Some seniors fall into the trap of thinking that their best days on the links must be behind them.

After all, if a player is losing a few yards off the tee each year, it will be impossible to make up the difference and keep shooting good scores, right? Not at all. Sure, your game might need to change as you move into your retirement years, but that doesn’t mean you have to get worse. With some focused effort in practice and plenty of attention to detail, you just might become the best golfing version of yourself well into your senior years.

In this article, we are going to address a part of the game that is particularly important for senior players – chipping. Okay, so chipping is important for golfers of all ages, but many seniors lean on their chipping to help them save par on those holes where they can’t quite reach the green in regulation. If your distance capabilities have waned in recent years, strengthening your performance around the greens can help you stay on track and avoid turning pars into bogeys.

As the title indicates, we are mainly going to be focused on the setup position you use when chipping. This is important, because your chipping swing is short, and you don’t really have time to make adjustments or corrections once it starts. Put yourself in a good position over the ball at address and the challenge of chipping the ball close to the hole will immediately get easier. In addition to our discussion of chipping setup, we’ll also talk about the basics of chipping technique, so you know what to work on during practice.

All of the content below is based on a right-handed golfer. If you happen to play left-handed, please take a moment to reverse the directions as necessary.

The Three Goals

It helps to think about your chipping stance in terms of three goals that you need to accomplish. If you are able to check off each of the three points we are going to discuss below, you will be well on your way to a successful chip shot. You still need to actually make the swing, of course, but it all starts with a stance that satisfies all three of these points. Let’s get right to it –

• A comfortable position. Being comfortable with your stance is always helpful in golf, but it is even more important when chipping than it is with the full swing. You need to be able to hold yourself nice and steady while swinging the club for a chip shot, so you want to be comfortable and relaxed at address. If you feel like you are forcing yourself into an awkward position, it will be hard to hold that position properly from start to finish. You may find that you move during the chipping motion since you are uncomfortable, and the quality of your shots will be impacted. There are some technical points you will want to keep in mind while building your stance – and we’ll touch on those later – but be sure to always keep comfort as one of your top priorities.
• A free swing. You need to stand in a position that permits you to swing the club freely back and through. If there is any restriction in your swing due to the way you are standing, plenty of problems will be soon to follow. You might not be able to make clean contact frequently, and you’ll likely have trouble judging your distance. Often, it is standing too close to the ball that leads players to struggle with a free swing when chipping. You don’t need to stand way back away from the ball but do give yourself enough space to let your hands and arms swing through without interruption.
• A great view. Having a good view of the target isn’t something you think much about when you are hitting full shots. After all, the target is probably at least 100 yards away, if not much farther, so you can’t really see it very well anyway. That story changes when you are hitting chip shots, as the target is just a few steps away in most cases. You can see it easily, and it helps to have a nice view from your address position. You probably won’t be looking up at the target while making the swing (although some golfers have tried this technique), but you will look back and forth a few times before starting your swing. It’s a good feeling to have a nice look at your target prior to hitting a chip shot, as you’ll feel that you have a clear understanding of where you are trying to send the ball. This last point is probably not quite as important as the first two, but we think it is worth keeping in mind while constructing your stance.

As you can see, there isn’t anything above that is particularly complicated or difficult to accomplish. You simply need to put your body in a position that is comfortable, allows for a free swing, and gives you a good view of the target. When thought of this way, it sounds pretty easy – and it can be. With that said, building a good stance isn’t going to happen automatically, so you’ll need to dedicate some practice time to work on this piece of the overall golf puzzle.

Standard Chipping Position Fundamentals

We’ve already highlighted three goals that you can keep in mind while working on your stance. Now, we are going to go a step further and talk specifically about some of the elements you’ll want to include in your address position. This is where you get down to the business of forming a stance that is going to serve you well both in practice and on the course. As you might suspect, it’s important to spend plenty of time practicing hitting chip shots with this stance so you can rely on it to get the job done during your rounds.

