What are the Signs of a Good Chip Shot? (Video) - by Dean Butler
What are the Signs of a Good Chip Shot? (Video) - by Dean Butler

Okay so what are the signs of a Good Chip Shot? It’s well a low shot that runs just nicely from the fringe onto the Green and rolls out and finishes close radius to the hole. It sounds so obvious you know? Well, it’s a good sign, but there are three components that we need to work on to actually get those results.

The first one is to focus on the ball strike. So, when you’re setting yourself up, I know it sounds so obvious, but we need to get the ball striking out in the middle of the club face so the ball strike is so, so vital so we don’t hit out of the hill or that so we couldn’t move the club face one way or the other way. So, the ball strike is so, so important. The second thing is the accuracy. Now the accuracy is the direction so, when you’re setting yourself up, and quite a few of you are guilty of just pulling the club up having a few sort of practice swings and go into the ball, yes you’re looking at the flag, wouldn’t it be better to kind of step back, stand behind the ball, look at the flag, look at where you want to land that golf ball, look where you want to land it, pick a marker out just in front of the ball, then put the club face behind line for that and then set yourself ready to play the Chip Shot, so straight away we’ve actually got the direction sorted out. The final component is the distance; it’s getting that ball the right length. So how do we go about the distance? Well, the most obvious answer would be to say if you’ve got a Shot Chip, let’s keep the swing nice and shot, if you’ve got a longer one, then let’s just lengthen it and it really is as simple as that; but you have to practice. You can’t just say do the short swing do the first swing, or a long swing rather, you have to practice technique. So let me just show you a couple of golf shots so that you might know a short chip [Indiscernible] [0:01:48] from about 20 foot. We set ourselves up with a weight 60 force in the left hand side as you would go for a chip shot, I’ve got that club face aligned from my marker having stood behind the ball. And in here I’m going to concentrate on keeping this club nice and low to the ground so, it’s a fairly short one. So, I’m going to keep the weight on my left side, keep my arms straight, back and forward. The loft of the club froze the ball up; it’s now landing on the Green and rolling up to the hole. If I’ve got a longer shot, don’t swing it any harder, don’t do that just lengthen your swing; same set-up again, but this time they swing a little bit longer, take it back there and all of a sudden now the ball is carried further up the green, it’s landing and there’s a release on it. So there you go, you’ve got the three factors there to improve your Chip Shots and you know what to look for. Just go out and practice. Remember practice makes perfect. 2014-05-15

Okay so what are the signs of a Good Chip Shot? It’s well a low shot that runs just nicely from the fringe onto the Green and rolls out and finishes close radius to the hole. It sounds so obvious you know? Well, it’s a good sign, but there are three components that we need to work on to actually get those results.

The first one is to focus on the ball strike. So, when you’re setting yourself up, I know it sounds so obvious, but we need to get the ball striking out in the middle of the club face so the ball strike is so, so vital so we don’t hit out of the hill or that so we couldn’t move the club face one way or the other way. So, the ball strike is so, so important.

The second thing is the accuracy. Now the accuracy is the direction so, when you’re setting yourself up, and quite a few of you are guilty of just pulling the club up having a few sort of practice swings and go into the ball, yes you’re looking at the flag, wouldn’t it be better to kind of step back, stand behind the ball, look at the flag, look at where you want to land that golf ball, look where you want to land it, pick a marker out just in front of the ball, then put the club face behind line for that and then set yourself ready to play the Chip Shot, so straight away we’ve actually got the direction sorted out.

The final component is the distance; it’s getting that ball the right length. So how do we go about the distance? Well, the most obvious answer would be to say if you’ve got a Shot Chip, let’s keep the swing nice and shot, if you’ve got a longer one, then let’s just lengthen it and it really is as simple as that; but you have to practice. You can’t just say do the short swing do the first swing, or a long swing rather, you have to practice technique.

So let me just show you a couple of golf shots so that you might know a short chip [Indiscernible] [0:01:48] from about 20 foot. We set ourselves up with a weight 60 force in the left hand side as you would go for a chip shot, I’ve got that club face aligned from my marker having stood behind the ball. And in here I’m going to concentrate on keeping this club nice and low to the ground so, it’s a fairly short one. So, I’m going to keep the weight on my left side, keep my arms straight, back and forward. The loft of the club froze the ball up; it’s now landing on the Green and rolling up to the hole. If I’ve got a longer shot, don’t swing it any harder, don’t do that just lengthen your swing; same set-up again, but this time they swing a little bit longer, take it back there and all of a sudden now the ball is carried further up the green, it’s landing and there’s a release on it.

So there you go, you’ve got the three factors there to improve your Chip Shots and you know what to look for. Just go out and practice. Remember practice makes perfect.