Golf Chipping Distances

Being able to control the your distance when chipping can take strokes off your game. The best way to control the distance with chipping is to increase or decrease the size of your swing, whilst still maintaining the same chipping motion.

Once you have a consistent chipping stroke, you can start doing some simple drills to improve your distance control. For each of the drills below, start a few yards from the edge of the green.

1. Place a tee in the green about ten yards from where you are chipping from. Hit ten balls and aim to have them land within two yards of the tee. When you can do this eight times out of ten, you are ready for the next drill.
2. Place a tee in the green about fifteen yards from where you are chipping from. Hit ten balls and aim to have them land within two yards of the tee. When you can do this eight times out of ten, you are ready for the next drill.
3. Place a tee in the green about twenty yards from where you are chipping from. Hit ten balls and aim to have them land within two yards of the tee. When you can do this eight times out of ten, you have completed this set of drills.

Once you have completed the set of drills, you can aim for further improvement by doing the same drill but aiming to have the ball land within two yards of the tee nine out of ten times. Once you have accomplished this, you then decrease the target size from within two yards of the tee to even closer.

Sometimes you will want to chip onto the green from further than a few yards from the edge of the green. You can use the same set of drills, just start five or ten yards from the edge of the green.

Being able to control your chipping distances will make you more confident, and make it much more likely you will be able to get up and down from near the green.