The Simplest Chipping Method You’ll Ever Learn

Most golfers make chipping harder than it needs to be. I'm going to show you one incredibly simple action that makes strike much easier to control. Today we're going to look at the real simple chip and run shot, the one from just around the edge of the green, where you could putt it and you should putt it if the ground is favourable. But today we're going to look about how we would just launch that ball slightly in the air, take out any debris or rough ground or slopes to allow the ball then to run the rest of the hole in a real simple way. So I've got a putter here as well and the reason being for that is when we think of chip and run shot, if we think of how we'd stand to hit a putt, that's kind of how we want to stand for chip and run shot, so the distance from the ball would be the same. So that's great to sometimes just grab and use and if you think where I am there I've kept my feet in the same location. Now what I want to do in terms of the basics is basically set up with the ball in the centre of the stance. For me I like it centred, you can put it further back but then you start with the ball much lower and you can dig the cub a little bit more. But I want the club in the centre and I want to lean forward, so you could have the ball more back and less lean forward and achieve the same objectives, but I want the ball centre and lean forward so your weight is about 70% on this foot. I want the heel of the club to be raised in the air so this club is much more vertical. If you see how this club lines now, it pretty much lines straight down my forearm as my arm would hang. I'm going to hold it down the club because again I've stood so close the club comes quite long and I want to make sure it doesn't go into my belly here, so I want to feel this is more vertical than my belly. The more vertical we can make it the simpler the shot becomes. I want then to lean the shaft forward so it's opposite my lead leg and again my head, eyes, buttons and my shirt need to be on the front of the golf ball. From here then I want to keep this club vertical and straight as I possibly can. I am stood slightly aside the ball so it's going to have a natural arc, just like we would do when we putt, but the idea basically is this is kind of like just a downward putt. Allow the club to work up in the air, make the backswing feel it's going to be about twice, maybe even three times as long as the fall through. The fall through is going to be very very short indeed. I want the ball to land just on the green and then release its way to the hole. In terms of the equipment I'm using the 8-iron here today. These greens at the moment are quite hard and fast and it's downwind but you could use a 7-iron or a 6-iron depending on how you produce the flight in your shots. So again it's a little suck and see sometimes but as a rule of thumb if I'm landing the ball quarterway between me and the hole that would be round about a 7-iron which is what I'm going to be doing today but again I hit the ball quite low and it's quite fast and firing downwind so I'm going with an 8. If I was going to land it halfway 9-iron, three quarters away sand-iron. So the ratios give you the club and we want to keep the technique exactly the same. Obviously the longer the club the harder it is to stand this close but that's the feeling we want. So we're leaning forward, everything's there, we're going to try and feel like this is a straight backswing. Our thumbs point down to the ground, my thumbs never point up so we keep those wrists to a real minimum. There might be a little bit of wrist hinge which is this way but the thumbs are still down to the ground but want to keep it again fairly to the minimum. So let's just see if I can land one just on the green and let it roll the rest of the way. Not a bad first effort. It's about probably six foot short the hole there but from this range pretty happy with that. So if I was going to go and play the shot again which I will do for you now I could either change the club and play exactly the same way with the 7-iron, it might go six foot past or I could indeed just try and hit this a little harder, land it a little further. Mishit that one ever so slightly. The beauty with this shot is because it's such a simple technique if you do mishit it it's never going to be too disastrous. We don't want as I said any excessive wrist action where we might hit the ground way before the ball. Didn't top the ball massively. It's very much keep the weight there, keep the pressure there. That one allowed a little bit more for the slope and I've tried to hit it a little harder. That one's working its way but because it was going more up the slope it took a little bit more of the speed out of it. But the idea is really we're trying to feel you know and approach it almost from a speed point of view as we do a long putt. Loft of the club just elevate it over the grass here and then let it roll the rest of the way to the hole. Keep this very vertical try and land that toe and let it run out towards the hole. So even there with those shots there were a few that were slightly mishit I'm still getting up in the region of the hole within 10 foot probably at my worst one and about six foot is my best one and it's just a very very simple shot. I just need to be a little bit more aggressive on how I play it. So there we have how we play a very simple basic chip and run shot. Stand close like you would putter, lean forward, head and eyes forward, keep your thumbs pointing down, keep the wrist action for minimal, make sure the backswing is longer than the fall through, make it quite abrupt as you hit the golf ball and get the ball to just slightly flight in the air and then run the rest of the way to the hole. Pick a club depending on the distances and ratios you have and start to get comfortable. If you feel you get really comfortable with one club like using 9-iron a lot then use that and adapt how you hit it for the shot in hand. So give that a go and let me know in the comments how you got on. If you are new to the channel please click like and subscribe and also make sure you share the videos if you can where possible. Thanks for tuning in today see you back here real soon.