so I've spoken before about the two elements of chipping so the first element is what I'm going to call airtime that's the amount of time the ball spends in the air and the second element is ground time that's how much the ball runs now ground time is controlled by the actual Club you're using a club with more Loft will spend less time running and a club with less Loft will spend more time running so the club and the loft of the club specifically determines how much your ball is going to run or the ground time today I'm going to focus on a little exercise that I work on to help improve my air time so the amount of time the ball spends in the air now the air time is actually controlled not by how hard you hit it but by the length of your swing so if I had a ball in my hand and I was going to throw a ball into each of these squares that I've set up here which is what I'm going to call the ladder drill if I was going to throw the first ball I would do something like that if I was going to throw it into the next Square I would take it back further and follow through further so when we throw the air time is actually controlled by our length of Swing so it is with chipping so for today I've got a nine iron it's just a simple ladder drill and you can do this anywhere I'm on a golf course the flag's just over there but I'm not aiming at the flag I'm just trying to get good at Landing the ball in this Square so it doesn't matter how good you are now if you keep working on this drill regularly you will get better and if you can get good at Landing the ball on the spot that you intend it's going to make you a much better chipper and you're going to lower your score as a result so I've just set these five alignment sticks up you can use anything you could use towels you could use golf tees just set up an area and we're just going to try and land each ball in the Square so I'm going to focus on that first one have a couple of practice swings so that one landed in the Square now I'm going to go with the next one so I'm now focusing on the second and when you're doing it I like you to go through your pre-shot routine if you want to stand back here and line it up you don't have to rush it you can take as much time in the world but we just want to try and get that feel of what length of Swing I need to produce the shot that I want so that one hit right on the edge my opinion is if it hits on the edge we count that as in I'm just going to move it back a little bit so that's two from two now we're going to go for that third box it gets harder and the less Loft you have on the club the harder this drill becomes so it's probably better done with more lofty clubs but uh you'll also start thinking gee I've only got two more to go to pass and you can start I start to feel a little bit of tension a little bit of nervousness so when we can bring a heat a little bit of heat into training I think it's a good drill that landed about two inches too far so that one's a fail so I'm two from three in a game of golf that wouldn't have been a bad result it's quite okay it's only missed I say two inches probably four inches but it was close but for this purpose it wasn't a pass now we go for that last Square the whole time we're doing it we think about our Rhythm and our timing we don't want to get faster or slower we just want to maintain the Rhythm and that one landed in that last box so my score for today is three out of four now if I want to I could go and repeat that and I could do it with a different Club or I could just repeat it again but the more times you can do this little drill the better you're going to be at controlling the air time of the golf ball and the landing area if you want to improve your chipping I've got a link to another video just up here that I know is going to help you improve your golf
Chip Better By Using The Ladder Drill
