Golf Chip Shots; golf tips on chip shots

br> You should never downplay the importance of a good short game in golf.

You can easily turn a score of 90 into a score of 84 just by being relatively good at golf chip shots and putting.

The average golf hacker guy looks to that new gimmick driver or fairway wood to help save strokes when the truth is putting some practice time in at the chipping and putting greens will save far more strokes.

In my mind there are two main things you need to always remember on both golf chip shots and pitch shots and they are to always hit down on the ball and always accelerate through the ball.

A lot of beginner golfers, or “hackers”, think that they need to lift the ball into the air by scooping under it and pushing it into the air.

Nothing is further from the truth.

On all shots except the driver and putter, you always want to hit down on the ball letting the angle of the club face propel the ball into the air. This will help create a more consistent contact with the ball and will get the ball into the air faster.

With chipping it is very important to make consistent contact with the ball so that you can learn distance control around the greens.

Acceleration is very important as well because deceleration of the club or being tentative when chipping will cause you stub your chips or to blade the ball weakly across the green and off.

Acceleration will help you hit clean crisp chips and also to put some check on the ball allowing you to control the distance of your golf chip shots.

When hitting a chip shot, you want your stance to be narrow, a little less than shoulder width and about 45 degrees open with your shoulders in line with your feet.



It is important that you put most of your weight on your front foot and leave it there so as to minimize lower body movement.

How high you intend to play your shot should dictate how far forward or back in your stance you should play the ball. If you need to hit a high chip shot, play the ball up in your stance and open the club face slightly.

If you want to play the shot low and let it roll towards the hole, which is the common recommendation, you should play the ball back close to even with your back foot. Your club face should be square to your target line.

In both chipping scenarios, you should always try to maintain a stiff wrist. That is no wrist cock/hinge. This lack of wrist movement will once again promote consistent contact with the ball eliminating flipping of the wrists that will cause chunking and blading of the golf ball.

When hitting golf chip shots I recommend and personally use a putting grip and choose a club anywhere from a 9 iron up to a 56 degree wedge depending on how fast I want to get the ball on the ground and how far I want the ball to roll.

Also, if I’m chipping from the rough or deep rough, I will always use more loft clubs since it is easier to get the ball out of the rough and the ball will naturally roll more anyway since you will get less spin.

Now using your putting grip, swing the club back from the ball about two feet and accelerate down and through the ball ensuring to follow through also about two feet. Note that two feet is only a general rule of thumb, you will actually want to have your take back more or less than this depending on the distance of the shot required.

Spend a half hour on the chipping green before every round figuring out the length of back swing required for each distance and you will be well on your way to knocking some serious strokes off your score.

4 important items to remember for golf chip shots:

Hit down on the ball and accelerate through your shots. – Good advice on most shots.

Open stance, weight forward and stiff wrist. – No lower body movement or flipping of the wrists.

Putting grip and short back stroke.

Practice, Practice, Practice.

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