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How To Play A Chip Shot – The Professional Way (3)
By Foursome
Set Your Eyes Slightly Inside The Target Line
This will happen almost naturally, but since the club is longer you want to make sure not to hover over the ball as you do when you putt. That will throw you off balance.
Set The Club On Its Toe At Address
Just in case you have equipment amnesia, here is a quick refresher: The heel of the club is the side where the shaft joins the clubhead. The toe of the club is the opposite side of the club, or the portion of the clubface farthest away from you when you address the ball.
One of the common misfires when chipping the ball is to get the club caught in the grass during the takeaway, or to get it snagged in the grass as the club approaches the ball prior to impact. This happens to even the best of players, so it’s a good idea to take measures to avoid it.
Our surefire suggestion for avoiding this is to stand the club on its toe at address. Another way of thinking of this is to have the shaft of the club closer to perpendicular with the ground than you normally would. You don’t want the shaft to be actually perpendicular, but close to it.
By doing this you keep a good portion of the clubhead clear of the grass but leave enough of the clubface in position to contact the ball.Think About Putting While Taking The Shot
The commonalities between chipping and putting are plentiful. For starters, you want the ball to travel along the ground toward the hole as much as possible. The chipping stroke itself is quite like the putting stroke as well.
Once you have made all the proper adjustments in your setup to play a chip, you simply move your arms and shoulders back and forth, all the while maintaining any angles you’ve set in your wrist and arms. The proper stroke should feel very natural to you.
Good players often look at the hole when taking their practice putting strokes. By doing this they get a sense of how far to swing the putter back and through. It’s a good idea to do this with your chip shots.
As with putting, another good way to gauge the length of your arm swing is to imagine how far back to roll the ball toward the hole. You should hit most chip shots about as hard as you would putt from the same distance. Just remember – once you have gauged the distance, focus on your intermediate target. That is your target point.
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