#106 Web TV: How To Chip At Hole From Edge of Green

How to Chip At Hole From Edge of Green.

What Length chip shot should you have in order to go from edge of green and get the ball into the hole?

How long should the length be, should you follow through on your chip shot, should you stop short on it, should you have a big back swing and stop. Should you do the opposite, short back swing and follow through? What is it that you need to do when you are actually playing your chip shot?

Well, that’s what I am going to show you today.

Today we are going to work out how far to take our club back and through in order to get a short distance.  You can see here where the balls are, about a metre, to that hole.

I’ll first show you what I see a lot of, before I show you actually how to do it. What I see a lot of people do is that when they are this close.  Oh, by the way, under normal circumstances if you are playing in a game you would probably want to putt this one, but this is a way we are going to improve our chip shot.

For the purposes of this exercise we are working on our chip shot.  What we want to do here is that we want to get the length right.  I’ll show you what happens when I see people chipping from this short distance.  They tend to do a lot of this! They almost make a mistake, they do make a mistake, they miss-hit the ball and they chunk at it and the ball flies past the hole.  You can see that when I played that shot I really stopped on it.

There is a fear and a panic that comes in when you play a shot and you think oh, my God, I’m going to make a mistake, and look what happens, it does anyway, it runs straight past.  The thing that we want to establish here is how far to take the club back and how far to take the club through in order for us to perform the chip shot and to build up confidence.  If you are confident with your chip shot when you are out playing on the course and playing in your competitions, you are confident as well.

If we work on a little back swing but still make sure we are going through the shot.  I’ll do my set up here, a little back swing and make sure we are going through the shot.  So now we go back and through.  What I am starting to establish here is how far I need to take my club back because I still want to make sure that I am going through the shot.  As you can see, each shot that I did was to take the club back less distance.  I started off with a longer one which had a longer finish with the ball going straight past the hole, I had a shot where I didn’t quite make contact with the grass, so it scooted along the green, that happens when we are practicing sometimes you don’t quite connect with it the way that you want it to. What I started to do was to decrease my backswing, but as you would have noticed I still increased my follow through.  I am still finishing through the shot. (refer to video).

The thing that you want to get to understand here with you chip shot is to make sure that you have a little back swing and make sure that you are going through the shot so that you are building confidence in the shot.

That’s a nice easy drill that you can go and work on.  You can go out onto one of the greens out on the course, or you can go to your practice green and start to put yourself under pressure. Where you are about a metre from the edge of the green and the hole is not too far away and really start working on the back swing, of really not having much of a back swing and working on coming through the shots so you can build confidence in your chip shot.

That’s your plan for this week.

Have an absolutely awesome day, take care, and remember; tee it high and let it fly.