Chipping away at career advancement
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Many people believe that learning how to golf can help advance their career. Over the next few weeks our Word Up segment will feature golf lessons and tips from Canadian PGA teaching professional Bari Gourley. This episode features some tips on how to properly chip the golf ball.
Shelley Ridgewell: Hello, and welcome to the mini show Word Up, where we offer a slightly different perspective of the insurance industry. Now, have you ever noticed that at many of the insurance conferences they always seem to have a golf tournament. Whenever I read the conference brochures they talk about how there’s a golf dinner and prizes and it always sounds like a fantastic event. But what about us, people like me, who don’t really golf and don’t have the confidence to go out and play in a competitive or fun-only event? Does that mean we have to sit and do the spa day or go shopping, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But a golf tournament does seem a bit exclusive. So determined not to completely embarrass myself and to actually go out and confidently join these events at conferences, I’ve asked the help of Bari Gourley.
Bari Gourley: Hi, my name is Bari Gourley and I’m a Canadian PGA teaching professional here at Kingswood in beautiful, sunny Fredericton, New Brunswick. I’ve played golf for 24 years and I started when I was in womb, and it’s been a life-long journey for me and I absolutely love it!
Today we are going to learn the difference between a chip and a pitch. A lot of people don’t know the difference and it’s part of the short game when you are getting close to the green. You chip when the ground in front of you is flat. You get the ball to bump and run up to the green. You pitch when you have to go over something; over a bunker, over water or a mound. We find nowadays a lot of people pitching even when the ground is flat, and that’s fine. You can do that if you like, but there’s more chance for error and I like to have a safer shot.
You pitch with a pitching wedge, sand wedge, or lob wedge, and it has more loft on it. The neat thing about chipping is you can chip with any club. And I’m going to teach you the chip today. There’s five basic steps to the chip. Before I get to those we’re just going to talk about why I like the chip more. The main reason is there is less moving parts. When you chip all that moves are the arms and the shoulders in a pendulum motion. That’s it! Sounds pretty easy huh? Well, it is.
Now, think of these five things every time you go to chip:
Number one: You are going to choke down on the club. Don’t hold it where you normally do. Choke down near the end of the grip because you don’t need the length for distance.
Number two: You are going to play the ball closer to your back foot, which is your right foot for righties, left foot for lefties.
Number three: You are going to lean on your front foot. You are going to put your weight forward and your hands forward.
Number four: You are going to move your arms back and through in a pendulum motion.
Number five: It should be easy, but is the hardest, make sure you watch the club hit the ball.
You should hear a little click and the ball goes up in the air a little bit because the ball’s been placed at the back of your stance and the downward motion actually hits the ball up in the air. Don’t feel the need of having to scoop.
Check out Bari and Shelley with more golf tips:
Hit the golf ball further and further your career
