Stephen Packer

When practicing your chipping be sure to separate the element you are looking to practice. For me there are only 3, strike, distance control then ability, the ability to perform both under pressure.

In his article I will lay out the best way to work on strike. Find an area to practice then around 4 meters in front of you create a gate with either old shafts or better yet a pair of drill sticks.

Now your only focus is hitting chip shots with the emphasis on strike, sending the balls through the gate, distance doesn’t matter.

The way to improve strike for your chipping is to first understand that the chip swing will bottom out some where close to the heel of your leading foot. So your ball position should be positioned inline with your leading heel for a basic standard chip shot.

The idea then is to put all of your attention and focus on the head of the club. This is what will be ‘striking the shot’ so that is where your mind is best placed.
My advice would be to feel the weight of the head and use the weight of the head to hit the shots. Pull the club back and feel the club head drop into the back of the ball as it swings through. It was inched described to me by a world class coach that each club has two ends, a heavy end and a light end. When chipping let the heavy end do all the work! A good drill for this is one handed chipping practice as I’ve mentioned in my tip ……………

So when your practicing your chipping, make sure that your only working on one element. Distance control, strike or scoring.

Practice more effectively, play more effectively.