As a child chipping was always my favorite part of golf. I would take a bucket of old range balls I received from a family friend and chip at a makeshift green my dad made in our backyard. Eventually, after I took hundreds of chips from each spot around our backyard green I ended up “designing” my very own golf course. A nice par 3 course where I got a chance to hit a variety of different shots. One around a tree, one over a bonfire pit, one up a hill, 50-yard pitches, 10 yard flop shots, I actually covered a lot of basic chips a golfer would have to hit. Eventually, after playing this course almost daily, my chipping got so good that I would never miss the green on my “tee shot” and I could even start to place the ball where I wanted it to land around the green. And now that I was really starting to golf frequently in my life, this improvement around the green slashed my scores in a way I had never seen before. What good chipping gave me was a safety net. Good chipping allowed me miss a green in regulation and still save par on a hole. Good chipping started to drastically decrease the number of putts I took in a round and good chipping keep me from throwing away needless strokes around the green. Chipping was my favorite part of golf at the time, and I would spend hours hitting all sorts of different chip shots just dreaming of new ways to have fun in my backyard.
The unfortunate thing about chipping and why I think it’s so hard for golfers to master is because there is no easy way to gauge how different variables will change each shot. Let me elaborate. If you use a 7 iron for a bump and run chip the ball will spend a very short amount of time in the air. That’s fine if you have room for the ball to roll out, or if you’re on the fairway. But what if you’re in the rough instead and you don’t have enough room on the green? Do you hit a flop shot? Well, what if there are trees in the way or gusty winds? Which wedge will you use for this shot? All of these variables; wind, green speed, obstacles, your lie, all affect your chip in a specific way each time, and that is what makes chipping so difficult to master.
Welcome to the home of golf here at Golf Academy. Our goal is to give you easy tips that you can apply to your game and see improvement quickly without having to spend hundreds of dollars on professional lessons. Throughout my lifetime I’ve gathered a large amount of information about golf and I’ve worked with a countless number of people and I’ve noticed that a lot of people struggle with the exact same problems. So I’ve decided to pile all my advice together here today to give you an outline, or a sort of troubleshooting manual for the different parts of your game that are giving you problems. In the coming installments I’ll outline the four main mechanical parts of golf (no mind games yet) as well as some of the main problems golfers encounter with each area. While this guide will provide an overview of basic techniques, I’ll release my methods for practicing all of the different parts of golf in smaller increments (because you don’t have four hours to read a master thesis on golf) which will include more specific, advanced advice about that part of the game. Now I know you’re anxious to start getting better, so lets jump into it! Look below and on the side bar to see some of the great golf content we have here!