Potential Causes And Fixes The Fat Golf Chip Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Potential Causes And Fixes The Fat Golf Chip Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we look now specifically at what causes a fat golf shot, and then more importantly what we can do to stop the fat chip shot. So a fat shot is where the club will hit the ground prior to hitting the golf ball, taking too much of a divot, often the ball won't reach its intended target. Fatting the golf ball is often created by having the bodyweight too far back behind the ball. So this might be at the setup position, the ball could be too far forwards, or the bodyweight could be too far back. And this is a golfer who is desperately trying to help the ball into the air, thinking they're doing the right thing to help the ball up, but of course the club will then bottom out prior to the ball trying to hit the ball up, you're going to have hit the ground first before the ball.

Other issues relating to this could be poor balance. So during the swing the golfer might be setup correction, but as they swing back they lean back, and then they never move forwards. They get poor balance leaning back. Some golfers, even poor balance leaning forwards, they topple over, the club damages the ground before it gets to the golf ball, so poor balance is quite a big issue with this. And then one other thing is a golfer might have decent technique but then actually slow down during the swing. So they might be chipping the ball quite nicely, but then on one particular shot they decide that actually they don't want to hit the ball quite so far so they decelerate. So golfer sets up quite nicely, good swing, but then slows the club down coming into impact. The club hits the ground with no power. And if the club hits the ground and you're not putting any power into it, it'll immediately stop the club going forwards and come out quite well short of the green with that fat shot. So we want to make sure we've got a good setup. We've got to have really good balance. And we want to be accelerating through the chip and the pitch shot. And we can do all of that we should find that our chip shots become better quality strikes, and therefore better results on the green. 2016-10-14

If we look now specifically at what causes a fat golf shot, and then more importantly what we can do to stop the fat chip shot. So a fat shot is where the club will hit the ground prior to hitting the golf ball, taking too much of a divot, often the ball won't reach its intended target. Fatting the golf ball is often created by having the bodyweight too far back behind the ball. So this might be at the setup position, the ball could be too far forwards, or the bodyweight could be too far back. And this is a golfer who is desperately trying to help the ball into the air, thinking they're doing the right thing to help the ball up, but of course the club will then bottom out prior to the ball trying to hit the ball up, you're going to have hit the ground first before the ball.

Other issues relating to this could be poor balance. So during the swing the golfer might be setup correction, but as they swing back they lean back, and then they never move forwards. They get poor balance leaning back. Some golfers, even poor balance leaning forwards, they topple over, the club damages the ground before it gets to the golf ball, so poor balance is quite a big issue with this. And then one other thing is a golfer might have decent technique but then actually slow down during the swing. So they might be chipping the ball quite nicely, but then on one particular shot they decide that actually they don't want to hit the ball quite so far so they decelerate. So golfer sets up quite nicely, good swing, but then slows the club down coming into impact. The club hits the ground with no power. And if the club hits the ground and you're not putting any power into it, it'll immediately stop the club going forwards and come out quite well short of the green with that fat shot.

So we want to make sure we've got a good setup. We've got to have really good balance. And we want to be accelerating through the chip and the pitch shot. And we can do all of that we should find that our chip shots become better quality strikes, and therefore better results on the green.