The longest and straightest
golf shots in the world are totally ineffective unless
you can get the ball into the hole in regulation figures
or better, so it is important that you acquire
the skills to finish off the perfect fairway shots.
Therefore it is time to look at the part of the game
of golf which requires the golfer to be able to strike
the ball correctly and land it with accuracy on the
green.
If
you can master the art of chipping and pitching the ball, you will see your scores drop
by a few shots per round.
If you want
to be able to chip and pitch the ball with precision there are three things you must learn:-
Before we start, as you look down at the ball what you cannot see is the ground that is hidden by the curve of the ball and guiding the club head into that gap is the key to chipping the ball correctly.
1) At the address position you must focus your eyes on the back edge of
the golf ball that tou can see and literally watch that point on the golf ball until the precise
moment the club head makes contact with the ball and
then maintain you focus on the spot the ball was resting
for a millisecond after the ball has been struck.
(
You must practice over and over
the action of watching the back edge of the golf ball
and fully focus on this point, right up to the precise
moment the club head strikes the ball - with every
golf shot.
Until you reach that point, you will
struggle to be a very good chipper of the ball - you
must focus on the point where the club head strikes
the ball and keep the focus of your eyes on that point for much
longer than you can imagine.)
2) You must learn to strike the ball with a downwards stroke so that the club head is driven into the gap that is hidden from view, but as your are perfoming this action, whole body also sways slightly towards the target area . (The old saying " you got to hit down on the ball to get it to go up" is absolutely correct.)
3) At the precise moment the ball is struck, the hands towards the target area as the whole body continues to sway slightly towards to target area.
But to be successful you must focus your eyes intensly on the gap that you drive clubhead into - focus on this point throughout the chipping action is vital.
Chipping requires
the golfer to use a selection of golf club, depending
on the length of the shot required to enable the golfer
to chip the ball so that it lands on a particular part of the
green and run the remainder of the distance to the
hole, remembering that any club you use to chip, the ball will normally run on the green the same distance that the ball was in the air.
However to key to very good chipping is that when it comes to playing the actual shot -- you must play the actual shot with the same speed and tempo as when you took during practiced swings, do not have second thoughts about the length of the back swing movement.
The basic principle of all iron shots is that you must strike the ball with a descending blow to make the ball go up -and this principle is equally important when chipping the ball from around the green.
Experiment on the practice area and at first exaggerate the downwards strike of the club head into the top back edge of the ball and gradually you will achieve a bit of finesse and soon you will be able to control the flight and the strength of the chip shot required.
At all times, when pitching or chipping the ball you must ensure that you rotate the shoulders to make the back swing movement, do not fall into the bad habit of simple lifting the arms to complete the back swing movement, I can assure you from experience that failure to rotate the shoulder will result in erratic golf shots.
Pitching.
A Pitch shot is simply a shortened
version of the full golf swing.
Therefore to pitch the ball it
simply requires you to carry out exactly the same
swing movements that you would use for the full swing,
the only difference is that you only make a maximum
of a three quarter swing action and in addition, the
swing action is slower than the full swing.
Therefore the emphasis is on precision, because the
distance is determined by the length of your back
swing.
Although the pitch shot is a shorter
version of the full shot, in order to dramatically
increase your chances of pitching the ball in an accurate
manner it is absolutely vital that you :-
1) Learn to focus on the back edge
of the golf ball and literally watch the back edge
of the ball until the club head strikes the ball.
2) Keep the head firmly positioned
slightly behind the ball with "pin point accuracy"
at all times and in the Fixed Frontal condition.
3) Use the pivotal movement of
the hips to literally force the compact upper body
unit to follow its movement and rotate back to the
original address position and on into the follow through
movement - but concentrating on swinging the club
head to the bottom of the swing arc with
an "out to in" swing plane
(The downward movement of the club
head as it strikes the ball automatically moves the
ball upwards and forward for a distance that is dependent
on the loft of the club face and the speed of the
club head.)
However the same principle applies,
you must watch the ball carefully so that you strike
the ball cleanly with a descending blow, but importantly
you must watch the spot that the ball was resting
on whilst the club head swings to the bottom of the
swing arc.
When you are fully focused
on the ball and you maintain this focus until after
the ball has been struck, you will notice that after
the ball has been struck, the retina retains the
image of the ball for a millisecond, but magically
this image has been converted to a black image.
Therefore if you can detect this dark image directly after you have struck the ball, this will
indicate to you that you have correctly continued
to look at the position the ball was resting until
after the ball was struck.
Importantly, the head must remain
positioned slightly behind the ball and in the Frontal
Facing condition and the upper body angle must be
retained until well after the ball has been struck.
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Bunker Play
Focus intensely on a point just behind the ball and
ensure that the club face remains square to the ball, make a short flat backswing and swing the club head into the sand, just behind ball, but to get the ball out of the sand you must keep the hands in a static position as the club head swings under the ball. ( static poition =The hands do not move away from the address position until afer the ball has been struck.)
Once the ball has been struck you then allow the hands to follow the club head into the follow through.
