Why You Need This: In this video, "How to Stop Chunking Your Chips"...

You'll find out how to fix the 3 things I see every time a student comes in for chipping lessons.

Chunking a chip is maybe the most frustrating thing you can do in golf.

After all, you've just hit a couple of really nice shots to get close to the green...

You're ready to strike for an easy birdie or to win the hole from your opponent...

And then, THUD...

You smack the turf right behind the ball, and your ball trickles forward a few inches.

Well, there's good news!

When you watch this video now, you'll find out just how easy it can be to stop chunking and start scoring!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 5:37

Video Transcription:

Ah, chunking a chip is the most frustrating thing you can do in golf. You’ve hit two shots, two really good shots, you’re up by the green, maybe on a par 5, you’re ready to chip up and tap in for a birdie, and now you’ve chipped the bar two feet.

Whenever I see somebody come in for lessons, they’re always doing three of the exact same things when they’re struggling with chunking the chips. I’m going to show you how to solve this once and for all, and get to the root cause of what’s really causing this.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

When we’re struggling with chunking chips, there’s three things that are happening. But first let’s get to what is the actual cause of this. What’s happening as we’re coming into contact, you can imagine my forearm here is the ground.

Any time my club is coming steeply down into the ground, I’m going to struggle chunking, because if I don’t hit the ball and the ground at the exact same time and pair that up with great hand-eye coordination, I’m either going to chunk the ball, or I’m going to hit the ball thin and it’s going to shoot all the way across the green.

So what we have to do, is we have to shallow this angle of attack out, so your club should be actually coming down into the ground, it shallows out and there’s a nice wide zone where we can make contact.

Probably a three to four-inch zone, and if we use the correct technique, just like you’re seeing with all the pros, I can actually hit behind this ball, make contact with the ground a good two or three inches behind the ball, my club’s going to be coming in so shallow it’s just going to brush through the grass, and I’m still going to get a dead-solid chip shot.

Or, I could start about an inch in front of the ball where my club hits the ground, and I’m going to get good, solid contact there. So I’ve got this nice window, this big margin for error that I can hit in.

First, now that we understand what’ going on there, let’s talk about what’s actually causing this steep angle of attack and how we can get rid of that.

The first thing I see, and I see this all the time, almost every single person that comes in struggling with chipping, they’ve been told to put the ball back in their stance. So now the ball is back here on the inside of my right foot, and they’ve been told to get some forward shaft lean like this.

Now what happens when ‘m doing this, you can imagine my natural arc of this club, the bottom of the arc is going to be somewhere up here toward the left, because my weight is slightly left as I’m chipping.

If I have my weight left, I’ve got the ball back, big forward shaft lean, now I’m chopping down into the ground very, very steeply. That works out OK if you have that perfect hand-eye coordination, and you’re hitting the ball and the ground at exactly the same time.

That’s almost impossible to do, I don’t know anybody that can do that time, after time, after time.

If you’re doing that technique and you’re already chipping pretty well, that’s great. That means you have really, really good hand-eye coordination, but that’s not the easiest way to do that.

So what we need to do first, is we need to go ahead and put our ball a little bit more forward in our stance. So it’s off about the logo of my shirt or my left ear. This is pretty much going to be where the ball is for all of our full swings when we’re hitting off the round.

Now you can imagine as my club is coming into the ground, because my weight is a little bit left again, the bottom of that circle, the bottom of that arc is going to be just in front of this golf ball. Now instead of chopping down like this, we’ve leveled this out.

Now the second piece to this that really makes a difference once we get the ball up here, is we need to have forward shaft lean, and we need to have what I call flat compression. That club is moving into the ground and having that flat spot that I talked about.

How we’re going to do this, is we have to have forward shaft lean, and as my club gets closer to the ground, you can see that my handle is leaning forward, and the club almost touching the ground at this point.

From here what happens is, the handle actually turns back up a little bit, and as my club releases down, that creates a flat spot as my club gets close to the ground, and it brushes across the turf for a good six to eight inches on the ground when we’re chipping.

So it’s coming in, and it’s going this six to eight inch level flat spot as we’re doing that. Again, that can only happen if I have forward shaft lean, and then my handle is turning up as my club head is releasing.

We’re going to do this for a couple reasons. Our arms and hands are naturally going to e swinging back up if we just let them rotate completely comfortably. Plus, my left shoulder is going to be rotating back up.

We’re just allowing the hands and the arms to turn back up like they should, and that’s going to flatten out that angle of attack. So if I go ahead and do this, we’ll do a couple close ups here, and you can see how my club is brushing through the grass on a nice six to eight-inch area, and it’s not chunking down into the ground hard at all.

Those are the two biggest areas I see with people coming in too steep. Now the last thing here is really, really common, and I think we’ve all heard this before, but it’s good to remind ourselves of the basics.

I want to make sure that I’m not decelerating. So as I take this club back, I don’t want to go way back here and then slow down as I’m coming into the ball. That makes the face really unstable, and I could chunk or hit it thin, I’m not going to be very consistent.

I want to have a nice, even backswing and follow through, that way I can get that good contact. So if I put all three of these pieces together, ball a little bit forward, little bit of weight on the left, I’m going to have that flat spot as my handle turns back up a little bit, and I’m going to make sure that I accelerate through the ball.

That’s going to get us those nice, clean strikes, and you’ll notice there as I hit that ball correctly, there’s absolutely no divot. I’m coming in so level with the ground, I’m clipping the ball with good forward shaft lean, but I’m not taking a divot as I’m doing that.

Good luck to you guys. Work on those three keys, and I guarantee you’ll get rid of the chunks forever.

Oh! Almost made that one.