Pitch, Don’t Chip, When Playing Aerified Greens, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Pitch, Don’t Chip, When Playing Aerified Greens, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you’ve ever gone on a golf course on one of those unfortunate days when the green keepers are doing maintenance on the golf course and they’re aerifying the green or hollow tining the green. So they’re putting a little spike marks in the green and then they’re throwing the top dressing on top of it. We all know that’s essential maintenance work and it’s important that green keepers do it. But there's never as much disappointment as when you get there on an exciting day to play golf and the green keepers have been out and top dressed all the greens and you just feel like you can’t quite hit the shots or hit the puts you want to hit. But here’s a little tip for you that hopefully will improve your chipping and pitching on those days.

I think you’ll find that when you chip the ball onto a green and its all hollow tined, the golf ball would bounce inconsistently. There’s nothing worse than landing the ball on the green in exactly the right spot and it just kicks off sideways. And obviously, when you’re chipping the ball onto the green, that ball would bounce more times and rolls for further across the green whereas if you were to pitch the ball onto the green with a higher, more lobbed shot, when the ball lands, it will bounce less and roll less than a chip, and therefore reducing your sort of potential for getting bad bounces, reducing the chance of getting bad kicks.

So if you’ve gone on of those unfortunate days where the greens had been hollow tined and aerified and top dressed, avoid hitting the low and bump and run shots and expecting it to roll consistently. Try and play a little bit more of an aerial route. Throw the ball up a little bit higher, get the ball to land and get the ball to spin a bit quicker, so it rolls less and it bounces less, and hopefully that will improve your chances of getting a good kick towards the hole.

 2012-07-31

If you’ve ever gone on a golf course on one of those unfortunate days when the green keepers are doing maintenance on the golf course and they’re aerifying the green or hollow tining the green. So they’re putting a little spike marks in the green and then they’re throwing the top dressing on top of it. We all know that’s essential maintenance work and it’s important that green keepers do it. But there's never as much disappointment as when you get there on an exciting day to play golf and the green keepers have been out and top dressed all the greens and you just feel like you can’t quite hit the shots or hit the puts you want to hit. But here’s a little tip for you that hopefully will improve your chipping and pitching on those days.

I think you’ll find that when you chip the ball onto a green and its all hollow tined, the golf ball would bounce inconsistently. There’s nothing worse than landing the ball on the green in exactly the right spot and it just kicks off sideways. And obviously, when you’re chipping the ball onto the green, that ball would bounce more times and rolls for further across the green whereas if you were to pitch the ball onto the green with a higher, more lobbed shot, when the ball lands, it will bounce less and roll less than a chip, and therefore reducing your sort of potential for getting bad bounces, reducing the chance of getting bad kicks.

So if you’ve gone on of those unfortunate days where the greens had been hollow tined and aerified and top dressed, avoid hitting the low and bump and run shots and expecting it to roll consistently. Try and play a little bit more of an aerial route. Throw the ball up a little bit higher, get the ball to land and get the ball to spin a bit quicker, so it rolls less and it bounces less, and hopefully that will improve your chances of getting a good kick towards the hole.