Quick Tips

The Ten Best Swing Tips

By now, you’ve probably heard every tip in the book, right? I know I have, and I’m even guilty of repeating myself a few times! Fact is, some tips deserve to be repeated because they work, they’re easy to understand and they, hopefully, lend lasting improvements. In this article, I’ve taken 10 of my favorite tips through the years and assembled what I think are a handful of tips that most likely, you’ve never tried. Some old, some new, all good for your game!

#1: SWEEP THE DEW

If you’re struggling with coming in too steep to the ball when swinging a driver (which usually causes sky balls and scuffs on the top edge of the club), try this simple drill. Granted, it works best in the early morning when the grass is still wet, but that’s not essential. The key is to set the club down about two feet or so on your natural arc path. For me, that’s slightly to the inside. Once you set the club down, I want you to keep it there and sweep as much dew off the ground as possible, throw that water toward the fairway and finish with the hands high.

This will do two things for you. It’ll teach you to extend the arms, and also force you to keep your weight behind the golf ball. Do it five to six times before the next time you tee off. I bet you’ll see immediate results!

#2: CHIP LOW, PITCH HIGH

When it comes to short shots, one of the most overlooked aspects is the trajectory of your golf ball. Too many people assume that successful chipping means you have to get the ball in the air, and better pitching means hitting shots that hug the ground. Both are wrong!

The right way to hit a chip is to forget about hitting the ball up in the air. You want to keep your chips as low as possible. To practice this, I like to take some rope and two alignment sticks and practice hitting chips that stay below the rope. In doing so, you’ll see that it becomes a lot easier to hit solid chip shots with a descending blow, as opposed to trying to flip the hands and lift the ball in the air. Instead, align your body with the ball back, hands forward and your weight on your left. And keep that ball below the rope.

When it comes to hitting pitch shots, it’s okay to let the ball rise up. I like to raise the rope on my little goalpost and practice hitting higher pitch shots that fly up and over the rope. The key to hitting higher pitches is to keep your hands soft and let the wrists release through the ball. So, in reality, a pitch shot is a lot more like a regular iron shot than it is a chip. Let the club release, and the loft of the wedge will cause the ball to fling up into the sky. Keep those chips low and pitches high!

#3: THROW YOUR BALL AWAY

One of the most common mistakes I see amateurs make is they almost always underclub their shots. And unlike the pros who hit the sweet spot with their irons and wedges more often than amateurs do, underclubbing can really make the game more difficult than it needs to be. And this doesn’t just mean choosing the wrong club, but also not swinging hard enough for the ball to get all the way to the hole.

To avoid hitting your shots short and getting more comfortable with hitting the ball all the way to the hole, I like to imagine a great big trash can sitting on the top half of the pin. With that in mind, I like to try to throw all my shots into that trash can. You want to aim high to hit it tight! It’s this type of visualization that helps me hone in my focus and hit shots with a more specific distance and target in mind. And as for hitting it short? This little visualization trick has helped me so much that I barely ever hit my shots short of the pin anymore. So go out there and try throwing your golf ball away in that imaginary trash can. It works!

#4: THE MISSING THUMB

The most creative area on the golf course is around the green. It’s here where you can hit an endless number of shots, in countless different ways. In the case of what I’m faced with here, I need to hit a shot that flies high and stops quickly. A lob shot, if you will. To do this type of shot, you have to really speed up the release of the hands through the shot and get your energy beneath the golf ball. To do this, I’ll let you in on my little secret. It’s all in the grip

The missing thumb allows me to hinge my wrists quickly.

What a release! Notice the full extension of my arms here.

My wrists have rehinged, and the ball is landing softly.

To hit the high flop, try this. Take your standard grip. Only now, take your right thumb and, instead of being positioned on the top of the grip, move it to the side of the handle. By doing this, you’ll immediately see and feel a huge difference in how the hands can easily hinge, release and hinge again through the shot without the left thumb getting in the way. Give this grip a try in the bunker. It works wonders for getting the ball up and out of the sand.

