Chipping - Golf Instruction Tips
The shot that requires the most authority is also one of the shortest. Golf instruction chipping without authority can be thin, fat or even shanked shots. Whatever can go wrong usually will. However hitting your chip shots like you mean it, you are more likely to be tapping your next shot in for birdie.
Fear, indecision, lack of strength lead to a lack of authority, which in turn leads to poor chipping. Think of your club as a horse.If you aren’t confident, it will recognize your concerns and play up. If you show it who’s boss and in charge, the results are often far more satisfactory. The best way to ensure authority is repetition. Adding the two strength drills will bring more authority to your short game.
First Drill- Hold your club horizontally out in front of your body, then cock the wrists. These simple exercises will gradually build strength and flexibility into those wrists, repeat each drill for 10 repetitions.
Drill 2; Hold your arms outstretched with a weight (a couple of golf clubs or 440gm cans are fine if you don’t have hand weights) and lift up and down with your wrists.
Wrist Strength
Most of the time it can be a bit hard to hit a shot with some authority when the club feels heavy in your hand. A pitch is a firm wristed action so the wrist must secure the club to ensure you’re in control of your swing. For many beginners, weak wrists can be a problem, however it won’t hurt all golfers to spend some effort on these drills.
Always be decisive
You will find any number of articles covering club selection and what type of chip shot for particular situations. What’s your decision, try to erase any doubt whatsoever, convince yourself that it’s the correct choice.
Spend time repeating the same shot over and over on the practice green.
If you have some room in your backyard, set up a bucket or basket and practice chipping the ball into it, if you have time. If you consistently hit your target, that means you’re decisive and have strong wrists, and you are on the right path to hitting plenty of chip shots close.
Learn the proper chipping set-up; weight on lead side, ball slightly back of center in your stance, eyes and hands closer to the target than the ball is at address.
Hinge the club slightly during the backswing with your favored or dominant hand, learn to hinge and to hold. Then, in the follow through, hold this position post impact. That is, don’t let the clubhead pass under your lead hand before impact. The ideal position at impact is the back of that hand should be nearer to the target than the ball is. After impact, you can release the club a bit. Don’t tense up. Scooping a chip shot into the air, getting too wristy is an amateur’s number one difficulty.
Golf Instruction Chipping Tip- Bet on the percentages
It might look fancy in the air but there’s a higher risk of error when you increase your loft for a greenside chip. Extra loft decreases the margin for error at impact and decreases the size of the landing zone on the green. The second bounce check-up is one of the hardest shots to play in golf, so it’s best left to the pros.
I encourage any amateur golfer to go for maximum roll and minimum air time, remembering to land the ball on the green.. This means using less-lofted clubs and relying on a simple formula when faced with a chip around the green. An amount of on course management is primary to any shot in golf. For a brush up on the finer points of golf instruction for a balanced posture
Golf Instruction Chipping - The Method
When you are about to chip, focus on your landing spot as the target, not the flag. Several factors will influence this like the condition of the green, and loft of club chosen. Use the following ratios, start with a five iron and increase the loft depending on the amount of the green available.
20 percent flight, 80 percent bounce and roll. ?
33 percent flight, 67 percent bounce and roll
50 percent bounce and 50 percent roll.
Practice chipping with an 8 iron to master the bump and run, then you can start with your wedge.
Here is a great golf instruction chipping tip I learned a while ago, try this. Use a golfball, take a normal stance for a chip shot, and throw the ball ‘under arm’(softball throw) at the target to get a feel for how hard to swing your club. Imagine how much strength is needed to fly the golfball onto the green and roll it up to the flag, by throwing the ball about two thirds of the way back to the hole. This is a great technique to get a feel for the shot.
I hope these few golf instruction tips will help you to improve your short game and reduce the number of shots in your round the next time you go out on the course.
This entry was posted on 26. January 2010 at 19:13 and is filed under Swing, Misc. Golf Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
