5 Essential Chipping Green Drills

You miss 10 greens per round. That's 10 chip shots. Each one is a fork: chip it close and you save par. Chip it poorly and you walk off with bogey or worse. Ten chances to save a stroke. Ten chances to waste one.

Your short game is where scoring happens for mid-handicap golfers. Not driving distance, not iron precision — chipping and pitching. These five drills will make those 10 opportunities count.

What it trains: Precise control over where the ball lands, which is the foundation of distance control.

Setup: Place a towel (or a 3-foot square target) on the green at a landing spot that would allow the ball to roll out to the hole. The landing zone depends on the club: closer to you for a lofted wedge, further out for a pitching wedge or 9-iron.

How to do it:

1. From 15 yards off the green, chip 10 balls trying to land each one on the towel
2. Track how many hit the towel
3. Move to 20 yards and repeat
4. Move to 30 yards and repeat
5. Score: how many out of 30 hit the landing zone

Why it works: Most chipping distance errors come from inconsistent landing spots. If you land the ball in the same spot consistently, the roll becomes predictable. This drill trains the one thing that matters most: where the ball first touches the green.

What it trains: Versatility and understanding of how different clubs behave around the green.

Setup: Pick three clubs — a sand wedge, pitching wedge, and 8-iron. Choose one hole at about 20 feet from your chipping position.

How to do it:

1. Chip 5 balls with the sand wedge (high trajectory, less roll)
2. Chip 5 balls with the pitching wedge (medium trajectory, medium roll)
3. Chip 5 balls with the 8-iron (low trajectory, lots of roll)
4. Note which club produces the closest average proximity to the hole
5. Change positions and repeat to a different hole

Why it works: Most amateurs use one club for every chip. This drill shows you that the "wrong" club might actually be the right one for certain situations. A low-running 8-iron chip is often far more reliable than a high-lofted sand wedge when the pin is in the back of the green.

After a few sessions, you'll naturally start choosing the right club for each situation on the course instead of defaulting to your sand wedge every time.

What it trains: Realistic scoring pressure combining chipping and putting.

Setup: Choose 5 different positions around the practice green, each at a different distance and angle to a hole. These should represent real short game situations you face on the course.

How to do it:

1. From position 1, chip to the hole and then putt out. Par is 2 (chip + putt).
2. Record your score: 2 (up-and-down), 3 (chip and two-putt), or worse.
3. Move to position 2 and repeat. Continue through all 5 positions.
4. Your score for the "round" is your total from all 5 positions.
5. Perfect score: 10 (all up-and-downs). Good score: 12 or under.

Why it works: This drill combines chipping and putting into a realistic game format. It's not just about the chip — it's about the chip-and-putt combination. You'll quickly learn that a mediocre chip to 8 feet followed by a made putt beats a great chip to 3 feet followed by a miss.

What it trains: Confidence and technique from difficult lies.

Setup: Find challenging lies around the practice green: thick rough, bare lies, downhill lies, tight lies against the fringe. Most chipping practice happens from perfect lies — this drill fixes that gap.

How to do it:

1. From a thick rough lie, chip 5 balls to a hole. Note your average proximity.
2. From a bare/tight lie, chip 5 balls. Note proximity.
3. From a downhill or sidehill lie, chip 5 balls. Note proximity.
4. Compare your proximity from tough lies to your normal-lie proximity.
5. The gap tells you how much confidence you lose from bad lies.

Why it works: On the course, you rarely have a perfect lie for your chip shots. Practicing from tough lies builds the adaptability and confidence to handle whatever you find. Most amateurs panic when they see a tight lie or thick rough. After 50 practice chips from those lies, the panic disappears.

What it trains: Precise distance control across a range of chip distances.

Setup: No hole needed. Use the open practice green.

How to do it:

1. Chip your first ball to approximately 10 feet away
2. Chip the second ball so it finishes past the first ball but within 3 feet of it
3. Chip the third ball past the second, again within 3 feet
4. Continue creating a "ladder" of balls, each one 1-3 feet further than the last
5. See how many balls you can place in the ladder before one finishes too close or too far from the previous ball
6. Personal record: longest ladder without breaking the 3-foot spacing

Why it works: This drill develops incredibly fine-grained distance control. You're not aiming at a hole — you're calibrating the difference between "10 feet" and "13 feet" and "16 feet." That granular feel for distance is exactly what produces chips that stop next to the hole.

Like putting, you don't need all five drills every session. Pick based on your weakness:

The 20-minute chipping session

• 7 minutes: Landing zone drill from 3 distances
• 8 minutes: Up-and-down game from 5 positions
• 5 minutes: Three-club challenge from one distance

This covers distance control, scoring pressure, and shot versatility in a focused session.

Track these stats on the course to see whether your practice is working:

• Scrambling percentage: The headline number. Are you saving par more often after missing the green?
• Average chip proximity: How close are your first chips to the hole? This should decrease over time.
• Up-and-down saves per round: The raw count. More is better.
• Blow-up holes from missed greens: Are you still making double bogeys from greenside positions?

The connection between practice and results is often visible within 5-8 rounds of consistent short game practice. Scrambling improvements tend to show up faster than full-swing improvements because chipping is a feel-based skill that responds well to focused repetition.

• Green-miss frequency and scrambling benchmarks by handicap level are based on aggregate amateur scoring data from major tracking platforms.
• The landing zone approach to chipping instruction is widely used by professional short game instructors, including Dave Pelz's short game research.
• The effectiveness of multi-club chipping practice for shot selection improvement is supported by variability-of-practice research in motor learning.