My left thumb is impeding the hinge.

No thumb means greater hinge!

#5: FIND YOUR SQUARE

When practicing short chip shots, I like to change things up and get my mind off the target and develop a better feel for where the ball lands and how much roll I should expect. To do this, I like to take four tees and make a square on the green. The goal is to hit a series of chip shots and try to hit every chip so it lands in that square. Once I can do that pretty consistently, I ratch it up a notch and try to get the ball to start landing in various quadrants of that square, I sometimes shrink the square and, if I get really motivated, I start hitting chip shots at each of the four tees. This type of practice helps me dial in my focus and gets me to think more about where I want the ball to land, not where the ball will end up. Once I have a good feel for where I think my chips will land, hitting shots around the green becomes a lot easier. It’s almost as though I switch from chipping mode to putting mode, even though I’m still off the green. If I can control where the ball lands, I can better control my distance and direction.

#6: TOSS A MELON

When it comes to bunker play, too many people feel as though they have to try to scoop the ball up out of the sand. Or, they feel they need to stab down into the sand to dig the ball out. In actuality, the best motion is a sweeping one where the arms and body work in unison and sweep through a layer of sand to lift the ball in the air.

To clarify, I like to think of hitting bunker shots as you would throw a heavy training ball, or in my case, a small melon. To throw this with two hands so it travels both far enough and high enough, I have to turn my arms and body, get low and release the melon up and out of my hands. The motion better resembles a sweeping stroke, as opposed to a steep motion that promotes hitting and digging into the sand. There’s no up and down motion here, just a simple sweep through about an inch of sand.

Hitting good bunker shots is the same motion as throwing a heavy ball! So try this yourself. Grab a heavy ball or even a melon like this. Practice heaving it up and out toward the target. Then do the same motion with a club and ball.

#7: GRAB A RAKE

Rakes are great for cleaning up bunkers, but they’re even better for tidying up your short shots. If you’re struggling with flubbing your chips or hitting them thin, try this. Grab a rake and place a golf ball above a foot or so in front of the teeth (as you see here). Now practice hitting some shots without touching the rake. This will steepen your chips almost immediately and help you get that much-needed descending blow into the ball.

Also, consider the handle of the rake. As you do this, the rake handle makes a great alignment tool. Align the rake at your target and practice hitting shots along the rake’s handle. You’ll hit straighter shots in no time.

#8: COIL AND THROW

Pow! Due to a stronger coiled backswing, I’ve hit this one a mile!

Ever wonder how the pros can hit such crisp, powerful iron shots? Part of it has to do with their ability to coil their body on the backswing over their right leg. Think of it this way. Imagine your right leg is a cork, and your upper body and hips are the corkscrew. As you swing back, you want to twist the corkscrew into that right leg. As you do this, maintain some flex in your knees (both of them) and really drive that corkscrew into that leg! From the top of your swing, you’ll unwind and release that tension into the back of the golf ball. Avoid swaying or dipping at the top of your swing!

Another reason better players can hit powerful iron shots is they understand that the clubhead acts more as a slingshot than an extension of the shaft. To better feel this, try this simple drill. Grab some mud, sand, whatever you can find to stick to the face of the club as you see here. Then, from address, I want you to fling the mud toward your target. Keep doing this until you can start to feel the whipping slingshot effect of the clubhead and the added speed in your hands. Then hit some real shots and you’ll feel some added speed in your release.

#9: TOE YOUR DRIVES

We can’t have a handful of tips without a slice fix, right? Here’s one of my favorites. Take a look at this wooden driver. I’ve cut the toe off and made a face, which sits about 90_¡ from the real face of the driver. I can actually hit shots off the new face, and I do it to demonstrate to my students the importance of closing the face to start hitting straighter shots.

