Master the Golf Chipping Stroke
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Learn the pro secret to consistent chipping - never blade or chunk a chip shot again! Few things in golf are more frustrating than being just a few feet off the green and 15 feet from the hole to then blade a chip shot across the other side - or worse, lay the sod over it. In this video, we show you how the pros hit their chip shots so cleanly off even the tightest lies so that you can have confidence around the greens.
Chipping Golf
I've seen a lot of things in my days on the golf course, but few things I've seen make people more angry than chunking or blading a golf chip shot. I get it. You're SO CLOSE to the hole, you may have just hit two awesome shots to get to where you are and then "clink" - there it guys screaming across the green.
I've got great news though! If you follow my golf chipping tips I give you and drill this new move in, you'll never struggle with either of those dreadful misses again around the greens. The secret lies in the mechanics of what's happening when you chunk or blade a golf chip shot. Let's discuss each of them.
The Bladed Chip Shots
This one can get you in trouble real quick. You can go from five feet off the green looking at a birdie to 20 feet over the green in a bunker looking at a double bogey in a heart beat. But, you can beat this shot by understanding what causes it.
In most cases, not all, but most, the cause is from active wrists. And, yep, you guessed it, from an overly active right wrist. That's because as the right wrist re-hinges it causes the golf club to start working back up off the ground rather than staying low and continuing to work slightly down. This causes you to hit the ball near the equater and send it soaring.
The drill I give you in this video fixes this problem.
The Chunked Chip Shot
This one is more embarrassing than harmful to your score, but it costs a stroke nonetheless and doesn't get us much closer to the hole. This one is most often caused by pushing too hard with the right arm and hand. This forces the club to work down too steeply requiring that you catch the ball just perfectly.
Golfers who are too right hand dominant start moving the golf ball further and further back in their setup to ensure clean contact, but this starts severely delofting the golf club, making it very difficult to hit shorter, delicate chip shots.
The trick is be able to keep the golf ball further up in your chipping stance so you can get the true loft back on the golf club at impact while still hitting it cleanly.
The fix is the drill in this golf instruction video. If you start practicing the way I demonstrate here, you'll find that you can chip a ball off any lie, from a spongy one to a cart path and never worry about hitting a bad shot again. Heck, instead of being afraid of the chip shot this tip will have you looking at them as scoring opportunities, so give it a try!
Today we're going to talk about golf chipping and more importantly how the RST fundamentals of pushing versus pulling apply to the short game and specifically the basic golf chipping stroke. When I'm talking about the basic golf chipping stroke, we're talking about hitting like a little bump and run. In this case it's a 7 iron, I'm going to say we have not a lot of distance to carry. We want the ball to land close or on the green and release and roll quite a way.
Even if you're landing it short of the green, and letting it roll up because you're on a firm fairway or a tight fairway lie, this is a great golf chip shot to have in your arsenal because it's a low risk play. Meaning it's going to tend to release out and get to the hole, versus if you try to put a lot of spin on the ball and if you don't hit it just right, you may come up way short. You hit it too hard, you may go too far. This is more like a putt. In this case, you need to apply the same fundamentals that apply to every other part of rotary swing, and again that goes back to pushing versus pulling.
Most golfers flip when they come into the short game area. This is what makes chipping golf really, really hard, because the loft is changing dynamically as you're striking the ball, which is going to completely change the strike on the ball, the quality of the strike, which is going to effect energy transfer, and the spin rate. It doesn't seem like spin rate would be a huge deal on such a short shot, but trust me, it makes a massive difference.
We want to make sure that this club face is staying at a constant loft angle all the way through the hitting area, versus doing this where we're adding a lot of loft. Think about this for a second. What would you be able to do with your body or your arms or your wrists or your hands that would effect the loft of the club? Well, of course by now hopefully you understand the RST fundamentals, that this right side tends to cause more problems than good. That's because this right wrist is angled back. These muscles are loaded, even on a short game shot. Then if you do what your brain wants to do, which is release them and use your dominant hand, you're flipping the club.
So how do we get rid of this in the golf chip shot? The exact same way you do in your real swing. Take your right hand off, and start practicing golf chipping with just your left arm and your body. Notice that my wrist stays nice and constant. I'm coming through the grass very shallow, because I don't have any angles to make the club continue to travel on a tangent path down. If I have my right wrist on there, I'd create this angle. It's very easy for me to stick the club in the ground. If you tend to chunk your chip shots, I guarantee you this is where it's coming from.
Golf Chipping Tips
Take this right hand off, and start practicing using your body. I even use my knees and hips a little bit on these chip shots, because I want to be able to keep my hands soft. This gives me a little momentum and rotation to move the club, rather than having to use my hands. As long as I focus on using my body, keeping this wrist nice and quiet, then the chip shot becomes super, super easy. What you should be doing when you're practicing your chip shots is doing them left handed. Nice little bump and run, piece of cake.
If I do it wrong, if I do it with my right hand, I hit behind that, hit the ball up in the air, ball bounces when it lands. It kind of goes offline in golf chipping. You need to focus on using the left side to pull the club through the hitting area. Then as you get comfortable, when you put your right hand back on it, the right hand's on there very light to help support and stabilize the left hand, not to hit at the ball.
Now, if I just go back and forth, perfect little bump and run golf chip shot. Focus on the fundamentals, apply the push versus pull technique to your chipping, just like you do in your full swing, and you'll never chunk or blade a golf chip shot again.
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Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
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