How to Chip With Any Golf Club

The long game, drives, fairway woods and long irons, boost a golfer's ego. The short game, chipping and putting, lower a handicap. Chipping is part of the short game that can be more fun to practice than most people make it if you approach it as a "mini-shot." When executing iron shots, you use a variety of clubs because they produce different shots. The same is true for chipping. Not every chip has to be hit with a wedge.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Use the same chipping stroke for most chips shots regardless of what club you're using.
2. Practice simple chips with a pitching wedge, an 8 iron and a 6 iron.
3. Get a feel for how each shot runs once it is on the green. Hit each shot with a typical pendulum motion chip, realizing that the same length swing will obviously hit the running shot of 6 iron much further than with a pitching wedge.
4. Work on more difficult shots. Hit at a pin tucked behind a mound. Hit at a pin that is downhill or uphill. Hit shots from deep rough. Use 6 irons for the tucked pin and lob wedges for the uphill shots. Try every combination of shots and clubs you can think of.
5. Discover what shots are most reliable. For some, the low runner, chip and run, is a comfortable old sweater. For others, it's a 64 degree wedge carrying a lofted shot to the hole. Golfers are different.
6. Finish your session by hitting to a pin and changing clubs on every shot. This develops the concept of "feel."

Tips & Warnings

• The exception to the concept of using the same stroke for all chip shots is at the far ends of the spectrum of chip shots. In other words, a chip shot from rough immediately off the green should be executed with a stroke very close to a putting stroke. Conversely, a flop shot with an open face wedge will be executed with a stroke much more like an explosion shot from a bunker.