How Can I Stop Hitting My Chip Shots Fat? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler
How Can I Stop Hitting My Chip Shots Fat? (Video) - by PGA Instructor Dean Butler

Here’s a question for you. How can I stop hitting my chip shots fat? Well, first of all, what is a chip shot? A chip shot is where we take most probably a seven iron or an eight iron, we’re just off the green. We’ve got nothing that is huge like a bunker in front of us or hills. It’s a flat sort of line. It’s too far off the green for a putter so you want to use a seven or eight iron just to play a chip and run with the ball will kind of go low over the sort of rough terrain and then land and then just run up. So, that is how the chip shot. But at these fat shots, what cause these fat shots?

Well, basically from here, when you set yourself for chip and run shot, we need to have the weight predominantly on the front foot. And when you hit the shots fat, the tendency is to be a little bit on the back foot so your weight is here at the back. And when this happens, you can see of course, there’s a bit of a dropping action where you fall back. Unless you fall back, you’re going to catch the ground much earlier. So, the key to actually what we need to do is to get this weight on the left hand side, just a couple of ways of doing it. We can set ourselves up and say, right, let’s put our weight, let’s lean on the left hand side which ideally, which is the way you’d want to be, 60, 40 ideally for the chip and run. By keeping that weight further forward, the actual arc of the swing is coming to get a bit more prone to catching ball then turf. Remember the problem of hitting fat shots is to get turf then ball. A simple tip, if you think, I’m not sure about that, is when I turn it myself around and say to your right. When you set yourself up, what I want you to do is I want you just to set yourself a bit normal, lift your right heels, you’re a left-handed golfer. By lifting that heel, it automatically puts the weight on the left foot. So, if you think, well, the first tip that we gave you, I’m not quite sure I can feel it, by setting yourself up and lifting that right foot off the ground, the heel of the ground, the weight naturally goes into your left side. Ball position, let’s put the ball position in the middle and maybe slightly further forward because we’re tying to eliminate the chance of a fat shots. So, there’s the ball position. I’m going to lift my right heel off the ground, my weight is now shifted on the left hand side. You should be able to see that clearly. And from here now, we’re going to keep that club nice and low. Keep it low to the ground, low through and the club is doing the job and there's no chance of actually hitting a fat shot at all. Now, one of the things, one of the incorrect answers that people come up with time and time again is I need to move the ball further back in my stance which means towards this foot. Well, it’s a wrong answer because by putting the ball further back, it naturally makes the swing steeper, which means the club then goes up and down. So, you can see from that, if I’m coming up and down, there's a big chance that I’m going to hit that ground behind the ball. So, most importantly, that’s to get the incorrect answer, go with the correct one. Do it a little bit of practice and enjoy chipping without hitting fat shots. 2014-05-13

Here’s a question for you. How can I stop hitting my chip shots fat? Well, first of all, what is a chip shot? A chip shot is where we take most probably a seven iron or an eight iron, we’re just off the green. We’ve got nothing that is huge like a bunker in front of us or hills. It’s a flat sort of line. It’s too far off the green for a putter so you want to use a seven or eight iron just to play a chip and run with the ball will kind of go low over the sort of rough terrain and then land and then just run up. So, that is how the chip shot. But at these fat shots, what cause these fat shots?

Well, basically from here, when you set yourself for chip and run shot, we need to have the weight predominantly on the front foot. And when you hit the shots fat, the tendency is to be a little bit on the back foot so your weight is here at the back. And when this happens, you can see of course, there’s a bit of a dropping action where you fall back. Unless you fall back, you’re going to catch the ground much earlier.

So, the key to actually what we need to do is to get this weight on the left hand side, just a couple of ways of doing it. We can set ourselves up and say, right, let’s put our weight, let’s lean on the left hand side which ideally, which is the way you’d want to be, 60, 40 ideally for the chip and run. By keeping that weight further forward, the actual arc of the swing is coming to get a bit more prone to catching ball then turf. Remember the problem of hitting fat shots is to get turf then ball.

A simple tip, if you think, I’m not sure about that, is when I turn it myself around and say to your right. When you set yourself up, what I want you to do is I want you just to set yourself a bit normal, lift your right heels, you’re a left-handed golfer. By lifting that heel, it automatically puts the weight on the left foot. So, if you think, well, the first tip that we gave you, I’m not quite sure I can feel it, by setting yourself up and lifting that right foot off the ground, the heel of the ground, the weight naturally goes into your left side.

Ball position, let’s put the ball position in the middle and maybe slightly further forward because we’re tying to eliminate the chance of a fat shots. So, there’s the ball position. I’m going to lift my right heel off the ground, my weight is now shifted on the left hand side. You should be able to see that clearly. And from here now, we’re going to keep that club nice and low. Keep it low to the ground, low through and the club is doing the job and there's no chance of actually hitting a fat shot at all.

Now, one of the things, one of the incorrect answers that people come up with time and time again is I need to move the ball further back in my stance which means towards this foot. Well, it’s a wrong answer because by putting the ball further back, it naturally makes the swing steeper, which means the club then goes up and down. So, you can see from that, if I’m coming up and down, there's a big chance that I’m going to hit that ground behind the ball. So, most importantly, that’s to get the incorrect answer, go with the correct one. Do it a little bit of practice and enjoy chipping without hitting fat shots.