Use Gap Wedge to Hit Long Chips with Topspin - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Use Gap Wedge to Hit Long Chips with Topspin - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

There’s going to be occasions when you’re around the side of the green on the golf course and you’ve got a little delicate chip shot coming up onto the green but you might have quite a long area to actually roll the ball up. So we want to get the ball down but then get it rolling up the green, we don’t want to fly it too far and spin it. So the club I’m going to use here is I’m going to take my gap wedge, I’m going to play the ball slightly back in the centre of stance, lightly back behind the centre with my hands down on the club. But I’m actually going to work on releasing my hands a little bit through the impact area, slightly turning the hands over rather than holding it off.

Now when you hold the club face off, you open the club up, you open the loft and you create a little bit more back spin by rolling the hands over and releasing the club head ideal off the club slightly. So when it comes down it would land and it would roll. I’m not necessarily creating top spin on the ball, that’s almost impossible to do when you’re hitting the bottom of the ball, you can’t create top spin but what you do is you take off the backspin so when it lands it appears like it’s got top-spin because it will land and it will shoot up off the green with far more roll than if you were cutting underneath the golf ball this way. So if you’ve got a flag that is deep on the green and maybe a tier and you think, “I’m going to run it up that tier and roll it up” by releasing the club head from the back of you stance and turning the hands over, the ball comes back with much less backspin to land on the green and release up. It might look like it’s got top-spin, but it’s actually just a reduced amount of backspin. Practice out on the chip and your putting before you go and play and then pick an opportunity when you think you need to get the ball running up the green, lob wedge or gap wedge so in the back of your stance, releasing your hands, and have a little practice with that one.

2013-03-28

There’s going to be occasions when you’re around the side of the green on the golf course and you’ve got a little delicate chip shot coming up onto the green but you might have quite a long area to actually roll the ball up. So we want to get the ball down but then get it rolling up the green, we don’t want to fly it too far and spin it. So the club I’m going to use here is I’m going to take my gap wedge, I’m going to play the ball slightly back in the centre of stance, lightly back behind the centre with my hands down on the club. But I’m actually going to work on releasing my hands a little bit through the impact area, slightly turning the hands over rather than holding it off.

Now when you hold the club face off, you open the club up, you open the loft and you create a little bit more back spin by rolling the hands over and releasing the club head ideal off the club slightly. So when it comes down it would land and it would roll. I’m not necessarily creating top spin on the ball, that’s almost impossible to do when you’re hitting the bottom of the ball, you can’t create top spin but what you do is you take off the backspin so when it lands it appears like it’s got top-spin because it will land and it will shoot up off the green with far more roll than if you were cutting underneath the golf ball this way. So if you’ve got a flag that is deep on the green and maybe a tier and you think, “I’m going to run it up that tier and roll it up” by releasing the club head from the back of you stance and turning the hands over, the ball comes back with much less backspin to land on the green and release up. It might look like it’s got top-spin, but it’s actually just a reduced amount of backspin. Practice out on the chip and your putting before you go and play and then pick an opportunity when you think you need to get the ball running up the green, lob wedge or gap wedge so in the back of your stance, releasing your hands, and have a little practice with that one.