Can I Hit Golf Chip Shots With A Gap Wedge? (Video) - by Pete Styles
Can I Hit Golf Chip Shots With A Gap Wedge? (Video) - by Pete Styles

So can you hit a golf chip shot with a gap wedge? Well yes of course you can. You can hit a golf chip shot with pretty much every club in the golf bag. You could chip with a hybrid club, you could chip with a 3-wood, you could chip with your lob wedge. There’s nothing to say you can and can’t do anything with a chip shot. One thing you have to consider is which club will give me the right trajectory and the right roll and quite often my gap wedge is my favorite club.

My gap wedge sits perfectly between my pitching wedge and my sand wedge. So a lot of people don’t actually have a gap wedge because the manufactures don’t supply it. You’re supplied with the pitching wedge and quite often with the sand wedge but they leave this huge gap between those two wedges, maybe ten degrees of loft which could be about 30 yards of distance. So a lot of better golfers put a 50 degree or a 52 degree gap wedge in their set and that bridges the gap between the sand wedge and the pitching wedge. It also gives you a nice little height and nice little roll ratio. So when you’re out on the golf course and you’re looking at a particular shot and you think I want to land it there and run it up that way, the sand wedge might land and stop too soon, the pitch wedge might land and roll too far, the gap wedge is the club to choose. Now the easiest way to decide which club to chip with I always find is standing on the golf course, imagine I pick the ball up in my hand, and I’m going to throw the ball out onto the green, I’m going to throw it and land it and see how it reacts. If I’ve got a big bunker in the way and very little room to work with, I’d throw the ball up a lot higher, get it to land and stop fairly quickly, that would instinctively be my lob wedge. If I find myself rolling it lower and running it across the floor because there’s nothing in the way that might be something like a seven or an 8-iron. Bump it forward and let it roll all the way. If I have a nice sort of middle distance under hand throw, throw it a little bit high and let it roll a little bit that might be my gap wedge. I’d play my gap wedge shot then with a nice fairly simple chipping technique. I play the ball in the center of a relatively narrow stance, I grip down towards the base of club to give myself a little bit more control. I then push a lot of my body weight onto my front leg, and then I have a short back swing with a short follow through with very little hand action so I’m not really flicking or scooping the ball up into the air, if I wanted to hit the ball up into the air I should have chosen a different golf club. But if I’ve chosen my gap wedge, I stand in the right positions, put my hands in the right place, make a little back and through motion, and just nudge the ball forwards. You notice my follow through is not a big hit round here because I’m describing just a little bump forwards, just a little chip. So yes you can practice chipping with your gap wedge, have a little bit of experience of doing that on the practice ground before you take it on the golf course, and good luck improving your chipping. 2014-08-12

So can you hit a golf chip shot with a gap wedge? Well yes of course you can. You can hit a golf chip shot with pretty much every club in the golf bag. You could chip with a hybrid club, you could chip with a 3-wood, you could chip with your lob wedge. There’s nothing to say you can and can’t do anything with a chip shot. One thing you have to consider is which club will give me the right trajectory and the right roll and quite often my gap wedge is my favorite club.

My gap wedge sits perfectly between my pitching wedge and my sand wedge. So a lot of people don’t actually have a gap wedge because the manufactures don’t supply it. You’re supplied with the pitching wedge and quite often with the sand wedge but they leave this huge gap between those two wedges, maybe ten degrees of loft which could be about 30 yards of distance. So a lot of better golfers put a 50 degree or a 52 degree gap wedge in their set and that bridges the gap between the sand wedge and the pitching wedge. It also gives you a nice little height and nice little roll ratio. So when you’re out on the golf course and you’re looking at a particular shot and you think I want to land it there and run it up that way, the sand wedge might land and stop too soon, the pitch wedge might land and roll too far, the gap wedge is the club to choose.

Now the easiest way to decide which club to chip with I always find is standing on the golf course, imagine I pick the ball up in my hand, and I’m going to throw the ball out onto the green, I’m going to throw it and land it and see how it reacts. If I’ve got a big bunker in the way and very little room to work with, I’d throw the ball up a lot higher, get it to land and stop fairly quickly, that would instinctively be my lob wedge. If I find myself rolling it lower and running it across the floor because there’s nothing in the way that might be something like a seven or an 8-iron. Bump it forward and let it roll all the way.

If I have a nice sort of middle distance under hand throw, throw it a little bit high and let it roll a little bit that might be my gap wedge. I’d play my gap wedge shot then with a nice fairly simple chipping technique. I play the ball in the center of a relatively narrow stance, I grip down towards the base of club to give myself a little bit more control. I then push a lot of my body weight onto my front leg, and then I have a short back swing with a short follow through with very little hand action so I’m not really flicking or scooping the ball up into the air, if I wanted to hit the ball up into the air I should have chosen a different golf club. But if I’ve chosen my gap wedge, I stand in the right positions, put my hands in the right place, make a little back and through motion, and just nudge the ball forwards. You notice my follow through is not a big hit round here because I’m describing just a little bump forwards, just a little chip.

So yes you can practice chipping with your gap wedge, have a little bit of experience of doing that on the practice ground before you take it on the golf course, and good luck improving your chipping.