The Basics You Need For Chipping – by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer
The Basics You Need For Chipping – by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer show you the fundamentals for correct chipping basics. These chipping basics will include striking of the golf ball to improve distance control and accuracy. We will also explore how the correct club selection can encourage a more consistent and accurate result with regards to the height of the golf shot and the distance the golf ball will roll.

If I was to aim this tip specifically at the beginning golfer and I would suggest that when they go to the driving range they probably spend a lot of their time hitting long shots nine irons drivers because that pretty stuff but it's not necessarily the functional stuff in terms of getting that schools down. Which is quite important for a beginning golfer maybe trying to get their school down into below 100 or something like that I would actually suggest maybe as long as you've got a 9 game drive a game that works functionally let's make sure we spend a good amount of time short game. I think you're right it's one of the areas if you like you say if you've got a functional driver and fairway game you can save an awful lot of shots being very sharp around the greens and if you get good at it early on you'll see your score really rocket from there, and I think in this perspective the techniques around the short game aren't that difficult it's the physically it's not as difficult maybe to make a short swing is to make a long story, and like you say the advantages the low hanging fruit if you like in terms of improving your golf should maybe be within the last 200 yards or certainly even the last 50 yards.

Given a couple of key points so give me the key thing that you'd like to see with a beginning golfer what should they focus on. Firstly if we were starting obviously understanding the club we're going to use depending on the situation we're faced with we may be faced with something where we're hitting over a bunker we may be just chipping up the green where there's no real danger in front of also club selection is key. Now edge will watch a lot of golf on telly I think a lot of people assume it's with say short game Phil Mickelson might spring to mind it's that high floating soft shot see one of the lovely one. Yeah I can do one of those maybe but not a functional shot not a functional shot now for me my biggest thing would be getting the club that you're really confident with maybe to start off with if you can learn to master one technique or the technique with your sand wedge or a pitching wedge we can then start to change the clubs as we go through so finding a club your confident with that can do a few of the different things. Maybe had it medium high and low pitching wedge, gap wedge I'd say around a 52 to a pitching wedge would be the one we can do the majority of things with.

OK and then you change that club if you had a bunker to go over you maybe use the more lofted club you have I needed to get that ball high in the air quickly and get it stopping quickly on the ground I get my most lofted club like a 58 or a 60 or whatever loft it would be in your set it was if there was nothing in front of us and no bunker in the way same club a different club a go get you could go differently could go a time and just chip and run it. If you think of trying to if we said I put a basket down there and was trying to throw a ball into all the way through as opposed to line up basket on the floor and rolling it in I think I'm going to have more success rolling instead of trying to get that slam dunk as it were for our American viewers. It would be a lot easier just to roll something down and hit the target so choosing the appropriate club for the appropriate shot is the right one low lofted club for a low running shot a high lofted club for a higher shot, but then a general purpose club to do everything else in between, and your really comfortable with that general purpose. If you've got one you pull out and you go a lot more pitching wedge for chipping I think we're going to see a lot more improvement from the get go. Now when we strike the golf ball surely that has to be super important one which is, yes definitely and one of the things if we turn to this camera here now as we talk about chipping. You know we've already got that imagery of height in the shot I would imagine and one of the big common faults I would see is I'm seeing a lot of people strike out the ground before or actually strike halfway up the golf ball on the top of it as you fat or thin fat or thin. Yes is where we want the ball down a bit to contact we want a solid crisp strike because that's going to help us control our next point which would be distance and also the spin of the golf shot as well ground that's hitting the ground isn't a bad thing you know it's not a bad thing it's a good thing we want to do it after the golf ball though we don't want to hit it big for the golf ball so contact is important. Yes and then accuracy with pitching wedge I've never really seen that's too much of a difficulty because we're not hitting the ball far we're hitting the ball gently towards the camera hitting it left or right is a really big concern that hitting it long and shot is definitely that is the big one if we're able obviously we're trying to get it as close as we can to give ourselves the easiest port possible.

So distance control is a great one and once you've you know selected a club you like and you get in a good strike if you're able to do and maybe even pick a couple of points in your swing where you know it flies a certain distance you'll be able to really control how far that ball is going to go and get some shots stopping close to the pin. So I quite like the exercise with the client on the driving range where I might get them to set up with their favorite club and then say OK give me a short medium and long so they just pick a short target and like Matt says it's a short swing you pick a point in your back swing then you pick a medium height and it's a medium distance and we pick a long swing and it's a long distance and then when you go to the golf course you look at the shot that's been presented to you go OK this is my medium swing yet this is my long swing or this is my shorts with losses you get more accomplished. You can pick more points in your swing and you might have 10 different this did so you can hit with one club but for now I would say just a short one and medium on a long one with a good strike something that gets you on the green and allows you to putt. Exactly and then your short game is going to be kind of we know off that you can actually start to bring your scores down. Yeah exactly there's nothing worse than doing all the hard work of getting the ball down to green side in 2 shots on a really tight hole and their necks in you've taken 4 or 5 shots 4 and something where you could have kicked on to the green. It's a bit soul destroying sometimes that would be ruining a good hole by making bad contact you ask choosing the wrong club or not having a good enough distance control. So you can work on those 3 factors that should definitely improve your short game and don't forget how important short game is to the overall game to help improve your golf scores.