If you slice, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to imagine hitting your shots with the toe of your driver. And by toe, I don’t mean the toe of the face, but the actual toe of the clubhead! The reason I think this is such a great imagination/visualization drill is because we’ve become a group of golfers too fixated on having a square clubface through impact. In reality, that’s somewhat of a myth. The face ought only be square for a split second, and no matter what, the face should be in the process of closing to the left. So, the more we focus on square faces at impact, the more often golfers will try to prevent the closing of the face. This, folks, is why so many golfers slice the ball. The face should always be closing!

By imagining you’re hitting off the toe of the club, it’ll instinctively get you to start rotating your hands more effectively through the shot and close the face at impact. Try it if you’re a slicer!

#10: BRUSH ‘EM, FLICK ‘EM

Think of brushing the grass to avoid lifting the putter.

Even after impact, the putter should stay low.

Another overlooked aspect of putting is forgetting to hit the putter’s sweet spot. Many golfers tend to lift the putter up too soon in the stroke, often causing contact with both the bottom of the putterface and the top half of the ball. This combo wreaks havoc on your distance and directional control. Instead, think of the putterhead as a brush on the ground. You want to make as long a brushstroke as you can across your stroke. As you can see here, I’m actually using a brush to demonstrate keeping the putterhead low to the ground through the whole stroke. Do that and you’ll find the putter’s sweet spot more often.

But what if lifting the putter isn’t a problem? What if you swing the putter too low and often stub the putter on the green while you putt? I’ve got the drill for you. Take two coins, a penny and a dime or a nickel. I’m using a dime here, and have it situated on top of the penny. Now, here’s the trick. I want to make a stroke and knock off the dime without touching the penny (if this is too difficult at first, try a nickel instead).

It’s a challenging drill, but a fun one, and a great way to keep the putter low, without touching the ground.

Wally Armstrong is a lifetime member of the PGA Tour and has played in more than 300 professional tournaments worldwide. For more information, visit wallyarmstronggolf.com.

Dot Your Impact

The number-one fundamental that all great ballstrikers know is critical for hitting better shots is centeredness of contact. How you contact the ball with the clubhead will affect spin, launch angle, distance, curve and also your perception of what happened in your golf swing. And as you might guess, hitting the center of the face is what you want.

I have a great drill that I like to use to improve my centeredness of contact. All you need for this drill is a Sharpie and two golf balls. First, draw a big dot on your golf ball so that when you impact the golf ball, you’ll be able to see where you hit it on the clubface. And here’s a little trick: If you’re trying this on a driving range, use a dry-erase marker. It works well, and the range ball won’t get damaged or marked up.

Hit a few balls with a big round dot behind the ball, and in a short while, you’ll quickly be able to see if you tend to hit the ball too much on the toe or on the heel. If you’re missing on the toe, put two balls on the ground about three inches from each other, with the golf ball that has the dot on it being the ball that’s farther from you. Typically, the cause of the toe shot is from bringing the club into impact with your hands and arms too close to your body. So, in this drill, you’ll address ball #1 (the ball closer to you) and then swing the club back and hit ball #2 (the ball farther from you). This will cause you to feel your hands and arms extending through impact and get you to feel the necessary move to find the sweet spot of the clubface.

Now, if you tend to hit the ball too much in the heel, put the two balls on the ground and do the opposite. Set up for the outside of the ball, but hit the inside of the ball. This will help you avoid hits by the hole.

The goal is to groove a better impact position so the ball and clubface make contact closer to the center of the clubface. As you do this drill, whether it’s fixing heel or toe hits, try not to fixate on results, but instead, pay attention to how the club feels. In no time, this simple and fun drill will have you improving your impact and hitting more solid golf shots.

Justin Klemballa, PGA, is the director of instruction at the Jim McLean Golf School at Sunridge Canyon in Scottsdale, Ariz. To get more information, visit sunridgegolf.com.

The Toe Putt

One of the most overlooked aspects of putting is making sure you have solid contact. Not many people think about it, but how you make contact with the ball when you’re putting can greatly affect your ability to make putts. Most mis-hit putts are the result of a too-slow tempo, a hesitation at impact and a too short of a followthrough. This can result in off-center hits, improper face angle and twisting of the putterhead.

