Chipping Golf Tip: Hands Lead Clubhead (Video) - by Pete Styles
Chipping Golf Tip: Hands Lead Clubhead (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here is a killer shot that might you might have been struggling with when you were chipping the golf ball. If when you set up to the golf ball, you get a feeling that you sometimes hit the ground first or you top and thin the ball and it scoops the ball very low or not far enough and you really want to head out nice high pitch shots. A real good tip is to make sure that your handle and your hands lead the club head. So in my set up position, I’ve a narrow stance. I have the ball around about the centre of my feet and I lean nicely into my left hand side. Now already there you can see how I’m taking the handle from the vertical position and pushing it left of centre. So I point the handle after or past my left hip, delofts the golf club slightly, but don’t worry about that you’ll get plenty of good contact on this one and plenty of height on the shot. Then as I make a back swing, it’s quite natural for the hands to lead the club head. That’s not the problem. The problem comes through the impact area if the head starts to overtake the hands, the hands slow down and then we’ve got a scoop. And that’s where we get the bad contact in the dough. So we want to focus on good sets of hands ahead and then the handle leading the club head throughout the swing.

And here is a really good little exercise for you. Take an alignment stick or any sort of stick you’ve got and place it up the grip against your left hand there and then a nice grip there. So that now is an extension of the line of the golf club. As I make my chipping technique, it shouldn’t hit me. So you can see in my follow through here, I’m not getting hit by the shaft. If I was to flick and let the club head over take the hands, you can see that hits me in the side. So if I’m scooping and flicking, that bouncing off my side instead of chipping the ball through in this fashion. Now if I take that on to a golf ball and strike it, you will see how in the follow through the handle still passes the side of my body and is effectively still in front of the club head. The club head hasn’t overtaken at that point. So if you were to scoop the ball, you would see the putt end of the golf club has cut through your body in half. If you were to lead with the handle correctly for chipping, this misses a side of your body. That’s a great chipping exercise if you want better contacts on your short shots.

 2013-04-01

Here is a killer shot that might you might have been struggling with when you were chipping the golf ball. If when you set up to the golf ball, you get a feeling that you sometimes hit the ground first or you top and thin the ball and it scoops the ball very low or not far enough and you really want to head out nice high pitch shots. A real good tip is to make sure that your handle and your hands lead the club head. So in my set up position, I’ve a narrow stance. I have the ball around about the centre of my feet and I lean nicely into my left hand side. Now already there you can see how I’m taking the handle from the vertical position and pushing it left of centre. So I point the handle after or past my left hip, delofts the golf club slightly, but don’t worry about that you’ll get plenty of good contact on this one and plenty of height on the shot. Then as I make a back swing, it’s quite natural for the hands to lead the club head. That’s not the problem. The problem comes through the impact area if the head starts to overtake the hands, the hands slow down and then we’ve got a scoop. And that’s where we get the bad contact in the dough. So we want to focus on good sets of hands ahead and then the handle leading the club head throughout the swing.

And here is a really good little exercise for you. Take an alignment stick or any sort of stick you’ve got and place it up the grip against your left hand there and then a nice grip there. So that now is an extension of the line of the golf club. As I make my chipping technique, it shouldn’t hit me. So you can see in my follow through here, I’m not getting hit by the shaft. If I was to flick and let the club head over take the hands, you can see that hits me in the side. So if I’m scooping and flicking, that bouncing off my side instead of chipping the ball through in this fashion. Now if I take that on to a golf ball and strike it, you will see how in the follow through the handle still passes the side of my body and is effectively still in front of the club head. The club head hasn’t overtaken at that point. So if you were to scoop the ball, you would see the putt end of the golf club has cut through your body in half. If you were to lead with the handle correctly for chipping, this misses a side of your body. That’s a great chipping exercise if you want better contacts on your short shots.