Common Mistakes When Golf Chipping (Video) - by Pete Styles
Common Mistakes When Golf Chipping (Video) - by Pete Styles

So as I’ve previously talked about a lot of the mistakes that people make in their chipping technique are actually mistakes they make in the setup position. So as we're addressing the golf ball to chip, if you get something wrong here, it can create a lot of problems throughout the whole rest of the swing. Now the classic mistakes when we see people addressing the golf ball is the in setup that leaning back too much. So much an instinctive thing that the golfer wants to get behind the ball and help scoop it up into the air, but if as a golfer, we address the ball, then we lean back to try and hit it up, and we scoop it. We tend to just hit the ground before the ball trying to lift it. That's going to give us some really awkward contacts.

So let's make sure that we're not leaning back in the address position. Well there are areas that might be of concern. It’s poor posture. Sometimes because it's a short club, because we want to get quite near to this golf ball, we can see a golfer setup, they grip down the club. They get really close to it and then they hunch, standing in its hunched over position really doesn’t put the body in its normal position. It doesn’t allow us to make the correct swing that we want. Golfers might feel close to the ball here, and they don't have any power, but it's really not a good position to be. We would rather be a little bit further away, properly tilted with a nice straight spine angle rather than that hunch. And the last thing that we see here is the killer tension. So golfers get too much tension when they get this far away from the green. They start to squeeze the golf club too tightly particularly if we've got a hazard in front of us, so a pond or a bunker right in front of us here. The golfer starts to strangle the golf club because they are scared of going in here. And guess what the strangling of the club makes them go in here anyway. So it will be better if we address the ball with a little bit lighter grip pressure, just the three or four out of a scale of one to ten. Ten is strangling it. One is letting it go. Three or four out of ten, keep that grip pressure nicely relaxed rather than strangling it, and then making the golf swing too quick. So if you can bring those changes or those corrections into your game, not hunching over, not leaning back, not squeezing the golf club too tightly, hopefully your chipping will improve by setting up to the ball better. 2016-10-20

So as I’ve previously talked about a lot of the mistakes that people make in their chipping technique are actually mistakes they make in the setup position. So as we're addressing the golf ball to chip, if you get something wrong here, it can create a lot of problems throughout the whole rest of the swing. Now the classic mistakes when we see people addressing the golf ball is the in setup that leaning back too much. So much an instinctive thing that the golfer wants to get behind the ball and help scoop it up into the air, but if as a golfer, we address the ball, then we lean back to try and hit it up, and we scoop it. We tend to just hit the ground before the ball trying to lift it. That's going to give us some really awkward contacts.

So let's make sure that we're not leaning back in the address position. Well there are areas that might be of concern. It’s poor posture. Sometimes because it's a short club, because we want to get quite near to this golf ball, we can see a golfer setup, they grip down the club. They get really close to it and then they hunch, standing in its hunched over position really doesn’t put the body in its normal position. It doesn’t allow us to make the correct swing that we want. Golfers might feel close to the ball here, and they don't have any power, but it's really not a good position to be. We would rather be a little bit further away, properly tilted with a nice straight spine angle rather than that hunch.

And the last thing that we see here is the killer tension. So golfers get too much tension when they get this far away from the green. They start to squeeze the golf club too tightly particularly if we've got a hazard in front of us, so a pond or a bunker right in front of us here. The golfer starts to strangle the golf club because they are scared of going in here. And guess what the strangling of the club makes them go in here anyway. So it will be better if we address the ball with a little bit lighter grip pressure, just the three or four out of a scale of one to ten. Ten is strangling it. One is letting it go. Three or four out of ten, keep that grip pressure nicely relaxed rather than strangling it, and then making the golf swing too quick. So if you can bring those changes or those corrections into your game, not hunching over, not leaning back, not squeezing the golf club too tightly, hopefully your chipping will improve by setting up to the ball better.