• Open stance. This is one of the biggest keys to a solid chipping position. Rather than standing square to the target line, as you would usually do to make a full swing, you are going to stand with your feet open to the target line. As a right-handed golfer, that means your left foot will be farther away from the target line than your right. Using an open stance actually brings a number of benefits to the table. First, it is going to help you get that good look at the target that we talked about in the previous section. With your body open to the target line, you should be able to look up and spot your target with relative ease. In addition, standing open is going to cause the club to swing slightly across the ball at impact, making it easier to get your shots up into the air. And, if you have a poor lie, swinging from outside-in will allow you to come into impact on a steeper path, helping you to avoid some of the grass behind the ball. Between the better look at the target and the improved swing path (for the purposes of chipping), standing with your feet open to the line is an easy choice.
• Lean slightly toward the target. We have to be careful with this tip, as it is easy to get carried away with this concept. We are not suggesting that you should be standing with 90% of your weight on your left foot, or anything like that. Rather, the idea here is simply to lean just slightly toward the target, favoring your left foot with maybe 55% or 60% of your weight. That’s enough to promote a downward hit through impact without causing you to lose your balance as you swing. Every golfer is going to have his or her own comfort zone with how much to lean to the left, so experiment with different positions until you settle on something that is comfortable and leads to good results.
• Hands in front of the ball. This is another point where it is easy to get carried away. At address, you want to have your hands slightly in front of the ball, meaning your hands should be to the left of the ball as you look down from your perspective in the stance. Again here, you don’t want to go too far, as forcing your hands way to the left of the ball is going to lead to an awkward swing and extremely low chip shots. Just as was the case above, you will need to experiment with your hand position on chip shots, so you can find something that leads to successful outcomes. Also, it is important to note that you will need to vary your hand position somewhat from shot to shot in order to produce different kinds of chips.
• Chin up. It’s good advice to keep your chin up on just about any shot you hit on the golf course. From your driver all the way down to your putter, do your best to keep your chin up away from your chest – both at address and during the swing. Your shoulders play a big role in the way the club moves through the swing, but they can only do their job if the chin is out of the way. Try to strike a nice balance where you have your chin up but your eyes are still looking down at the ball. Not only does this mean good things for your shoulders, but it will also be easier to keep your back in a flat position.
• Feet relatively close together. One of the biggest differences between the stance you use for your full swing and your chipping stance is the distance between your feet. With a full swing – especially with a long club – you need to have plenty of width to stay balanced. That’s not the case with a chip shot. You are only making a small swing, and there should be little body rotation to speak of. That means losing your balance isn’t much of a threat, so you don’t have to bother with the wide stance. Try standing with your feet relatively close together, while still wide enough to feel stable. This way, you should be a bit taller over the ball, and more able to make a free swing.

There is a lot of information above, but in reality, it shouldn’t be that difficult to implement. If you work through the points one by one, you’ll soon find that you have a stance you can be proud of – and one that will serve you well each time you need to produce a quality chip in order to save par.

Some Chipping Tips

In this section, we want to move away from the specifics of the stance, and instead talk more generally about chipping. This is an area of the game that gives countless amateur players fits, but we don’t think it needs to be that way. The tips you’ll find below are wide-ranging, with some being mechanical in nature while others relate to the mental side of the equation. Consider each one and decide if it can help you achieve better results.

