Josh’s Tips & Tricks: Practice on The Mill

Intro

Hello golfers, welcome to this week’s tips & tricks. Just a quick one this week to show you how you can practice your chipping in the winter months on our fantastic chipping green. Now the nights are dark and the weather is cold and wet, getting out to practice short game isn’t usually top of the priority list. Keeping it sharp through the winter though will help massively when the season starts again. Lets have a look at how you can practice on The Mill.

Chipping Practice

Take a look at the following short video to see how you can improve your chipping by using our short game area…

Lots of people say how fast and unrealistic the short game area is. If you haven’t used it, it is very quick and has a few steep hills. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be used to get good feedback from your chipping practice.

When I do lessons out on The Mill I try to use the side furthest away from the car park. This is because the mat is the most like grass and it means you’re chipping back up the slope. The ball then stops quicker. This isn’t however the main purpose of this article.

What I try to get people to visualise is the height of the shot and then the landing area. In our country at this time of year, where the ball lands is often very close to where the ball finishes when we chip. Therefore working on the height and landing area are the keys to success. I have used different coloured hoops for this example but you could use different head-covers, different coloured golf balls, different coloured towels, basically anything you can get your hands on. Set them at different distances and try to land it on them with different heights. Try to get a reliable strike and height then when you get on the golf course try to replicate it.

Get used to using your lofted clubs such as your sand wedge or lob wedge. These will drop and stop very quickly in wet conditions. If you use a gap wedge or pitching wedge on the course, they might have one or two bounces forward then stop. Anything with slightly less loft is then likely to run a bit more when it hits the surface and may skid forward.

Summary

Don’t neglect your short game practice through the winter. We have a floodlit short game area which can help tighten up your skills. Practice landing the ball at different distances with different clubs and at different heights.

If you struggle with your short game come and see me and we can spend some time on The Mill.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK A LESSON NOW

See you soon,

Josh