Golf Chipping Drills (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Chipping Drills (Video) - by Pete Styles

You join me now on the side of the chipping green, we are going to be chipping onto the green trying to work on getting this golf ball up and down. Now on the side of the green like this we don’t want to take more than two shots if we can help it, we've probably hit quite a decent shot towards the green. The ball has just fallen from the edge and if I can chip and hole the putt, I feel like I have actually got away with a decent score on this hole. Now it's a relatively simple shot you would think, but a lot of people I feel probably don’t practice this shot enough and therefore aren’t quite proficient enough at it. So here is three really good chipping drills that work purely and simply on the concept to just getting this ball up and down. So the first exercise I'd like to focus on is taking two alignments rods here and just simply aiming them towards the intended target, which is the flight towards the back of the green there, and by standing nice and square to those alignment rods and letting the club swing up and down, that intended swing path line.

I want to try and make sure that I'm swinging in a straight direction as possible towards my intended flag. If I was swinging the club across those lines either inside or outside or outside inside I'm going to cause myself quite a few problems. So chopping across or pushing out to the right, I'm not going to be very accurate and that could cause me problems with hitting the ball to far left or too far right of the intended target. The other drill I'd like you to focus on from here is making sure you try and get the golf ball within three feet. Generally if you are going to have a good percentage chance of holding you're putts you'd like this first chip shot to get you within three feet. If you then miss the putt you would be able to blame the putt as the mistake rather than the chip shot, but if you are chipping this to 12 or 15 feet away and then missing the putt it's not really the putts fault, it's more of the chip shot fault. So aim to get this within three feet of the hole and the last drill you could focus on is simply scoring yourself of how efficiently you are during this exercise. So you take nine golf balls in a line or nine golf balls positioned all around the green and try and play the up and down game, so simply hitting the ball onto the green taking your putter and holding it, chipping the ball on, holding it and you aim that with nine balls is to score 18. So if you could go round and call it power 18 if you like nine balls around the side of the green chip on and hole the putt. It's quite a nice game to be competitive, so you're either competitive with yourself or actually competitive with a different playing partner. Trying to get the ball up and down as often as you can and you might be surprised to either how good or even how bad you are at it. You know if you go around there and you chip it on, on three putt and two putt every time you're taking three shots each time, you might think well that’s okay I'm meant two take two putts. But really from the side of the green like this you want to try and get this ball up and down a little bit more regularly and like I said be competitive and also watch how good the good players are. If you're playing at club level you will see good players very rarely take more than two shots from this position, one chip shot goes close, the second putt goes in. So you use those three exercises to see if you can improve, you're consistency and how well you can chip the ball from here to within three feet of that pin. 2015-11-04

You join me now on the side of the chipping green, we are going to be chipping onto the green trying to work on getting this golf ball up and down. Now on the side of the green like this we don’t want to take more than two shots if we can help it, we've probably hit quite a decent shot towards the green. The ball has just fallen from the edge and if I can chip and hole the putt, I feel like I have actually got away with a decent score on this hole. Now it's a relatively simple shot you would think, but a lot of people I feel probably don’t practice this shot enough and therefore aren’t quite proficient enough at it. So here is three really good chipping drills that work purely and simply on the concept to just getting this ball up and down. So the first exercise I'd like to focus on is taking two alignments rods here and just simply aiming them towards the intended target, which is the flight towards the back of the green there, and by standing nice and square to those alignment rods and letting the club swing up and down, that intended swing path line.

I want to try and make sure that I'm swinging in a straight direction as possible towards my intended flag. If I was swinging the club across those lines either inside or outside or outside inside I'm going to cause myself quite a few problems. So chopping across or pushing out to the right, I'm not going to be very accurate and that could cause me problems with hitting the ball to far left or too far right of the intended target. The other drill I'd like you to focus on from here is making sure you try and get the golf ball within three feet. Generally if you are going to have a good percentage chance of holding you're putts you'd like this first chip shot to get you within three feet.

If you then miss the putt you would be able to blame the putt as the mistake rather than the chip shot, but if you are chipping this to 12 or 15 feet away and then missing the putt it's not really the putts fault, it's more of the chip shot fault. So aim to get this within three feet of the hole and the last drill you could focus on is simply scoring yourself of how efficiently you are during this exercise. So you take nine golf balls in a line or nine golf balls positioned all around the green and try and play the up and down game, so simply hitting the ball onto the green taking your putter and holding it, chipping the ball on, holding it and you aim that with nine balls is to score 18.

So if you could go round and call it power 18 if you like nine balls around the side of the green chip on and hole the putt. It's quite a nice game to be competitive, so you're either competitive with yourself or actually competitive with a different playing partner. Trying to get the ball up and down as often as you can and you might be surprised to either how good or even how bad you are at it. You know if you go around there and you chip it on, on three putt and two putt every time you're taking three shots each time, you might think well that’s okay I'm meant two take two putts.

But really from the side of the green like this you want to try and get this ball up and down a little bit more regularly and like I said be competitive and also watch how good the good players are. If you're playing at club level you will see good players very rarely take more than two shots from this position, one chip shot goes close, the second putt goes in. So you use those three exercises to see if you can improve, you're consistency and how well you can chip the ball from here to within three feet of that pin.