and as efficient as possible. In the address position, we want that left arm to be straight but relaxed. So we don’t lock the arm out, it doesn’t have any tension to it, but it is a firm and straight left arm, we certainly don’t have any bend in it to set position, that would cause problems for a majority of our chip shots and particularly our short chipping and pitching shots. So the left arm is firm but it’s not locked. During the back swing, it stays firm and not locked and the height and position of that left arm can really dictate the length of the golf shot we have the lower the left arm goes, the low it will come through, the shorter the shot. The higher the left arm comes, the higher it comes on the follow through also the longer the golf shot. So if we can cue that left arm quite low, quite shallow to the ground we are going to hit shorter chip shots using that left arm to control the power.

Now as we come down towards the ball, the left arm still has a very important role to play. If the left arm decelerates and stops at the ball which is the one, for a lot of golfers because they don’t want to hit the ball too hard, they bring the left arm up, that maybe come up to high, then they think I have got too much power, so they stop the left arm, this happens what we see here is the club will overtake the hands or the clubhead goes past the hands that causes problems with the little slick and little scoop and that’s going to cause a big issues with the quality of the contact. Actually what should happen through here is the left arm should keep coming through to round about the same length it went on the backswing. So the left arm short on the backswing, short on the follow through, longer on the backswing, longer on the follow through, but we don’t want the long backswing and then the deceleration that’s going to cause problems with scooping that left wrist. One last issue with the left arm is bending and lifting the left arm through the ball, classing problem with topping the shot here, is bending this left arm up, we tend to thin and top the golf ball, that left arm pulls in we are in big trouble. So keeping that left arm really straight and really clean is going to give you some good crisp contact on the golf ball. Improve your left arm to improve your chipping. 2016-10-03

If we look now specifically at the roll of the left arm during the actual stroke, it plays quite an important part in making your chipping technique as simple and as efficient as possible. In the address position, we want that left arm to be straight but relaxed. So we don’t lock the arm out, it doesn’t have any tension to it, but it is a firm and straight left arm, we certainly don’t have any bend in it to set position, that would cause problems for a majority of our chip shots and particularly our short chipping and pitching shots. So the left arm is firm but it’s not locked. During the back swing, it stays firm and not locked and the height and position of that left arm can really dictate the length of the golf shot we have the lower the left arm goes, the low it will come through, the shorter the shot. The higher the left arm comes, the higher it comes on the follow through also the longer the golf shot. So if we can cue that left arm quite low, quite shallow to the ground we are going to hit shorter chip shots using that left arm to control the power.

Now as we come down towards the ball, the left arm still has a very important role to play. If the left arm decelerates and stops at the ball which is the one, for a lot of golfers because they don’t want to hit the ball too hard, they bring the left arm up, that maybe come up to high, then they think I have got too much power, so they stop the left arm, this happens what we see here is the club will overtake the hands or the clubhead goes past the hands that causes problems with the little slick and little scoop and that’s going to cause a big issues with the quality of the contact. Actually what should happen through here is the left arm should keep coming through to round about the same length it went on the backswing. So the left arm short on the backswing, short on the follow through, longer on the backswing, longer on the follow through, but we don’t want the long backswing and then the deceleration that’s going to cause problems with scooping that left wrist.

One last issue with the left arm is bending and lifting the left arm through the ball, classing problem with topping the shot here, is bending this left arm up, we tend to thin and top the golf ball, that left arm pulls in we are in big trouble. So keeping that left arm really straight and really clean is going to give you some good crisp contact on the golf ball. Improve your left arm to improve your chipping.