What can you do to work on hitting the ball solidly? If you have a standard heel-toe putter, you’re in luck (sorry, mallets don’t work so well for this one, folks). What I like to do to help improve my tempo and contact with the putter is to use what I call the toe putt. Quite frankly, this means gripping the putter on the side of the grip and putting the ball with the toe pointing at the ball. As you try this, the point isn’t so much to see how many putts you can make or to impress your buddies the next time you want to show off. Instead, practicing the toe putt helps you impart a more pronounced impact with the ball and a followthrough that’s directed toward the target, much like hammering a nail into a board. After a few tries doing this drill, go back to the standard way of putting. I bet you’ll instantly feel as though finding and hitting the sweet spot on your putter is a lot easier, and your putting will improve.

And one more thing about the toe-putt. There’s another use for it, if you’re so inclined to give it a try. If you find your ball up against the fringe or even rough, using the toe-putt technique (it’s perfectly legal, by the way) can help you pass the putter through the thicker grass and make better contact with the ball. Fred Couples and Vijay Singh have done this a few times in situations where there isn’t a lot of room behind the ball to rest the putter.

Give it a try the next time you face a tough putting lie from just off the green. The toe-putt might be just the shot to help you make a birdie or, at worst, two-putt for an easy par.

Mark Bereza, PGA, is an ANNIKA Academy Instructor, Certified Callaway Performance Center Clubfitter at the ANNIKA Academy in Orlando, Fla. Visit theannikaacademy.com.

Take A Seat

If you’re struggling with making consistent contact, or you’re plagued with a swing that tends to route from the outside-in (a predicator for a slice), here’s a simple drill for you to try. I call it the Take a Seat drill, and how it works is simple.

First, you’ll need to have a chair available, or you can run this drill against the back of the couch at home. Align yourself with the chair so that you have slight contact against your backside. Take a normal swing, and at the top, the right side of your backside should be in contact with the chair. At the transition from the top of the swing, try to hold the right side of your backside against the chair as long as possible, allowing the club to drop to the inside of the swing plane on the downswing. Just prior to impact, your weight will shift to allow the left side of your backside to come in contact with the chair. The key in this drill is to maintain contact on your right side as long as possible, delaying your hips and the shift to the left side until impact.

If your lower body isn’t in the correct position at the start of your downswing, the left side of your backside will make contact with the chair prematurely. This is generally due to bringing the club over the top of the swing plane, instead of inside, thereby creating a slice. But if you follow the guidelines for how your body should interact with the chair, you’ll quickly develop a better sense for a swing that’s more inside-out, and as a result, improve not only your contact with the ball, but your direction and ball control as well.

*At the top of your swing, you should feel contact with the chair.*	*During the transition, I’ve moved slightly from the chair. At this point in the swing, it’s perfectly alright to do so.*
*Back to the chair! At impact, my left side has made contact. This is what you want.*	*Through to the finish, I’m still in contact with the chair. I flushed this shot, by the way.*

Andrew Getson teaches at the Grayhawk Learning Center in Scotts-dale, Ariz. For more information, visit andrewgetsongolf.com.

Drop The Box

Along with a poor and weak grip, one of the biggest mistakes I see many of my students make is having bad posture at address. This means they’re in a slumped, slouched and unathletic position from their neck down. Odds are, these students have wrongly been told to keep their head down through the swing, which means they bury their chin into their chest, and the back is rounded, and the shoulders are squeezed together. As a result, this makes swinging the club properly much more difficult, and the likely result is excessive lifting and dropping of the arms and hands. And in many cases, because the body can’t make a good turn and shift away from the ball on the backswing, a reverse pivot occurs.

When I see this, I immediately make my students aware of their bad setup. Sometimes, if it’s severe enough, I’ll place a sleeve of balls or a golf glove on their upper back and neck. In no way do we want that to be able to sit there! I often joke with students who mimic this position that I could place a pizza on their upper back, and it would stay in place. That’s no good either! We want to be more upright so the sleeve of balls can’t stay in place on your upper back.

