05/23/2015

Hitting a high, soft chip shot can be a tough task to accomplish, especially when most seasonal golfers are unaware of their swing’s direction.  In this segment of On the Lesson Tee, PGA Professional Todd Kolb shows us how swinging around the body may lead to chunked shots, and shows us how we really should be tracking our swing direction.  This chipping lesson will help you with proper chipping technique in no time, showing how swinging inside and around the body can be a huge mistake in maintaining proper chipping technique.

I’m PGA Professional Todd Kolb with USGolfTV, and today On the Lesson Tee I’m giving you the proper direction that the club should swing when hitting a chip shot by helping you understand proper chipping technique; and what I mean by swing direction is I mean the direction that the club head is traveling in the motion.  Now a lot of amateur golfers—because once again, they want to hit the ball nice and soft—tend to swing the club too far inside and around.  And what happens is when they do that, they hit behind the golf ball, because when the club travels in and around, you tend to bottom out behind the golf ball.

Now what you want to do is you want to keep the club head—what I call—in front of you; the club head basically swings straight back and it swings straight through.  Now on a side note, if you want to hit the ball a little higher and softer—this is a little secret that I’m going to share with you—and that is that when you finish the swing, you want the club head to be in front, but you want the face to be slightly open, or looking towards the sky.  So at the end of the day, if you keep the club in front on the backswing, if you keep it in front on the follow through, and you get the club face slightly open, not only will you have good contact with the ball, but the ball will come out high and soft, helping you with your chipping technique.