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Common Chipping Mistakes And How To Correct Them
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Apr 1, 2025
In this video, Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach Ged Walters explains the 6 most common faults golfers suffer with when chipping around the green and suggests simple ways to overcome them! Whether you're setting up to the ball incorrectly or struggling to strike your chips cleanly, this video has all the pointers you need to become a confident chipper and turn a weakness into a strength.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Do you struggle with your chipping? Well, if you do, this could be the video for you
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We're down here at Sandy Way Golf Club in Cheshire with Golf Monthly's top 50 golf coach
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Jed Walters, and he's going to be taking you through six common mistakes amateurs do around
0:14
the green when it comes to chipping. Right, save me talking, let's get into it. Over to you, Jed
0:20
Thanks, Monty. So, there's no better place to start than with the biggest issue, the number one
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issue poor poor setup leads to everything um what is the most common setup that i see well i see
0:33
people setting up as if they've got the seven iron in hand so they're doing this um and they are
0:38
literally three feet away from the green now if you're like this and then all of a sudden you're
0:44
trying to hit a shot which is going about 25 30 feet we see and then it's a big slow down
0:51
as we try and help the ball up into the air not hit it too far and that leads to
0:57
hitting the ground too soon it leads to hitting the middle of the golf ball and thinning it across
1:01
the green it leads to topping it and a lot of frustration more than anything else so how do
1:07
we get the right setup well you're set up for let's start with this sort of basic shot
1:13
just on a lovely lie here the keys that we want to get is we don't want to go too wide
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so we want to narrow the width of the stance down so if i was to put my club head in between my feet
1:28
there you can see it's only ever so slightly wider than the width of my golf club now i don't want to
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be miles away from the golf ball as well i want to be a little bit closer than normal so from here
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there is very little space between me and the golf club if i was to just change to here
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that's about the distance you would want to be so we want our golf ball for this as a
2:05
generalized shots being generally more central in the stance because that's just going to help you
2:13
with your angle of attack then moving down from this position here you are in a much better place
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to be able to move the club nicely more importantly be able to move the torso and allow the body's
2:27
rotation to support the release of the club one which i see loads all the time is a loss of
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structure in the arms so you can see here i have a little ball just dangling from my neck here on a
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little lanyard you don't have to use one of these you could use a deflated football you could use a
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swimming armband but what this is for is to maintain a little bit more of the structure of
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the arms if we think about when we were taking our setup position if i was just to pinch this between
2:58
my forearms here from here you can see that the structure between my shoulders and my arms
3:06
is more like a triangle so if we then take that down into the golf club itself it's almost like
3:12
creating the letter y now what i see loads of is a struggle from golfers who want to try and get
3:19
the golf ball up in the air they lose that letter y and it comes from the separation of the elbows
3:27
as they try and help the ball into the air. Now the release of the club so this movement in the wrists is an essential movement to really control We want to have that We don want to take that out of the way But what we do want to stop is this shortening of the radius
3:45
So if we think about the club being sat on the ground, as soon as I separate my elbows, the club comes away from the ground
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So that's shortening the radius. Well, if I now move on to the golf ball
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well, I've got no chance of hitting the golf ball there. The club isn't going to collect the ball on its way through
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so i'm gonna do one of three things i see we stick the club into the ground too soon because we then
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start leaning back we thin the ball across the other side the green or we just catch it right
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on the top so controlling the structure is really really important so if i keep the forearms pinch
4:21
together so they're maintaining the ball in place all i have to do then is just maintain the height
4:28
of my posture and then keep the club moving and i can brush the ground and as long as i keep doing
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that i'm going to brush the ground all the time so then the club is going to collect the golf ball
4:42
on its way through so if i was then to address the golf ball all i'm thinking about is maintaining
4:49
the y maintaining the structure of the arms and keeping my movement
4:53
and I'm going to make really nice contact all the time so the length and speed is going to
5:01
then control the distance another common mistake is a lack of movement in the upper body there's
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a lot of players who just try and use their hands and arms and forget that the real sort of engine
5:15
the motion is about turning the torso so what do i mean by that well when you see a lot of
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chipping actions we see a lot of this so when you look at it from face on you see that my chest is
5:32
still facing the golf ball so it's a lot of this kind of action now what happens i see a lot from
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there is when we see that lack of motion the club moves quite a bit and then it starts to slow down
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and the speed of the arms tries to control the shot and then lots of that happens so what we
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need to do is we need to make sure that this bit moves the chest has got to start moving
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and it's got to have that motion where the arms then follow and it's the chest supporting the
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release of the club head as we go through now as long as we get that happening we'll be able to
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allow the golf club to almost land on the turf glide along the turf and then take off almost if
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you imagined an airplane landing on the runway so it would come down it would touch down wheels
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it would then move along the runway and then imagine it wanted to sort of take off again
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it would then move up so we're releasing the golf club but we're supporting this release with the
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turn that we're going to make so now when i make a backswing and i rotate the torso
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i can allow the club to land on the ground the sole is going to do most of the work so it'll
6:59
just bruise the turf as we go through. And then even if I was to get the club to land, say here, an inch, inch and a half
7:08
behind the golf ball because of the way I using the club and the body the club is actually going to still move along the ground It going to be like the plane is still going along the runway so i not going to get that duff shot i actually still going to get a really good outcome so on this shot i now going to support that release with the rotation
7:30
and we're just going to allow the club then to bruise the ground and then you can see it just pops up nicely off towards the target
7:42
another one of the big mistakes that i see from lots of people when they're chipping is they move
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the club inside very very early plenty of golfers are moving the club in and around here very very
7:59
early so the only thing they can either do from there is try and come back this way and the body's
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then got to start working away to keep the club away from the ground because it would just stick
8:10
into the floor back here too far away. So this leads into a lot of pushed shots
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a lot of shanks and stuff like that. Or they then try and loop over the top
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Now, sometimes you can get away with it, but there's a lot of timing involved. And when there's timing involved
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sometimes it stays with you for a bit, but when it disappears, you just don't know when it's going to come back
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So if we think about what's going to happen if we move the club on a more natural plane
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as the club moves away from the golf ball, if you thought about it moving in a straight line
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it would be moving straight back, but the more it moves off the ground, it arcs
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So it's moving back, it's moving up and it's moving in, but it's not moving too far in
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So you can see the club's relationship to the shaft, the stick that I've got there just on the angle
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just to match the shaft's plane. So it's moving back up and in
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Then from here, you can rotate back through and the club will come back down
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and through to execute your shot. So having that picture in your mind
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of the club moving back and up and in, and even practicing with a shaft
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or an alignment stick in the ground, like we have here, a shaft or alignment stick on the ground
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So you've got a visual of the direction that you're moving the golf club in
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that's the important thing so from that point of view there you'd be able to practice and hit shots
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like this just taking your setup just picturing that back up and in motion and making a nice
9:47
smooth controlled swing another of the big common mistakes that we see is when players try and steer
10:00
ball towards their target so what i mean by that is when they swing the club through the impact
10:07
what they're trying to do is move the club in the direction that they want the golf ball to go in
10:13
when we look at how we want to move when we're moving around the arc as you can see there as i
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move the club around the arc it's moving up that exit route stick there to the left now if i try
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to move it in the direction that i would want the golf ball what we would see then is i'm pushing
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my arms and the club away from the golf ball which is where a lot of you guys will hit the shanks
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from so i'm just gonna play a little shot here now where you can see that as long as i make the right
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movement we got golf ball exiting up the stick towards the target and I kept moving around so the club has exited round to the left Finally one thing that I see way too much is people just picking up their most lofted club
11:08
So I've got four clubs in my hands here. I've got my most lofty club, 58 degree
11:14
The amount of time I see people just going in for their 58, their 60, wanting to hit it
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up in the air, it's get rid of that. 54, that's plenty of loft
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Now, behind me where the bunker is, if I was in that situation
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people would still want to go for their most lofted. 54 degrees is a lot of loft, so the ball will get up in the air
11:38
You don't really need to go too severe, as I say, unless it's a real sort of challenging lie, downslope situation, something like that
11:47
So again, 54 degrees from this situation, that can go over there as well
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there are two options really that i would want to see most golfers use that would lower their scores
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it's all about lower scores it's not about hitting the sexy shot it's about the lower score
12:02
the putter and a seven iron they're the keys the reason is we've got loads of green to work with
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now the seven iron will help you get over this little bit of grass here and get the ball running
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nicely the putter will just run through because this is cut really nice and short so it's one of
12:23
the two options whichever you feel really more comfortable with but i like to see the ball on
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the ground as quickly as possible because it's one more predictable and two it's telling you what the
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green is going to do so if you leave it short you're getting a look of how the green how the
12:40
ball is going to move down towards the hole if the ball goes beyond the hole please pay attention
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to it because it is reading the put that you're about to hit for you if you watch how that ball
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moves you are then going to see how the ball is going to be expected to come back towards you
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so from here if i just put the putter down for a second and in terms of playing this seven iron
13:04
shot i want you to play just like you would play a putt but with a narrower stance nice and tall
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and just moving back and through nice and smooth keeping the triangle of the arms in place keeping
13:22
the shoulders rocking back and through you just want to nudge the ball and let it run that's all
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you want to do if you want to use your normal grip if you want to use your putter grip that's
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entirely up to you it's personal preference but just making sure that your feet are nicely close
13:38
together so it's only about the width of the club head there a little bit of pressure just
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leaning into the left side so that you've got an ever so slight downward angle of attack and we're
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just going to put a little bit of a putting stroke on it and just roll it forward and you can just
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see how that ball is reading the green for me so it's moved in from right to left and now i've left
14:02
myself, I don't know, what's that, three half feet maybe for my next shot which is just all you want
14:09
to do. You want to keep it as simple as possible so the next shot is very, very easy. Thanks Jed
14:17
lots of great information there for you guys to take away and implement into your own game
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I hope you found it useful, I definitely have but that's it from us here at Sandy Way Golf Club in
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