Chipping From Rough

A tricky shot is when you have missed the green, but not by very much, and your ball is sitting down in some rough.  If the shot was a longer shot, it would not be that difficult.  You would naturally have enough speed to make solid contact with the ball, but in this situation, because the shot is short, it can be difficult to get enough speed to make consistent contact and control your distance.  The key to playing this well is to steepen your angle of attack on the ball, thus removing as much grass between the ball and the club face as possible, giving you control.  The key points you will need to change from your normal chip shot around the green are:
– Place more weight on your left foot at address.

– Stand a little closed to the target.

– Increase your wrist cock in the backswing.

– Open the club face so that you can increase your swing speed, helping you cut through the grass.

Enjoy this video and be sure to try and practice this before you try it in a competitive round.

Transcript

So you’ve missed the green, but not by very much. You find yourself on a little bit of a rough that if you were able to hit a full shot it wouldn’t really cause too much problem. You’d have enough speed to make good contact with the ball. But in this situation, it’s a short shot, you can’t really get much speed. It’s very difficult to get a good contact on the ball and control your distance. Now, what we’re trying to do when we’re playing this shot, to be able to get a better contact and be able to control your distance a little more consistently, is we’re trying to get a steeper angle of attack. We’re trying to come down on the ball with a little bit of a steeper angle, a steeper blow.

If we come in in a shallow angle, this way, what’ll happen is we’ll get a lot more grass caught between the ball and the club face, making it very difficult to predict how fast the ball will come out. Sometimes it doesn’t come out at all. So to be able to get a steeper angle of attack on the ball, what I’m going to do is I’ll place more weight on my left foot. But the important thing here is that I actually stand a little bit closed. I’ll put my left foot in front of my right, because that will allow me to turn more onto the ball, with a little bit of steeper blow. The more I open up my body, I have to swing on a more in out path to my bodyline that will make my swing shallow, not steep.

I want to be aiming a little more to the right, almost feel like I’m coming over the top of the shot slightly, that’ll steepen my angle of attack. If you’re somebody who’s good at using your wrists, you can maybe use a little bit more wrist cock in the back swing. Again, that’ll get the club head in the air a little faster, allowing you to steepen your angle of attack on the ball. Another important thing I do here is I open the club face a little more than I normally would for this length a shot. The open club face will allow me to play the shot with a little bit more speed than I normally would. Again, that just helps the club go through the grass, creating a better impact, allowing you to control your distance.

So here we go, a little bit of a closed stance, open club face. I’m going to use my wrists, and just feel like I come down on the ball sharply.