Lose The Yips

Once you are happy with your chipping technique try some of these practice drills to get you match sharp. These drills are designed to help you generate feel, distance control and imagination in the short game. These drills are designed to give you smaller targets than you may have had before, and get you visualizing much more when trying chip.

Spot chip; Many people like to pick a spot when chipping on which to land the ball. Mark out a meter square and practice landing the ball in it. The after a dozen or so shots make it smaller and keep making it smaller until you are chipping to a target about 4 inches wide. Trust me you can do this but it takes a little practice. With time you will think that that original meter square was massive.

Hole it; Like long putts you should always be looking to hole your chip shot. Otherwise what is the point. Try to read the slope on the green. Pick where you want the ball to land and visualize the ball rolling in. If you don’t visualize it and believe it then it wont happen.

Throwing it away; A simple way to get distance control is to practice throwing the ball onto the green and up to the hole. Get a feel for the length of swing and power you use to do this and this will relate directly to a chip. When you are doing this your eyes are telling your hand and arm how far to throw the ball. This should be the same when chipping. Burn the vision of the hole into your mid as you chip. With a little practice you will be amazed how your body takes over and hits the ball the distance your eyes are telling it to.

Par 18; Measurable practice is very important and with this drill you will see how much you are improving. Take 18 balls and throw them down around the chipping green in different spots. Take you time and go round and chip then all onto the green. The go and try to putt them in, in 1 putt. If you get up and down 10 times then you have a score of 10. As you practice this should go up. Once you are up over 14/15 you are getting near tour standard and can plainly see that if you play a round and miss all 18 greens, well you should chip and putt around 14 times and shoot no more than 4 over par. The maths is simple, so is the drill and it is effective too.

Measure; Take a length of rope, loop it at one end and put the loop around the flag. Then mark on the rope 12inch increments going out to about 10ft. Then chip 10 balls to the green and measure off how far all 10 are away from the hole in total. Say you chip all you balls onto the green and add up that in total they are 50 ft away then on average when you play you know you will be no more than 5ft away when chipping onto any green, This will give you confidence and take the pressure off your long game because you know that even if you miss a green on average you will only have a 5 footer for par.
Get this down to 2-3 feet and your chipping is ready to take on Tiger!

These are just a few really good practice drills. Once you have tried mine then why not try to make up some for yourself! Use you imagination. I have many more practice drills that are good for improving your chipping.

Contact me and I will give you some drills to do that will improve your putting!