Think about it:  chipping is such a simple action.  The only stroke that you can make that is more simple at its core is a putting stroke, and chipping can certainly be done in a nearly identical fashion to putting. At the same time, so many players have trouble chipping effectively.  Put some players just off the green with a perfect lie in the short grass and the results will be somewhere between inconsistent and disastrous. It almost goes without saying at this point, but I have completely modeled my short game using the techniques outlined in Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible.  This certainly goes for chipping too.  To summarize his chipping technique: Stand relatively tall, close to the ball, feet close together, turned about 20 degrees toward the target, with the ball positioned off the back ankle. Around 65% of your weight should be on the front foot. Grip down a bit with “dead hands”.  Keep the wrists firm and quiet throughout the stroke, but not tense. Use a finesse swing with the upper

Many weekend players aren’t big on practice and like to show up on the weekends, knock the ball around, and have fun with friends.  I think that’s great.  The game is what we make of it, and hopefully we concentrate on keeping it fun. But there are many of us that put in work to improve.  In many cases, it’s a significant amount of work.  That’s great, as well, but it’s painful to see people working so hard, all the while setting themselves back by not practicing effectively.  I’ve been guilty of it myself. Dave Pelz is a big proponent of (and as far as I know, coined the phrase) “practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent”.  Bad practice will groove bad habits which can take years to erase. Here are some areas where bad practice habits could hurt your game. I’ve done some of these in the past, so if any seem familiar, you’re not alone. The Problem of Putt-Putt-Putt I bet a lot of you are guilty of this one.  Tell me if

Practice is not something we golfers seem to like much.  Of course, most of us would rather be out on the course than at the driving range or practice green.  That’s only natural.  But we put in the time anyway, so that we can play better golf.  Unfortunately, we don’t tend to have the best practice habits. We often approach it like a chore, instead of looking at it like critical preparation for what we really love to do.  You can see it clearly at the driving range.  Watch as people aimlessly beat balls down range with no target, no desired shot, and no purpose. We tend to fall into the same trap around the practice green. Watching the U.S. Open last week, there was one shot that set all this off in my mind. I want to say it was Sunday.  Maybe, maybe not.  Ricky Barnes hit an approach shot and missed the green to the right.  He wasn’t on the collar.  He was in that nasty, horrible, U.S. Open rough that we hope

It’s been raining here in one form or another for the better part of the past week.  I did manage to get out to the driving range on Tuesday, but other than that, Mother Nature has foiled me again. For many of you, it’s tough to find time to play golf, let alone commit time to improving.  With family, job, and other obligations, just blocking out four or five hours on the weekend to play is tough enough.  It’s even more tough when there are violent thunderstorms or torrential downpours that turn your precious golf time into something else time. Then, to make matters worse, it can happen for a few weeks in a row.  As we all know, golf is a “use it or lose it” skill.  Those of us who deal with an off season know that it takes a while to get it back in spring.  The last thing you need is to lose it in the summer because of some poorly timed rain. The first step in all this when your

We golfers practice for one reason:  to be able to hit the shots on the course that we hit on the practice tee.  We are training our bodies to produce an automatic reaction on the course to whatever shot we are faced with.  We hit certain shots repeatedly on the practice tee and practice green until they become second nature.  When they come up on the course, the fact that our bodies have been programmed to hit them inspires confidence and we greatly increase the chances for success. The main problem is, though, that the practice tee (unlike the practice green) is not necessarily comparable to what we’re going to face on the course.  The shot conditions out there are generally different than what we experience on the practice tee.  The key is to be aware of the differences while we’re programming our brains so that we can effectively make the transition. Lie Quality Perhaps the biggest difference we face between the practice tee and the course is the quality of the lies we see.