• It’s all about a landing spot. One of the biggest mistakes made by amateur golfers is the failure to pick out a specific landing spot for their chip shots. A landing spot is just as it sounds – a spot on the ground (usually on the green) where you want the ball to land. You want the ball to wind up near the hole, of course, but that usually isn’t where it needs to land. You’ll have to judge the conditions of the ground, the height of your shot, the spin on the ball, and more to pick an accurate landing spot. Once you’ve settled on a landing spot for a given shot, you can basically forget about the hole and focus your attention only on hitting that spot.
• Accelerate through the ball. This is a tip that you probably won’t be surprised to see, but it’s an important one so it warrants inclusion in our list. As you swing forward through impact, you need to make sure that the club continues to pick up speed until the ball is sent on its way. You’ll find that it is easy to decelerate on chip shots because you aren’t trying to hit the ball far and you may be a little nervous about the outcome. That nervousness leads to a tentative move through the ball, and poor results. Do your best to convince yourself that you are going to hit a good shot, and that you can swing through without being afraid of where the ball might go.
• Read the lie. The lie of the ball is always important in golf, and that certainly holds true when chipping. If you have a clean lie, on relatively flat ground with no long grass around the ball, you can pretty much pick whatever kind of shot you would like. On the other hand, if the ball is down in the grass or on a steep slope, you will want to play with more margin and do your best to hit a decent shot. Never make the mistake of ignoring the lie when planning your shot. The lie of the ball determines everything about the chip shots you can hit, so always take it into consideration as you prepare.
• Where do you want to putt from? Too many amateur golfers make the mistake of thinking that the only goal with a chip shot is to get the ball as close to the hole as possible. It’s great to get the ball close to the hole, but you can be even more specific than that. As you prepare for your chip shot, think about which side of the hole would be best to putt from for your next shot – usually, that is going to be the low side of the hole. If you can set up an uphill putt to convert your up and down, your odds of knocking that putt in the hole will be improved.
• Firm left wrist. The quality of the strike is always important when you are chipping, and you should be able to improve your ball striking on chip shots by keeping your left wrist firm through impact. Don’t let the left wrist fold up as you approach the ball, since the club is going to release early and start to move up away from the turf. To practice keeping your left wrist firm, try hitting some practice chip shots with just one hand. Keep your left hand on the club while taking your right hand away and then hit a few shots. You’ll feel the need to keep your left wrist firm during this kind of drill, and you can hopefully translate that feeling to the chip shots that you hit with both hands.

Good chipping doesn’t happen automatically. You’ll have to good for quality results, but the work will be worth it when you start saving strokes and recording lower scores. We hope the tips above are able to help get you on the right track sooner rather than later.

Some Chipping Thoughts for Seniors

Senior golfers tend to face some challenges that many younger golfers don’t have to deal with. It should go without saying that not all seniors are going to deal with the issues listed below, but they are relatively common in the senior game, so you may find one or more of these points useful as you work on your chipping performance.

• Shaky hands. If your hands aren’t quite as steady as they used to be, some types of chip shots may be a little tricky. Specifically, you might have trouble hitting touch shots that require you to loft the ball up into the air gently. Such a shot demands excellent control of the club head, and you might not be able to produce that kind of control at this point. Should you happen to be dealing with shaky hands, try keeping the ball down closer to the ground whenever possible. Such ‘bump and run’ style chip shots are easier to hit, and you won’t need to be quite as accurate when delivering the club to hit a good shot.
• Back problems. For those who have back issues, it’s going to be hard to get down over the ball time after time to hit good chip shots. In this situation, try to stand tall and use all of the club rather than choking down on the grip an inch or two. Many players choke down when chipping, but such a technique is certainly not required. Using the whole club will let you stand up taller, and that might be enough to put you in a more comfortable position at address.
• Picking the right ball. This is a problem you might not have thought of previously, but it can be a real issue for senior players. If you’ve lost a little bit of distance over the years, you might be tempted to switch to a golf ball that is going to offer some extra yardage. That’s fine – except such a ball will probably have a firm feel and offer little spin around the greens. As a result, you might not have much control over your chip shots. Shop around to find a golf ball that walks the line between providing you with sufficient distance and nice feel on and around the greens.

Improving your chipping is one of the fastest ways to lower your scores. Better chipping is not going to come easy, but you can make consistent progress through practice and attention to detail. We hope the information offered in this article will help you reach your goals in the near future. Thanks for reading and good luck!