The goal in your setup (with virtually any club) is to feel tall, upright and athletic. You should feel as though you’re looking at the ball with a tall, proud chin. Or, think of it this way: I like to encourage my students to “see the ball with the bottom of their eyes.” This helps you keep your head in alignment with your spine.

As for your knees, they ought to be slightly flexed, and any lean forward toward the ball should be a tilt from the hips. It’s always better to miss too upright with your posture than too slumped and slouched. Your weight should be over your shoelaces, not hung out on your tippy toes. And lastly, feel as though you have a grapefruit under your chin at address. This will help you avoid slouching your back and chin. Just remember, don’t squeeze the grapefruit and make juice!

Try this, and I bet your drives will be longer and straighter and your irons more precise too.

Top-25 Instructor Barry Goldstein is one of the country’s leading golf instructors. He currently teaches at Inverrary CC in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and can be reached via email at drforgolf@aol.com.

Drain It

I bet if you stood 10 feet away from me, you could easily toss me a golf ball and wouldn’t be short or long with your throw. In fact, I bet you wouldn’t think twice about how to do it. You’d subconsciously judge the distance and trust your ability. If it’s so easy to toss a ball, why do so many people struggle with putting a golf ball the right distance?

Just like when one throws a ball, putting it the right distance is the result of referencing your past experiences. Putt a lot on greens of varying speeds and slope, and you’ll likely be able to gauge the speed correctly. Haven’t played in a while, and you may be a bit rusty with your distance control.

While practice may not always make perfect, it certainly helps. Another way to improve your distance control is to think of your putts as “tosses.” For example, I like to limit the time between my last look at the hole (or my target) and the ball. As my head returns to the ball, I almost immediately start my stroke. That visual reference must stay fresh in my mind, so I’m reacting to my target, not the ball. It’s a bit like how a basketball player shoots a free throw. He doesn’t look at the ball, he looks at the back of the rim. He doesn’t think about distance, he thinks about making it. And he does that by reacting naturally to his target.

USE THE RIGHT PUTTER

There are a number of factors to consider when buying a putter. Length, face material and style of alignment aids are just three that come to mind. But one–head style–can completely alter your stroke shape.

Check out the photo above. I’m holding two putters: a blade and a mallet. Notice how each is angled a different way? The mallet faces straight up, while the blade tilts at an angle. (Mallets are “face balanced,” whereas blades are heel-toe balanced.) If you prefer a straight-back and straight-through stroke, then a mallet is the right shape for you. If you like your stroke to arc from inside the target line to square to back inside the target line, then the blade is your putter of choice.

It’s important to keep in mind that each putter style will naturally produce a type of stroke shape so you don’t have to force it.

Wayne Allen, CPGA, is the head professional at Blomidon Golf Club in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada. Visit him at wayneallengolfacademy.com.

Maintain The Cup In Your Left Hand

Here’s a tip for low-handicappers who have a hard time controlling the distance of their short irons.

The problem usually lies with the path your club takes as it approaches the ball. Because better players tend to swing from more inside the target line, their clubface can easily shut on shorter shots. This approach may generate a lot of distance on longer shots (because the clubface is turning over), but it doesn’t produce much distance control. In fact, often it will lead to hooked shots. And that’s not an optimum shot shape for your control irons.

To remedy this, keep your left wrist cupped throughout the swing, especially just before impact and into the finish. (See the color photos at right.) When you try this, I want you to feel like you’re hitting a soft cut shot. Practice at first with just your left hand, then place your right hand on the grip and retain that feeling. Hold these shots off a little and watch the ball fly straighter and stop on a dime.

Top-25 Instructor Zach Allen, PGA, teaches at DeBell Golf Club in Burbank, Calif. For more info, visit zachallengolf.com.

Goal Time

If you want your game to reach the next level, you need to set strong goals. Setting goals does many things, including clarifying specifically what you want to accomplish and the type of actions you need to take to reach your goal.
At the beginning of each season, I encourage my students to create a goal that has a very specific end result, like lowering one’s handicap. Such so-called “outcome goals” need to be created with the following steps in mind:

• They need to be specific and measurable:
How will you know when you accomplished it?
• They should be time-sensitive:
When will you accomplish this goal by?
• They should be challenging:
It should be a goal that’s outside your current comfort zone.
• They should excite you:
It’s a goal that will make you want to practice.

When setting goals, remember to push yourself. They should be hard to accomplish and will therefore help you raise your standard of performance. Weak goals on the other hand only produce weak results.

Once you’ve set your goal (for example, “to be a scratch golfer”), the next step is to set a time frame in which you can accomplish it. Divide your goals into three ranges: long-term (three years or more) middle (one to three years) and short-term (under a year).

Start with your ultimate long-term goal, then break it down into a couple short-term goals. Once you’ve done that, you’ll know what steps you need to take to arrive at your end goal. Setting short-term goals will boost your confidence because you’ve formulated a realistic plan of action.

Consider this imaginary situation: A junior’s ultimate goal is to play on one of the pro Tours. From there, she must move backwards on a timeline, to take her ultimate goal and break it down into bite-sized pieces. Here’s an example.

Ultimate Goal: to win a major championship
Granted, that’s a very high goal. But that’s okay. Remember, we want to set challenging goals. The next thing you should chart is your current level. Be honest. In my scenario, the golfer is a junior who’s a 5 handicap. She’s good, but not eliteyet.

From a 5-handicap golfer to a major winner
If your only goal as a 5-handicapper is to win a major championship, you’ll easily get frustrated and disillusioned. In fact, you’d be so far away from accomplishing it, that you’d soon lose motivation. The purpose of this timeline exercise is to know what you need to do now in order to reach your long-term goal. Filling in the timeline creates smaller, more realistic goals as you advance toward your ultimate goal. The rest of the timeline exercise is to fill in the measurable goals that will lead to the highest outcome goal. These are progressively more difficult accomplishments in the order that they would happen. I’ve filled in the rest of the timeline below to illustrate.

Timeline Exercise

5 handicap
Scratch handicap
College player
Top amateur
Win a professional mini-Tour event
Qualify for the PGA Tour
Contend in a PGA Tour event
Win a PGA Tour event
Contend in a major championship
And finally…win a major championship

A golfer could win a major without accomplishing all the other steps, but it’s highly unlikely. Sure, young players have skipped college to turn pro, but there are only a few who have accomplished the previous steps and are ready for the next level of professional golf. Even top amateurs have found the transition to the next level more challenging than they thought it would be. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and think we’re ready for the next level, so my advice is this:
Identify your ultimate goal and work backwards. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Accomplish your smaller goals and improve one step at a time.

There are two more steps to the goal setting process. Look for them in my book, Golf: The Ultimate Mind Game.

Rick Sessinghaus, PGA, teaches at Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale, Calif., and is the author of Golf: The Ultimate Mind Game. For more information, visit ricksessinghaus.com.

Card Game

No, I’m not playing a game of cards, but I am holding a couple in these photos. One in each hand and placed between my index and middle fingers. Why? I want both cards to face the same way–like in the color photo above. When they do, I know that I’ve found my perfect stance width.

Let’s back up a second and talk about the golf swing. As you know, it’s made up of lines, angles and neutral positions. This tip is about making sure you find the right neutral position. Over the years, you’ve probably been told to grip the club the way your hands naturally hang at your sides. But if you do that from an improper stance width, your arms and hands won’t hang the same way. One hand may face out, while another may turn in. Since your arms and hands return to neutral during the swing, your clubface will, as a result, open or close as your hands return to neutral through impact. And that leads to hooks and slices.

