Perfect Focus For Chipping With This Back Yard Umbrella Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Perfect Focus For Chipping With This Back Yard Umbrella Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

A lot of golfers tell me that they don’t have enough time to practice or they don't have enough time to get to the range. But here is a great little practice drill that you can do at home in the backyard pretty much for free. You don’t even need to go out and buy an expensive pitching net. If you've got an umbrella in your golf bag you're going to use that as your target and it works out really nicely. You open the umbrella up, you take it into the backyard and you stab it into the ground. And then you walk back a few feet, lay a few balls down and just try and chip the ball back into the umbrella. Now the nice thing about this is as it sits there kind of looking at you, it's quite an inviting target to hit into, you've got the fly stick that you're aiming for and you've got an area around about three and half to four feet wide that’s trying to get the ball to land in it. Now you can do this from a few feet back and a few yards back depending on how big your back garden is you can keep moving further and further back down the way trying to chip the ball back in.

Maybe play little games with yourself, see how many out of 10 you can get in, if you get more than seven you go to the next level and have another go, more than seven again go back another five paces and the same thing again. Now I practiced like this so much as a kid that still to this day when I visualize a golf shot on the course I actually see an umbrella where I want to pitch the ball. So if I’ve got a little pitch that has to come up and over a bunker, land then roll around the corner to a green. I'm not really focused on the bunker or the flag, what I'm focused on is where would my imaginary umbrella be? And the umbrella is sitting there on top of the green, looking at me, opened up like this, that’s where I'm going to try and pitch the ball if I can visualize that spot, land it in that spot, it then runs around and down to the flight quite nicely. So by practicing and visualizing chipping into an umbrella it's a great way of taking the same visual clue out onto the golf course with you. So what you do in practice you take the same process out onto the golf course and do it for real. And the really nice thing about this is because the front edge lifts up in the air if you feel it you're going to know about it, it's not going to go into the bucket, so the umbrella won't take the ball unless it's coming in at the right angle and at the right speed. And that’s a great little practice drill that you can do in your garden with the equipment that you already have and I guarantee a couple of hours a week working on this you're chipping and therefore your scores will improve. 2015-04-01

A lot of golfers tell me that they don’t have enough time to practice or they don't have enough time to get to the range. But here is a great little practice drill that you can do at home in the backyard pretty much for free. You don’t even need to go out and buy an expensive pitching net. If you've got an umbrella in your golf bag you're going to use that as your target and it works out really nicely. You open the umbrella up, you take it into the backyard and you stab it into the ground. And then you walk back a few feet, lay a few balls down and just try and chip the ball back into the umbrella. Now the nice thing about this is as it sits there kind of looking at you, it's quite an inviting target to hit into, you've got the fly stick that you're aiming for and you've got an area around about three and half to four feet wide that’s trying to get the ball to land in it. Now you can do this from a few feet back and a few yards back depending on how big your back garden is you can keep moving further and further back down the way trying to chip the ball back in.

Maybe play little games with yourself, see how many out of 10 you can get in, if you get more than seven you go to the next level and have another go, more than seven again go back another five paces and the same thing again. Now I practiced like this so much as a kid that still to this day when I visualize a golf shot on the course I actually see an umbrella where I want to pitch the ball. So if I’ve got a little pitch that has to come up and over a bunker, land then roll around the corner to a green. I'm not really focused on the bunker or the flag, what I'm focused on is where would my imaginary umbrella be? And the umbrella is sitting there on top of the green, looking at me, opened up like this, that’s where I'm going to try and pitch the ball if I can visualize that spot, land it in that spot, it then runs around and down to the flight quite nicely.

So by practicing and visualizing chipping into an umbrella it's a great way of taking the same visual clue out onto the golf course with you. So what you do in practice you take the same process out onto the golf course and do it for real. And the really nice thing about this is because the front edge lifts up in the air if you feel it you're going to know about it, it's not going to go into the bucket, so the umbrella won't take the ball unless it's coming in at the right angle and at the right speed. And that’s a great little practice drill that you can do in your garden with the equipment that you already have and I guarantee a couple of hours a week working on this you're chipping and therefore your scores will improve.