Why is the chip and run recommended? Think of your best answer, and I’ll tell you next week. In the meantime, consider the motivation for not hearing the answer over the last fifty years. It was there – ready for absorption – and yet it was withheld. Who benefitted? For shame, golf instruction industry. For shame.
Okay, here we go…. The chip and run is our lowest, club head-speed option for moving our golf ball the required distance in the air. Make note of which body parts we use to move our club for any MPH point on the speed dial. We use rotation, arms, and wrists for maximum speed shots. So, what do we use to move the club head more slowly. Rather, what muscles/body parts are NOT needed to move slowly?
Our hands and wrists are closest to our ball and contain our smallest, swinging muscles. We certainly don’t need small muscle groups to swing slower. Wrists are last to be added in generating speed, so wrists are the first subtracted when minimizing speed.
Our arms are next. You may think we need our arms to hinge and move for chip-and-run shots, but we don’t. Yes, arms are attached to our hands and wrists. However, arms too, contain muscles too easily affected by nerves and are without mass sufficient to reliably deliver predictable speed and resist impact without our, standout, slow-speed, predictable-delivery body part – our torso.
Only our torso rotation is needed to hit low-speed, chip-and-run shots. Our biggest, mobile chipping muscles are in our torso. Moreover, we create impact-resistance by connecting our hands, wrists, arms, and our torso into force far greater than even a long-grass lie can provide. Exceptional lies do occur. But exceptional lies usually require speed uncommon in chip-and-run shots.
If you observe PGA and LPGA players, all their chip-and-run shots are shoulder/rotation-driven. Thank you for reading.
John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy