Everyone Is Bad At Chipping...Until They Learn This

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Transcript Summary-

Have you ever wanted to know how to make consistent contact with your chip shots around the green? You know — stop fatting it, stop thinning it, and actually get that beautiful backspin that checks up by the flag. Or maybe you’ve wondered how to play those tricky little shots right on the edge of the green when you’re in the thick rough with hardly any green to work with. And what about those wet, muddy lies? They’re so much harder than a perfect fairway lie, aren’t they? Well, in this lesson, I’m going to show you the most natural way to chip consistently from anywhere around the green — and it really comes down to just two things.

Now, before we dive in, if you’re new to my channel, welcome! I release new golf lessons every single week designed to help you improve your game. And don’t worry about remembering everything — I always include a free downloadable practice guide linked below.

So, let’s get into it. The first thing you need to do to improve your chipping is to add flow to your motion. When golfers get nervous over short shots, they tend to get stiff and static. But think about it — if you were throwing a ball underarm, you wouldn’t stand frozen; you’d have some movement, some rhythm. It’s exactly the same with chipping. So grab a club in one hand, move it freely, even take a little step forward as you swing. Feel that natural flow and rhythm. Don’t worry about where the ball goes at first — just loosen up and get rid of the tension. That’s step one.

Once you’ve freed up your motion, the next thing we need to talk about is contact — how to make consistent strikes. This all comes down to controlling the depth of your arc. Imagine your club moving on an arc around your body. If that arc is too high, you’ll thin it; too low, you’ll fat it. Your job is to control how that club interacts with the ground. Make a few swings and just pay attention — does the club barely brush the grass, dig too deep, or miss the ground entirely? That awareness helps you naturally control your arc height.

When you get this right, you’ll notice something amazing — you can actually hit slightly behind or slightly ahead of the ball and still get great results because your arc depth is consistent. But if you’re struggling, there are a couple of things to watch out for. Too much wrist action can really mess with your arc — it shortens and lengthens the club unpredictably. Keep your wrists quieter and your thumbs more downward through the shot. Also, avoid dipping or lowering yourself toward the ball mid-swing; that’s a guaranteed fat shot. And finally, make sure your trail arm isn’t collapsing behind you. Keep it more in front of your body and extended.

Now, once you’ve got that contact dialled in, let’s talk about spin and difficult lies. If you want to get that lovely check on the green, you need clean grooves — no moisture, no grass — and a solid strike. Move the ball slightly more central in your stance, lean the handle a touch forward, and focus on controlling that same arc depth. Clean grooves, good strike, and you’ll start to see the ball grab beautifully.

When you’re on those horrible muddy or bare lies, just stand a bit closer to the ball and take the heel slightly off the ground. That setup removes the need for excessive wrist hinge and keeps the club from digging. Maintain your height, keep that same flow, and you’ll be amazed how well the ball comes out, even from the worst lies.

And finally, those short-sided shots from the thick rough — the ones everyone dreads. The key here is having enough energy in your swing. Most golfers make their backswing too short and try to jab at it. You need a longer, flowing backswing so you can drop the club behind the ball with some momentum. It’ll feel like a long swing for such a short shot, but that’s exactly what helps you get the ball up and out of that heavy grass and land it softly near the flag.

So, that’s how you start transforming your short game. Remember, according to Shot Scope data, improving your short game by just 10% can save you four to five shots a round — far more than improving your driving. So, spend some time on these feels, get that flow, control your arc depth, and watch your confidence around the greens skyrocket.

If you enjoyed this lesson, give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend who struggles around the green, and if you’d like more personal help, visit dannymaude.com. Until next time, have a wonderful week and happy golfing!

Transcript Edit- Have you ever wanted to know how to make consistent contact time and time again with your chip shots around the green? So, you're not fatting it. You're not thinning it. In fact, what you're doing, you're actually creating shots that actually get a lot of backspin and check when they land on the green. He also ever wanted to know how to play those chip shots right on the edge of the green when you're in the thick rough and you haven't got a lot of green to work with and you chip it out and it lands and stops really close to the flag. How do you play those wet muddy lies? So easy to play off beautiful lies, isn't it? But what about the muddy ones? How do you make solid contact off those horrible lies? In this golf lesson, I want to show you the most natural way to learn to chip consistently from wherever you are on the green. There's only two things that you really need to learn. In this golf video, I can't wait to share with you. Before I do, though, if you're new to the channel, it's one of your first lessons of mine, please consider subscribing. I release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game. Plus, you never have to remember a thing. Everything we do here, I'll put it to a free downloadable practice guide in the description box below.

So, I want to start teaching you to play shots like that time and time again. And before we get into the shots around the green from the awful lies, how do you get backspin, all those kind of shots, let me show you two things that if you can learn these two things, they will unbelievably improve your chipping. I'm not going to give you a checklist of this, this, and this. Just two things will start to transform your chipping. So, let's start with the very first thing we need to do. A lot of times when people get nervous over the short game shots, they get way too static. So, the first thing I want you to do is if you're throwing a ball, you wouldn't stand here like this and kind of just be static and throw, right? There'd be some softness to you and you wouldn't overthink it. You just in a sense have a flowing motion. If I was throwing a ball underarm onto this green, right? There's a movement and a flow to that and you need that in your chipping. So before we talk about what the wrists do and the arms do, which again is super super simple, let's at least add some flow to your motion. So there's a couple of ways I want you to naturally feel this. You know, grab the club either in your your dominant hand, right, and just start to move. And notice here, I'm almost even look, I'm stepping forward and I'm swinging backward. I'm just like I'm just tossing this onto the green here like this, you know? And then all I'm going to do is walk to the golf ball, put two hands on or maybe a little step forward. Just add whatever it takes just to add some flow. And I would suggest in practice to hit a few shots like this. Don't worry about where the ball goes. I'm going to stand to the side of the golf ball here. Look. And I'm just going to flow towards the target. And the key here all the time is is just get a sense of a little bit of natural motion. Get rid of some of that tension and staticness that destroys so many short game shots. I'm not asking you for a big powerful motion. Just a little bit of freedom just to free up that motion here. Stand slightly to the side of the golf ball here. I'm just stepping in and I'm just flowing through just to keep that momentum going forward all of the time. So once you've unshackled yourself from the tension and that could take a while. I would enjoy just getting on a practice green and and just on your garden just walking up to the golf ball adding that freedom there. Not worrying about strike. Just get rid of that tension. Once you've done that, then we need to we do need to focus on strike. How do we make consistent contact? Well, the two things we want to control. One is where the club bottoms out in your arc. But I would say the most important thing for short game is the depth of your arc. We want to control it. So what do I mean by the depth of your arc? Well, this here, look, if I'm swinging here, the arc height is too high and it would hit the top of the golf ball. If I was to lower myself to the ground now, the arc height would go underneath the ground and that would be a fat shot. So, really simply, let's not notice this. I'm not focusing on setup or anything like this. Let your body work this out. I'm going to make I get get you to now make some swings and I want you to focus simply on controlling your arc height. How do you do this? Do you know what? I'll tell you in a second, but initially just see if you can notice how your club is interacting with the ground. Didn't interact there. Now it's interacting. That's too much interaction. So notice in a sense by paying attention to how your club is interacting or not interacting with the ground is a way to in a sense control your arc height. So what I'm going to do now is this. I'm going to hit a shot. And the beautiful thing about controlling your arc height is is you don't have to hit a perfect position on the ground. You can hit behind the ball slightly. You can hit slightly ahead of the golf ball. But when you control your arc high, watch this. I'm actually going to hit now maybe an inch or two behind the ball. But because I'm not up here, I'm not going to go too low. I'm going to control my depth. Watch what happens. Hit way behind the golf ball there. And that's beautiful. Spins a little bit as well. I'm able to produce an action that is a little bit more consistent than one that requires absolute precision. Now, you might find after that simple golf tip, your chipping starts to naturally improve because you're controlling the arc depth. Some of my students, however, they want a little bit more. They want to know, well, how do I control the arc depth, Danny? Because I'm still a bit inconsistent. So, let me give you a couple of common mistakes to look out for. Tina, a recent student of mine, was really struggling on short shots like this, even though we did this exercise. And the reason being is if she was excessively using her wrists. If you use too much wrists in the back swing for a short shot, well, you've just making the axe much much shorter. If those wrists all come out too early, you end up fatting it. If they don't come out enough, you end up topping it. So, what I did with Tina was I simply said, "Look, just control your wrists. Just get a sense here. Pay attention to your how the club's interacting with the ground. And you'll notice if you kind of keep the wrists a little bit kind of almost the thumbs pointing downwards as you're chipping here, you'll find you've got a little more control over that arc depth. She did that. The following day she goes and wins the club championship. So, it's really, really important. Super, super simple as well. The other couple of things to look out for, which are common mistakes I see with players who struggle with consistent contact, is is when they make a swing, they'll often in attempt to strike it, they'll lower themselves towards the golf ball. When you do that, what are you doing? You're getting closer to the ground. You're more likely to fat it. When people do that as well, they fight it once or twice. They then kind of lift up with their arms to try and avoid the ground and then they kind of thin it. Not very very pleasant. Again, all this starts to disappear very naturally. If you pay attention to how or the depth of the ark, you're naturally going to want to kind of control your height with your body as well. You're not It doesn't make sense to do this, right? So, these things can gradually disappear. Um, so watch out for that. The other thing to watch out for, which is the final probably common fault, is this trail arm getting pulled behind you. If this has loads of flex like this and starts to pull behind, what you're going to do, you start to push that out and that can get you going again underneath the ground. When you fattened a few, you then start pulling up and you it all starts to deteriorate. You can see here, look, if my arms are out extended in front of me, maybe my thumbs are pointing slightly downwards and I'm simply paying attention to how that club is bruising the ground. I am now controlling that out depth time and time again. So that is it. That's contact. Let's talk about how the best players now play from muddy lies and how do they play, you know, get backspin. Well, you'll see here what I'm doing is if I want to get backspin on my chip shots, I've got a 60°ree Callaway Opus SB wedge, the new wedge that has, first of all, spin pocket grooves, which help you to get spin. But I need those grooves to be clean. So I make sure when I'm chipping and I want spin, I want to make sure that this is unbelievably clean, right? No moisture on there at all. that gets rid of back spin immediately. Then I want to make sure I guarantee great contact. So what I'll tend to do when if I really want to guarantee contact, I've obviously got arc depth, but I want to hit ball first. I'm going to move the ball slightly more central in my stance. I'm going my handle slightly further forward here. And then all I'm going to do is again concentrate on my arc height throughout this shot by paying attention to how the club's interacting the ground. And just naturally, you'll see this ball spin. One thing I'm often asked when I'm over the golf ball is is what am I thinking about? I'm thinking about landing this ball just a few feet on the green here. I'm visualizing a fairly lower flight. I' I've set that low flight up with ball middle to back in my sand handle forward. From here, I'm then once I've got that, I've got my flight. I'm then going to do some practice swings. Again, paying attention to how my club is interacting with the ground, making sure I've got the arc height. And then I trust I don't think of wrists and arms and all those kind of things that allow your body to naturally do this. It'll work it out if you pay attention to those couple of things. And then from there, it's being very positive. Keep flowing. And watch this. That would have that would have checked beautifully if it hadn't have been for that golf ball there. But that is how you start to get backspin on your shot. There's no magic in it. It's simply decent amount of loft, decent strike. Now, we'll work on some shots around the green. Hard horrible muddy lies and the short little shortsized rough shot. So on these horrible muddy wet bare lies, all I'm going to do here is get a bit closer to the golf ball here. So why I do that, so the heel's almost off the ground with the golf club. And why I done that is I've taken all the wrist hinge out. Remember wrist hinge could come out and then extend the club underneath the ground. If I take that all that out, then ultimately, as long as I maintain my height, I'm just going to be it's beautiful, right? I should be a this should be no different to any any other shot really. I'm just making it more likely. From here I'm visualizing a very very low shot. Now let's have a look.

You see here there that still flighted low. See the spin even on a shot like this when you get the spin. So there's your back spin shot off a horrible lie too. Let's just finish off with one that popular question on my channel which was how do you play the shortsided one when the flag's right next to it and you got to come out that horrible thick stuff. So here you can see the ball's buried in the rough. I haven't got a lot of green to work with. I'm going to chip to this alignment stick here. How do we play the shot? You can't just in a sense do a normal chipping action because the rough is wet. It's heavy. So, what we've got to learn here, and this is where the practice and the warm-up happens. What I would do before a round. This is my first attempt at this. What I'm going to do here is all we're doing is no difference to what we've done before. We're going to control the arc depth. But what I'm going to need now is a longer swing and more energy. So, what I'll tend to do is have a longer golf swing here. So, I've got a lot of energy stored and then I can decide what what to do with that energy. I can allow I can drop that energy just behind the golf ball just there and I'm just getting a sense of that. What I'm not doing is having a short swing and trying to jab it on the green which where most people are. So, why this feels difficult people is it's a fairly long swing for quite a short shot but it's a feel thing. This is why we have to warm up to provide enough energy in the back swing so that you can then allow it to fall into the back of the golf ball. Here, I'm moving that ball fairly forward in my stance here. I'm going to play it. So, I'm going to almost land this club just slightly behind the golf ball. And it's just a pure feel thing

behind the golf ball there. And look at that. I mean, I I can't play any better than that. And all I've done is dropped that club beautifully into the back of the golf ball. But for a short shot, it's required a fairly long swing to get through that rough. And that's what people struggle with. It's kind of a very misconception. So, I hope you enjoyed this little short game video. Now, remember, shot scope data that I get from my watch tells me that if you improve your driving by 10%, you'll only drop maybe 0.02 shots. If you improve your shot game by 10% on average, you will drop four to five shots per round. That's pretty impressive. So, understanding how to play shots around the green will really, really help you lower your scores. If you enjoyed the video, give it a thumbs up. Share it with a friend who you know is struggling with their short shots around the green. If you're looking at wanting to know how to play your pitch shots, click this one out right here. If you'd like more help personally from me, head over to dannymort.com. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing.