Drive for show putt for dough as the saying goes, but what about those shots in between? A pitch or chip shot makes up a fair number of the shots that you will make on a golf course, and they are most often the ones we can mess up, especially in a pressure situation. What is the best way to sharpen up that part of your game? Read on, and I will give you tips and tricks to have you chipping consistently from the comfort of your backyard with a chipping net.
What Equipment Do You Need?
Chipping Net
To improve your golf skills you need to practice them and it is not always possible to get to a golf course. Golf Chipping Nets give you the ability to practice where ever you may be, check out our Golf Chipping Nets Product Review for some great options.
The beauty of a chipping net is you can erect it at home or while away on holiday and get some practice in. Most nets allow for a range of shots – pitching and chipping. If you aren’t sure the difference between these sorts of shots have a read of our article about chip shots.
Practice Balls
You can practice your shots with conventional golf balls which will give you the right feel of the ball off the face of the golf club, or If your space is very limited or if you just want to practice body positioning and swinging the golf club rather than the impact with the ball, you can use practice golf balls.
These nifty lil things allow you to address the shot as you normally would and also to perform the shot at 100% without the niggling fear that you might put the golf ball through the net and through the window.
Practice balls come in a range of colors and styles. My preference is colourful hollow airflow balls such as these from KOFULL
Golf Mat
You may be blessed with grass areas in your yard that will simulate the grass of the golf course – rough and fairway. For those not wanting to move the net around or living in a concrete jungle there are golf mats. These mats are in effect artificial grass and come in different textures. My pick for Golf Mats is the GoSports Tri-Turf
The Process
Once you have all the equipment you can get started. The beauty of a practice net is that we can not see the ball flight, which means that we are less likely to focus on that part of the shot. what I mean by that is, on the golf course we care about how that shot looked, rather than how we produced it. Practicing into a chipping net is forcing us to focus on technique and gives us the opportunity to try new things.
In our article ‘What is The Fastest Way To Improve Your Golf?’ we go through the a logical sequence on how you can improve your golf. The same steps can apply here too.
So let’s get chipping into that practice net and improve our golf!
- MAKE TIME – Make sure you set aside a good 30 minutes to practice
- EQUIPMENT SET UP – Set up your practice net where you will be able to get some full golf swings in, this will allow you to practice the full range of pitching and chipping shots
- VIDEO – Having a camera set up to take images / video of your technique is not always necessary, but with does give you a good idea of how your technique is going when you are trying new things.
- VOLUME – without thinking too hard about things get swinging. Having a good number of balls that will let you swing repetitively making small tweaks as you go
- FEEL – learn to feel what a good strike feels like. This can also be evidenced with video – recall what your set up and swing felt like when you performed a swing technically well, aim to get that same feeling each time you swing a club
Summary
Being a consistent and confident golfer takes practice. The amount of time that you are able to dedicate to specific components of your game will be reflected in the gains you will make when playing a full round. Using a chipping net will allow you to practice more often, at times that you can’t get to the course or the driving range.