You’ve hit a good drive, and then a decent shot to around the green. Pretty good! Maybe you’ll get up and down for par. Or, at worst, make a bogey and move on. In this maddening game of misses, things could be worse.
But then, disaster.
You pull your wedge, and chunk your ball a few feet. Then, you do it again. What looked like a potential par is now a double bogey or worse, and with your hopes of getting out of the hole with a reasonable score dashed, you may be wondering how this all happened.
In a nutshell, chunking chips happens with the low point of your swing is too far behind the golf ball. Your club hits the ground before the ball, and the result is an inglorious duff, or skull if you catch it more on the upswing.
How can you prevent it? Here are two drills that can help.
This one, from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Allen Terrell, involves standing with your feet almost pointing at the target. This will have the effect of preventing you from shifting you from your trail foot and encourage your body to rotate, which will move the low point of your move forward, and prevent you from chunking the ball. It’ll also have the secondary benefit of limiting your backswing, which will help golfers who tend to decelerate.
If you’re looking for another drill, this one is slightly easier than the one you see DJ doing above, but accomplishes many of the same thing. As Skillest teacher Shauheen Nakjavani shows via one of his students below, setting your trail foot is on its tiptoe and behind your lead foot will force more weight forward. You’ll also begin pivoting — or turning — around your lead foot, which will move the low point forward and, again, prevent chunks.
