Now, here’s some advice for you. If you’ve got one good part of your game, if you’ve got good iron play but poor chipping, or vice versa, you’ve got good chipping but poor iron play, here’s a little tip that hopefully will help you improve the bad part of your game.

I like to think about hitting a chip shot exactly the same as hitting a mini iron shot. So when you set up to the golf ball when you’re chipping, your feet are closer together. Your left arm and shaft make a straight line and the club comes back gently and descends down into the golf ball. And that’s exactly the same approach that we would have when we’re hitting a full iron shot but just on a much bigger scale. On a full iron shot, we have a much wider stance. The body weight is maybe slightly more even and less at the left side at set up, but the impact position for both is very similar. We’re in to the left side, we’ve got the straight line and we’re hitting down into the ball.

So if you have a problem in any part of your game, be it chipping, or be it iron play but then you have a good flip side, so your chipping is better, your iron play is better, try and just picture the swings as being mini versions of each other. So if when you’re chipping, you’re leaning back, trying to scoop the ball into the air, just consider the shot to be a mini iron shot, feet narrow, ball in the middle, hands full is hitting down for a good contact, and likewise, if you’re good at chipping, but then when you play your irons, you lean back and scoop, just think about this as being a super-sized chip shot. Try and get yourself in that same impact position to strike down because ultimately, a chip and an iron shot have the same impact positions. They just have more or less club head speed.

So think of playing your chip shot, like little mini iron shots and hopefully that will help you improve.