Golf is Hard TV - Episode 29 - Chipping Visualization

Male Speaker: Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Golf is Hard TV, the Golf show for the rest of us. We are going to continue talking about chipping and we are going to actually look at some shots here and I kind of -- a question I want to ask about sort of where to think about aiming the shot. But we have gone over some basics, why don't we do just a quick recap of what we talked about in the last two episodes in terms of the concepts. Male Speaker: Yeah the concepts, it is great time because we have covered concepts and now we are going to cover the basic strategy and that covers most of the shot games and it's up to you guys to just practice a little bit. But concepts are, you need to be swinging down into the ball to make it go up and you do that by putting your sternum in front of the ball and the ball towards your back foot. So if I am hitting a shot that way, if I were a left hand, I would be leaning towards the hole, I want to let my club swinging down and through and that will get the blow, it will go up. And then with the posture the same as the full swing, just make sure your arms are hanging as much as they can, you are fully extended. Club is not quite on the ground at address because you need them to extend down through the shot and those are the basic fundamentals on chipping, very simple. Male Speaker: Great. So you are going to make fun of me in the Red Sox hat or-- Male Speaker: Oh, by the way, yes. Now you guys, can you see the B, Boston Red Sox and we are getting closer. We are baseball fans I know. You can see this grass is really kind of still an ugly brown but that's a great thing, is you are going to watch this grass grow. It is going to be nice and green in the next month or two. And the trees back there, beautiful leaves and it's just beautiful thing. So spring time baseball, Red Sox. Male Speaker: It's almost here. New Yankees Stadium, New Shark Stadium or New City Stadium, whatever the hell it's called, we are going to be in good shape. Alright so here is my question about Chipping. I have hit my ball here as usual, it is kind of around on the green not quite on the green and I am looking at the chip and my question is where should I be thinking about landing this shot. So when I hit I know it is going to go up in the air a little bit. Male Speaker: Right. Male Speaker: But I want to make sure that I think about this the right ways -- first of all is that the right question to be asked? Male Speaker: Yeah. That is a right question. You want to visualize a shot; you want to ask yourself what is the shot going to look like? Where about should it land? And that's what you want to ask. Male Speaker: I am asking. Male Speaker: Okay. Well the rule of thumb, lower the shot lower the risk or the lower the shot, the lower the risk, and that's you general rule of thumb strategy wise. We have covered the concepts of how to get the ball in the air. Now once you do that pretty consistently what do you want to think about? Male Speaker: What do you mean by that? Male Speaker: Yeah, what does that mean? And that's what we want to talk about here. So lower the shot means lower trajectory. The lower you can keep the ball, the less risk there is of hitting a bad shot. So let's say for instance you can see this shot here on camera. There is really no trouble here, we have a lot of green, we have about 50 feet of green. Male Speaker: Yeah. Male Speaker: You get about 3 or 4 feet of rough here. There is no need to fly this ball with a sand wedge all the way to the hole. I know it's like the shot every one wants to hit the high fly shot, very pretty, fly it all the way up there, let it just sit near the hole. That's great but it is very difficult to be consistent and if you miss hit the ball you can fly it up over the green and you can hit a 50 yard pass the hole because it takes a lot of swing to hit it that high and let it land that soft. I will only recommend doing that if you absolutely need to if you are hitting over a bunker and you didn't have a lot of green to work with. Male Speaker: Right. Male Speaker : So the lower the shot, the lower the risk. Male Speaker: Okay, it's good. I really like it. Male Speaker: So we will demonstrate what that looks like. What club do you have? Male Speaker: I have got an 8. Male Speaker: Alright. Male Speaker: So I have got a pitching wedge now, right this one. Male Speaker: This is pitching wedge here which -- myself if I am really out there trying to score and trying to keep my score as low as possible, I would chip this with probably say an 8 iron or 7 iron and just kind of get it to look like a putt. You want to get it on the green as quickly as possible and let it run. Male Speaker: So was that too high? Male Speaker: Well, it wasn't a bad shot, but that was about 6-7 feet short. So try it again. Male Speaker: That was too high. Male Speaker: Alright. Now that one there it went about 10-12 feet past the hole. Male Speaker: Yeah. Male Speaker: So now for the average golfer -- let's say it is pass 4 you are near the green in two shots -- Male Speaker: Yeah, I would happy with these other shots by the way. Male Speaker: She needs to chip. I mean where is she going to make out that as boogie? But you can do better with practice and that's why we are here. So, now there is a lot of swing involved in making those two shots. Now let's say we have got the same shot. Let's hit it with an 8 iron. Male Speaker: So this is an 8, okay. Male Speaker: Couple of practice swings here, visualize what that's going to look like. The reason these balls are on here is really this one now only needs to land about right here probably, it's going to run most of the way. Good posture, get the chin up, let the arms hang. Nice. Now you can see how that ball got on the green quickly. Male Speaker: Yeah. Male Speaker: And ran most of the way. I mean this shot is probably going to fly about 20% and run about 80% of the way. Good, now that one is a little thin, but you can see the result was almost the same. Male Speaker: Yeah. Male Speaker: There is not as much disparity in the result because there is less swing involved here, there is less loft, it is running more. See he has got good posture, arms are hanging. So let that club swing down nice. Now again not solid the contact but you see that's 10 iron right there. If you already have 50 shots with the wedge and 50 with the 80 you can much tighter stuff. Male Speaker: So the main thing is to visualize where you want to try land the ball and the concept is lower the risk -- lower the trajectory, lower the risk. Male Speaker: Lower the shot lower the risk. Male Speaker: I like it, I like it, it is good stuff. Okay, that's it for another episode of Golf is Hard TV, thanks for watching. Send in question, take some video of yourself if you like, we would love to take a look and -- Male Speaker: Yeah absolutely. That's great. And that's what it is all about. So as you get out there it's getting nicer out, we are getting into the golf season, send your questions, send your video and if you want to put it we will put it up, we will put your swing up on the site and we will put up some comments out there. So bring it on. Male Speaker: It is good, golf is hard. Male Speaker: Golf is hard. Male Speaker: Talk to you later.