Golf Tips for Chipping, Adjust Your Body from Sidehill Lies (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Golf Tips for Chipping, Adjust Your Body from Sidehill Lies (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

One of the real differences you might find between practicing your chipping here in a closed-off sterile environment on the driving range and then implementing that chipping thrill on the golf course, it’s that here the ground is very flat and even. On the golf course particularly on chip shots, all humps and bumps surround the green and you very rarely get a flat shot. It’s not a like the teeing ground, generally flat similar to a driving range, around the greens. Every chip shot you have will have some variety of slope in it. So it’s quite important that when you have got an opportunity to practice your chipping of a sloping area you can do so.

Couple of little things you can look for in your technique as well. So when you set up to the golf ball, let’s imagine that we’ve got a ball below feet scenario, I am just going to drop my ball off the matt actually, and that just makes the golf ball a couple of inches below my feet. The general bad shot that you might hit from here, would be that you actually top the golf ball, you’d hit the golf ball a little bit thin, so if I am standing taller than normal, there is a risk that I would go over the top of the ball and scull it across the green. So what I need to really do here is just have a little extra sort of sit down in my legs, a little bit more knee flex really to drop down a little bit lower, that keeps a little bit of body weight on my heels and if I am standing on a down slope, sitting back on my heels would be a good movement.

I certainly wouldn’t want to just tilt forwards more for my waist, because I’ll feel like I am going to fall over the top of the golf ball and the heel would pull too far forward. So I would sit down a little by my heels, drop my height down a little bit to ensure that I can hit down underneath the golf ball, but also just account for the fact that when the ball lands on the green it would generally just move away to the right-hand side a little bit with a bit of spin, but also the fact that coming off the clubface, it would pop out right so, and just a little bit down on the left-hand side.

Now if we look at reversing right now, for a ball above my feet, so if I’ve got a ball above my feet, the general bad shot here wouldn’t be thin, it would actually be fat, the risk would be that because the ball is effectively closer to me, I would dunge it into the ground then hit it fat. If that’s going to be the case, I would like to grip down on the golf club, take this little bit out of the club to make it feel like I can get a cleaner and better contact on the golf ball, rather than sort of kneeling and bending down a bit too much, I actually stand up nice and tall, so get myself away from the ball a little bit more. Stand up nice and tall gripping down, aiming to the right of target this time, knowing that the clubface has a little bit of angle on it because actually making the ball go left, clipping it that way, landing it right of the green, letting it break back into the hole.

So just think about when you are practicing you’re chipping, practicing on the flat is fine, but try and practice on the slopes, then get used to how the ball would react from the slopes and just adapt to your technique, slightly depending whether you’re uphill-slope or downhill-slop and hopefully that will improve your chipping on the slopes.

 2012-08-03

One of the real differences you might find between practicing your chipping here in a closed-off sterile environment on the driving range and then implementing that chipping thrill on the golf course, it’s that here the ground is very flat and even. On the golf course particularly on chip shots, all humps and bumps surround the green and you very rarely get a flat shot. It’s not a like the teeing ground, generally flat similar to a driving range, around the greens. Every chip shot you have will have some variety of slope in it. So it’s quite important that when you have got an opportunity to practice your chipping of a sloping area you can do so.

Couple of little things you can look for in your technique as well. So when you set up to the golf ball, let’s imagine that we’ve got a ball below feet scenario, I am just going to drop my ball off the matt actually, and that just makes the golf ball a couple of inches below my feet. The general bad shot that you might hit from here, would be that you actually top the golf ball, you’d hit the golf ball a little bit thin, so if I am standing taller than normal, there is a risk that I would go over the top of the ball and scull it across the green. So what I need to really do here is just have a little extra sort of sit down in my legs, a little bit more knee flex really to drop down a little bit lower, that keeps a little bit of body weight on my heels and if I am standing on a down slope, sitting back on my heels would be a good movement.

I certainly wouldn’t want to just tilt forwards more for my waist, because I’ll feel like I am going to fall over the top of the golf ball and the heel would pull too far forward. So I would sit down a little by my heels, drop my height down a little bit to ensure that I can hit down underneath the golf ball, but also just account for the fact that when the ball lands on the green it would generally just move away to the right-hand side a little bit with a bit of spin, but also the fact that coming off the clubface, it would pop out right so, and just a little bit down on the left-hand side.

Now if we look at reversing right now, for a ball above my feet, so if I’ve got a ball above my feet, the general bad shot here wouldn’t be thin, it would actually be fat, the risk would be that because the ball is effectively closer to me, I would dunge it into the ground then hit it fat. If that’s going to be the case, I would like to grip down on the golf club, take this little bit out of the club to make it feel like I can get a cleaner and better contact on the golf ball, rather than sort of kneeling and bending down a bit too much, I actually stand up nice and tall, so get myself away from the ball a little bit more. Stand up nice and tall gripping down, aiming to the right of target this time, knowing that the clubface has a little bit of angle on it because actually making the ball go left, clipping it that way, landing it right of the green, letting it break back into the hole.

So just think about when you are practicing you’re chipping, practicing on the flat is fine, but try and practice on the slopes, then get used to how the ball would react from the slopes and just adapt to your technique, slightly depending whether you’re uphill-slope or downhill-slop and hopefully that will improve your chipping on the slopes.