2018-12-20

In this video tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer show you the fundamentals for correct chipping basics. These chipping basics will include striking of the golf ball to improve distance control and accuracy. We will also explore how the correct club selection can encourage a more consistent and accurate result with regards to the height of the golf shot and the distance the golf ball will roll.

If I was to aim this tip specifically at the beginning golfer and I would suggest that when they go to the driving range they probably spend a lot of their time hitting long shots nine irons drivers because that pretty stuff but it's not necessarily the functional stuff in terms of getting that schools down. Which is quite important for a beginning golfer maybe trying to get their school down into below 100 or something like that I would actually suggest maybe as long as you've got a 9 game drive a game that works functionally let's make sure we spend a good amount of time short game. I think you're right it's one of the areas if you like you say if you've got a functional driver and fairway game you can save an awful lot of shots being very sharp around the greens and if you get good at it early on you'll see your score really rocket from there, and I think in this perspective the techniques around the short game aren't that difficult it's the physically it's not as difficult maybe to make a short swing is to make a long story, and like you say the advantages the low hanging fruit if you like in terms of improving your golf should maybe be within the last 200 yards or certainly even the last 50 yards.

Given a couple of key points so give me the key thing that you'd like to see with a beginning golfer what should they focus on. Firstly if we were starting obviously understanding the club we're going to use depending on the situation we're faced with we may be faced with something where we're hitting over a bunker we may be just chipping up the green where there's no real danger in front of also club selection is key. Now edge will watch a lot of golf on telly I think a lot of people assume it's with say short game Phil Mickelson might spring to mind it's that high floating soft shot see one of the lovely one. Yeah I can do one of those maybe but not a functional shot not a functional shot now for me my biggest thing would be getting the club that you're really confident with maybe to start off with if you can learn to master one technique or the technique with your sand wedge or a pitching wedge we can then start to change the clubs as we go through so finding a club your confident with that can do a few of the different things. Maybe had it medium high and low pitching wedge, gap wedge I'd say around a 52 to a pitching wedge would be the one we can do the majority of things with.

OK and then you change that club if you had a bunker to go over you maybe use the more lofted club you have I needed to get that ball high in the air quickly and get it stopping quickly on the ground I get my most lofted club like a 58 or a 60 or whatever loft it would be in your set it was if there was nothing in front of us and no bunker in the way same club a different club a go get you could go differently could go a time and just chip and run it. If you think of trying to if we said I put a basket down there and was trying to throw a ball into all the way through as opposed to line up basket on the floor and rolling it in I think I'm going to have more success rolling instead of trying to get that slam dunk as it were for our American viewers. It would be a lot easier just to roll something down and hit the target so choosing the appropriate club for the appropriate shot is the right one low lofted club for a low running shot a high lofted club for a higher shot, but then a general purpose club to do everything else in between, and your really comfortable with that general purpose. If you've got one you pull out and you go a lot more pitching wedge for chipping I think we're going to see a lot more improvement from the get go. Now when we strike the golf ball surely that has to be super important one which is, yes definitely and one of the things if we turn to this camera here now as we talk about chipping. You know we've already got that imagery of height in the shot I would imagine and one of the big common faults I would see is I'm seeing a lot of people strike out the ground before or actually strike halfway up the golf ball on the top of it as you fat or thin fat or thin. Yes is where we want the ball down a bit to contact we want a solid crisp strike because that's going to help us control our next point which would be distance and also the spin of the golf shot as well ground that's hitting the ground isn't a bad thing you know it's not a bad thing it's a good thing we want to do it after the golf ball though we don't want to hit it big for the golf ball so contact is important. Yes and then accuracy with pitching wedge I've never really seen that's too much of a difficulty because we're not hitting the ball far we're hitting the ball gently towards the camera hitting it left or right is a really big concern that hitting it long and shot is definitely that is the big one if we're able obviously we're trying to get it as close as we can to give ourselves the easiest port possible.

So distance control is a great one and once you've you know selected a club you like and you get in a good strike if you're able to do and maybe even pick a couple of points in your swing where you know it flies a certain distance you'll be able to really control how far that ball is going to go and get some shots stopping close to the pin. So I quite like the exercise with the client on the driving range where I might get them to set up with their favorite club and then say OK give me a short medium and long so they just pick a short target and like Matt says it's a short swing you pick a point in your back swing then you pick a medium height and it's a medium distance and we pick a long swing and it's a long distance and then when you go to the golf course you look at the shot that's been presented to you go OK this is my medium swing yet this is my long swing or this is my shorts with losses you get more accomplished. You can pick more points in your swing and you might have 10 different this did so you can hit with one club but for now I would say just a short one and medium on a long one with a good strike something that gets you on the green and allows you to putt. Exactly and then your short game is going to be kind of we know off that you can actually start to bring your scores down. Yeah exactly there's nothing worse than doing all the hard work of getting the ball down to green side in 2 shots on a really tight hole and their necks in you've taken 4 or 5 shots 4 and something where you could have kicked on to the green. It's a bit soul destroying sometimes that would be ruining a good hole by making bad contact you ask choosing the wrong club or not having a good enough distance control. So you can work on those 3 factors that should definitely improve your short game and don't forget how important short game is to the overall game to help improve your golf scores.