Rookie on the Green

I headed to the golf course this afternoon for some quality time with putting and chipping, but the Minneapolis weather was anything but quality.  The wind was blowing so hard it nearly moved me during my setup — the balls I hit into the wind went nowhere!  And then it started to rain.  I got in one round of practice chip shots using my newly acquired Golftec chipping techniques and one round of putts.  Call me a fair weather golfer, but staying out there in the rain just wouldn’t have been productive.  Oh well, I gave it a try.  Tomorrow is supposed to be back up in the 60s, much better than today’s 46 degrees/ “feels like 38″ with 35 mph gusts.  I’ll head back to the range for practice under more conducive conditions.

From the three rounds of golf I’ve played so far this season, one thing is evident:  I have no idea what the heck I’m doing when I chip.  I went to a Golftec lesson last week and asked to work on chipping to try to remedy this situation.   It turns out that my fundamental problem was the set-up — it’s very different from just a normal golf shot, and is a little counter-intuitive. It’s counter-intuitive because you’re getting lift on the ball by squeezing it between the club head and the ground, not by scooping it into the air.

Basically, my instructor got me on the right path with setting up to chip:  stance a little closer than usual (toes pointing maybe even a little bit left, towards the hole), ball farther back in the stance, not much of a back swing.  Your hands need to stay ahead of the club head, with the shaft of the club slanting with the grip towards the front of the swing and the head lagging behind (you can see this in the “after” photo, below right).  This is all for a short chip, say, just off the green.

This is a before-and-after of what’s going on with my chipping.  In the “before” on the left, you can see that my weight somehow ended up on my back foot when I hit the ball and the club head got ahead of my hands.  In the after, you can see that my hands led the club head through contact and my weight moved through to my front leg.

Another thing my instructor pointed out that seemed to help with my weight-shift issue was that my right shoulder should come up on the back swing and then go down noticeably as I move through to contact, as illustrated above.

I also learned that for the short little chips we were working on, the backswing should only go back to about waist high, with the club parallel to the ground, with wrists hinged back.  So the motion should be hinge back the wrists and then turn through to contact.  My instructor kept saying “hinge and turn, hinge and turn.”

One helpful Golftec drill I’ll be doing is a straight-arm chipping drill.  You keep your arms extended, totally straight, and don’t allow your hands or wrists to move during the chip shot.  The motion to impact should occur because of the rotation of your body, not wrist action.  This should be done with chips in the 15-yard range.

I have a long way to go before I can chip well consistently, but I’m going to set aside some time just for chipping practice because this is costing me so many strokes right now.