- Welcome, Adam Bazalgette here,
in beautiful Naples, Florida.
Today's subject, how to chip around the green, stay tuned.
(dramatic music)
So how to chip around the green.
We're gonna look at two specific aspects
of that in this video.
Number one, a little bit about club choice.
What's the best club choice around the green.
I'll show you what I do and why I go about it that way.
And secondly, what's the role of the body and the arms.
How much of each do we wanna use,
what's too much body, et cetera.
So we'll look at that.
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Let's get started.
Okay, so let's look at club choice a little bit here.
Now let's assume for the sake of this video,
we're on a clean line, there's no thick grass
or anything up around the ball,
and that we're in a situation where only a few,
maybe five, six steps at the most off the green,
so it's a true chip shot.
And in terms of club selection,
I recommend that you have two or three chipping clubs.
I use three, and if you don't practice a lot,
I don't practice nearly as much as I used to,
I like to have a one-club gap between those
so I can kind of feel the difference.
So I use pitching wedge, eight iron,
and if it's a really long running chip shot, a six iron.
And what you'll find, and this is just a truism,
that the less lofted club you use
is easier and more forgiving.
It's just the way it is
and there's really two reasons for that.
First of the two reasons is using loft
when you don't have much cushion under the ball.
Let me show you a quick close-up.
So here's pitching wedge and six iron,
my extremes here, let's have a look.
Six iron, with almost no shaft lean,
the sweet spot of the club is resting
against the back of the ball.
Sweet spot being just up here a little bit,
it's not at the bottom.
That's very easy to to do.
Now secondly, let's get the pitching wedge in here.
And listen, this is a good lie,
but there's not a lot of cushion under it.
And with no forward lean,
that ball is touching the club right down at the bottom.
So I need more lean, more of a trapping, pinching shot,
and it's just a fraction more difficult.
It requires a little more precision
and skill to hit it solidly.
Listen, the easiest one of all is the putter.
It doesn't have no loft but effectively no loft
so it's just a cinch for contact.
So solid contact is easier when the face
isn't leaning away from the ball as much.
Okay, the second reason I think it's a little bit more
forgiving or easier if you like with a less lofted club,
and let's say this is for the majority of golfers,
I'm not saying the best players in the world find it
that way but the second reason is
you just don't have to swing nearly as hard.
And I've got my pitching wedge here,
got my six iron there.
For me they're at the outer fringes of my club choices.
I could get this ball,
that's against the wind a little bit,
that was a pretty decent shot,
I could get it over to the hole with that one.
But I can take this six iron,
choke down a little bit,
and literally make a swing that's a fraction of the size.
Roughly the same outcome but I'm promising you
when you don't move the club nearly as far,
solid contact is a lot easier.
And besides that,
when you take a lot of the speed out of a shot
and the club isn't traveling as fast at impact,
your mistakes, your mis-hits, won't be nearly so damaging.
A thin shot at that speed
is not that different to a solid shot.
Okay so let's talk a little bit about
the blend of body and arms.
This is my eight iron here.
Just kinda bump it onto the green there.
You can see that everything looks reasonably together,
club kinda looks towards my middle.
What I tend to see is people sort of take a piece
of information, they stop doing what would be natural.
Let me give you an example of that here.
If you have a tennis ball, and you had a golf posture,
and you just had to toss it literally,
just five or six feet.
Just a lackadaisical toss there.
You would probably find that your brain would naturally
activate just enough flow and release in your body
to complement the arm swing.
Now I'm not suggesting for a minute
that you'd stand there and rip your hips into the shot.
But neither do I think you just toss it
and keep your legs dead still.
There'd be that natural little bit of flow.
And to me, that's the best thing for you.
Get a little bit of a blend.
Now let me give you a little outline, perhaps,
on where I see the two mistakes.
Number one,
and probably typically more the high handicapped golfer,
they will tend to swing a little bit too much
with just their arms and poke at the golf ball.
They've heard, keep your legs still,
probably focusing on the ball too much.
And the kind of things you'll see if you do that,
you'll probably see your rhythm won't be very good.
And I'd say your contact to be pretty inconsistent.
Because when you don't have any body motion there's a good
chance you're gonna bottom out a little too early
and then kinda fire your way forward and hit at the ball.
So if you feel kinda jerky,
if you feel like your rhythm isn't very consistent,
your contact's spotty, you probably don't have
a natural enough flow with your body.
Now on the opposite end of the spectrum here,
and this is likely more of the low handicapper fault,
they're so used to lagging the club and having shaft angle.
I think they usually use their lower body
a little too much, create too much shaft lean.
And when you create a lot of shaft lean,
that club can stick in the ground pretty well.
You start jabbing shots and, of course,
your mind's gonna adjust for that
and kinda try to flinch away from the ground a little bit.
But if you do hit it solidly,
there's a good chance that with that much shaft lean
and a little too much leg action,
you kind of drill the ball and hit it too hard.
Doesn't come off, you know, with a lot of touch.
So we're looking for something in the middle.
And again, I think,
let's put that right there,
what I would do is just say, hey if I was tossing a ball,
anybody can do that, it's easy.
You don't have to have a ball.
Take a couple of tosses there
and just grab the club
see if you feel something very similar.
See if you can, sort of capitalize on what you probably
can already do well naturally.
And I think if you do that,
you'll have the correct blend.
One last little word on that,
to me a lot of players don't put their feet
close enough together.
You watch on TV when you see
a really simple chip off a good lie,
chip off a good lie,
you see how close together their feet are?
And oftentimes, they're turned a little bit,
and their knees and ankles are pre-set slightly.
All this does is when you don't have much energy
in the swing, it makes it a little easier
to just sort of float through slightly
with your hips and knees.
They can just respond to the tossing motion,
kind of as they would there
when you're tossing a tennis ball.
You get too wide,
there's a good chance you're gonna get frozen.
So find out which one's you, kind of examine back
which category you think you fall into.
And hey, you can do it.
If you can toss a ball a few feet gracefully,
you can make a good chipping stroke.
Well I hope you found that helpful
on how to chip around the green.
Again, ScratchGolfAcademy.com's my website.
We have full courses in every area
including a full course on chipping.
And of course one-on-one internet lessons with me.
Please subscribe to this YouTube channel if you like it.
We'd love to get you more free content.
Thanks.
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