Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

Watching somebody chip and pitch their ball well, I think can look quite artistic, some much such a flowing shot action, it looks quite simple, but when it’s done well, his body position just turns back and through back and through it looks like a very simple action, but there is a huge amount that actually goes into making that action look so smooth and so consistent. And you only have to look at someone chipping the ball badly to realize how badly some people can make a jab at this. It should be simple, but if we get it wrong, it looks pretty horrific and the results are horrific as well. So you got to be careful if we have got this simple technique really well horned in and really well dialed in.

First thing is we are going to make quite a narrow stance, so we are going to have a, the seat around about hit with the path. So not so narrow that you feel off balance, but not so wide that you generate too much power or you sway. Then I sort of hit with the path, then we play the ball around about the center of the stance now we are going to lean into the left hand side, under this point, here we want to make sure that the eyes are in front of the golf ball and they stay down. Now having the eyes in front of that ball is not a common thing with a normal swing, the eyes will sit slightly behind the ball, chipping and pitching we can actually be looking down after the ball, because that’s the low point, that’s where the club should be headed, to after the ball.

So we lean in to that left side, now as we swing back, we bring the arms back this way. We actually just want a small little write hinge, a little cocking of the wrist in this position and effectively the way we create that is soft hands. So soft hands it’s not floppy but it also is not tight, there is no tension in the wrist and hands and arms here as we turn the club bat we just have that little softness in the shaft there to set the wrist, but a good strong straight left arm. And this is the area where the soft hands becomes a problem, a lot of golfers when they do soft hands, they do soft elbow, and when they do firm elbow, they do firm hands. So we want to make sure that it’s firm elbow, soft hands and then turn down through the ball. And again the idea would be keep the eyes down until after impact.

So we have got a nice setup soft hands, firm elbow, stay down, stay down, stay down, stay down, stay down, stay down, stay down and then let the eyes look up, almost when the right shoulder hits the chin, the eyes are going to look up and see where the resulting shot went. And I think if you can get that technique really well horned in and really well practiced, your firm left arm will produce some really nice crisp chip shots.