So, how do you find the proper stance width and, hence, the perfect balance? Well, first, it’s important to know that every golfer has a few stance widths in which his or her body is perfectly in balance. (But no more than three to four different stances.) Once you’re aware of that, follow these easy steps.

• Stand facing a mirror.
• Place a playing card between bothindex and middle fingers.
• Stand as you would for a driver shot.
• From there, let go of the “club” and relax your arms, letting them hang.
• Look in the mirror.

Are the cards facing the mirror? If not–if one is turned in for example–then you know you’re not in proper balance. Try different widths–narrow, wide, etc.–and note how the cards’ orientation changes. Use a yardstick to notate your perfect stance widths. As I said, you may have a number of correct stance widths.

Note that these widths change over time. That means you should check your stance widths on occasion to make sure you’re standing at the appropriate widths. I think this simple way of finding the right balance is a guaranteed way to better golf swings.

Dr. David Wright, PGA, is considered one of America’s top-100 golf instructors. He teaches at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, Calif. Visit him online at wrightbalance.com.

Left Turn

Hitting successful chip shots from around the green requires a few basic fundamentals to understand. I think chipping is a little like putting, in that there’s more than one right way to succeed. Some players like less hand and wrist movements, while other players like to feel some flex or play in the hands and wrists. Some like to open their stance, while others prefer a square stance. And on and on go the different ways to hit a chip, as it seems the ways to get the job done are endless.

Let the upper body rotate and the right knee move back on the backswing.

At impact, the body is square to slightly open. But what you can’t see here is I’m continually rotating.

It’s obvious my upper body is turned, but check out my right knee. Its forward position indicates some lower body movement and the proper weight shift.

That said, there happen to be two keys that I think are required to execute successful chips. The first is to understand where the majority of your weight should be during the stroke, and where the ball should be. I encourage my students to keep the majority of their weight on their left side, and play the ball in the middle-back of the stance. This ball-back/weight-forward combo does two things: It creates the necessary shaft lean toward the target, which then steepens your chipping stroke to prevent hitting the ground first before the ball. If you’re too vertical with the shaft, you run the risk of hitting fat and thin shots, more often than you would with the ball back in your stance a little bit. Second, it makes it easier to control the trajectory and roll, helping you better dial in the right stroke length and distance for each chip.

A great way to feel this for yourself is to set up, shift your weight so it’s predominantly on your left side (maybe a 65/35 split), and play the ball off your right toe. To know how far to lean the club forward, simply lay the club so the grip rests over your left thigh. That’s where you should grip the club and play the shot.

Notice how just postimpact, my hands are still leading ahead of the clubhead? It’s a lot less than at address, but they’re still slightly ahead of the clubhead. This indicates crisp ball-first contact and a controlled swing over my left side.

Forward shaft lean is a must for good chips. Use your left thigh as a guide.	*Keep your weight forward as you chip. It will prevent you from hitting behind the ball.*
Stack your impact! Don’t let the clubhead pass the hands through the shot.	Finish with a turned body and your weight on your left side.

The other critical component for better chipping mechanics is to remember that although the chip shot is a short one, the body should still be engaged in the shot. This means, I like to see my students rotate their body with the shot. From down the line, you can see that my upper body has rotated away from the target on the backswing, then back toward the target on the forwardswing. If I were to seize up, I run the risk of collapsing my wrists, lifting up and, likely, hitting fat and thin shots.

If you follow these two basic fundamentals, and feel as though you have a good shaft lean and rotation in your stroke, the rest is up to you! Add as much hinge to your wrist as you’d like and align your stance open or square, depending on your personal preference and what looks and feels good to you. Just remember, once you find a particular chipping style, stick with it for all your shots. The last thing you want to do is hit every chip completely differently, since it makes hitting consistent chips almost impossible. Instead, master the fundamentals and hone in on your personal style. You’ll start seeing better results in no time.

AJ Gaul, PGA, teaches at the Faldo Golf Institute at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge in Palm Desert, Calif. Visit gofaldo.com for info.