May 6, 2026
Struggling with your chipping? Karl Morris — coach to 6 Major Champions — shares the golf chipping tips that actually work, including the "surf the turf" technique used by tour players.
By Karl Morris | Mind Caddie
I've worked with golfers at every level for over three decades — from Major Champions to club golfers shooting in the 90s. And when it comes to chipping, the problem is almost always the same.
Not technique. Not equipment. Not even practice time.
The problem is that most golfers are trying to do the wrong thing.
They're trying to lift the ball into the air. They're gripping the club so tightly their forearms go white. They're thinking about the last time they duffed one into the rough in front of the green. And all of that conspires to make a relatively simple shot feel impossibly difficult.
These golf chipping tips aren't just about where to put your hands or how to position your feet. They're about understanding what's actually happening when you chip well — and what's getting in the way when you don't.
Here's the single most important thing I can tell you about chipping. The club gets the ball in the air. Not you.
The wedge you're holding has been engineered — with precision, at considerable expense — to do exactly that job. The loft is built in. You don't need to help it. In fact, when you try to help it, you're actually working against the very mechanism that makes the shot work.
What happens when you try to scoop or lift? Your body sends a signal to get underneath the ball. Your leading edge — the sharp front edge of the clubface — digs into the ground before the ball, and you either duff it five yards or catch it thin across the green. Sound familiar?
"Trust the loft of the club to get the ball in the air. Do not try to help it."
The job isn't to lift the ball. The job is to get the club interacting correctly with the turf — and let the loft do its work.
This is the concept that has helped more of my players improve their chipping than almost anything else. It sounds simple. It is simple. But it works.
Your wedge has two relevant edges: the leading edge (the sharp front of the sole) and the back edge (sometimes called the bounce). Most amateur golfers unconsciously favour the leading edge at impact — and that's where the trouble starts.
What you want is for the back edge of the sole to interact with the turf. Not to dig. To glide. To surf.
Think of it like an aircraft landing. There are three possible outcomes:
That third outcome is what you're training for. Once you feel it, you'll recognise it immediately. And once you recognise it, you can repeat it.
Take your sand wedge and make a series of slow, half-length swings. No ball needed initially. Your only intention is to brush the very top of the turf with the back edge of the sole at the lowest point of your swing arc.
Pay attention to your grip pressure. Tight hands create a steep angle of attack. Soft hands allow the back edge to stay shallow and glide. Think 'soft hands' before every swing in this drill.
Once you feel the back edge interacting with the ground correctly — and you will know when you get it — introduce a ball. Your attention stays on the interaction with the turf. The ball is simply a by-product.
Before every short game shot, I want you to ask yourself three questions. These aren't warm-up thoughts or pre-shot affirmations. They're a genuine process for organising your mind.
What is my INTENTION? Where is my ATTENTION? How is my ATTITUDE?
Intention gives you a starting point and a destination. Without it, you're just swinging a club. With it, your body organises around a clear task. Your intention might be to land the ball on a specific spot on the green. It might simply be to make solid contact. On a good day, it might be to hole it.
Attention tells your brain what to focus on in the moment of execution. Some players chip better focusing on where they want to land the ball. Others focus on the back edge of the sole, or a specific spot on the turf. You'll need to find what works for you — but the key is that your attention is somewhere useful, not somewhere useless.
"Your attention will be in one of two places: somewhere useful to the task, or somewhere useless to it."
Attitude is the emotional backdrop to the shot. Fear, frustration, indifference — they all show up in the swing. The players I've worked with who chip best do so with a kind of curious calm. They're interested in the shot, not dreading it.
This is one of the biggest performance thieves in the short game, and it's one we rarely talk about.
Mental time travel is what happens when your mind leaves the present shot and goes somewhere else entirely. It delves back into the last chip you duffed. Or the chip before that. Or the chip last Saturday that ended up in the bunker. It catalogues them all and presents them as evidence that you can't chip.
Or it jumps forward. It calculates what this chip means for your score, your handicap, how you'll feel walking off the 18th. It turns a simple 20-yard shot into something weighted with consequence.
Neither of those mental journeys helps you chip the ball.
When your mind is anywhere other than this shot, right now, you simply cannot execute it to the best of your ability. The good news is that the process of building a clear intention and placing your attention deliberately acts as an anchor. It brings you back to the present. Not as a vague aspiration, but as a practical mechanism.
If you want one practical drill to take straight to the practice area, this is it.
Place a tee in the ground so just the top is visible, a couple of inches on the target side of where your ball sits. Your intention when you chip is to remove that tee with the back edge of the sole after striking the ball.
What this does is automatically encourage the right club-to-turf interaction. The back edge grazes across the surface, collects the ball, and the tee tells you instantly whether you've got it right. If you dug the leading edge, the tee stays put or you never reached it. If you got it right, the tee pops out.
It's cheap. It gives you immediate feedback. And it trains the exact feeling we're talking about — surfing the turf rather than digging through it.
Once you're consistently removing the tee, start exploring different clubs to different distances. Chip with a 7-iron. Chip with a gap wedge. Chip with your sand iron. See how the same technique produces different flights and different amounts of roll. Build a library of shots you trust.
One of the most limiting beliefs I see in amateur golfers is the idea that chipping means reaching for the sand wedge. Every time. Regardless of the lie, the distance to the pin, or where the flag is cut.
The best chippers I've worked with — and the best short game players on tour — treat the whole bag as an option. A 7-iron chipped to a back flag with plenty of green to work with will roll out beautifully and be far easier to control than a flop shot that requires perfect execution under pressure.
Try this: from the same spot around the green, play three shots to the same landing zone — one with your most lofted wedge, one with a mid-loft wedge, and one with a less-lofted iron. Same landing zone, same technique. Notice how each ball behaves differently once it lands. Higher and stopping quickly. Mid-height with moderate roll. Lower and running out to the back of the green.
Now you've got a genuine tool kit. And a plan for front flags, middle flags, and back flags.
This one gets overlooked. Constantly.
When you hit a chip shot that feels exactly right — that glides through impact, pops up on the right line, lands exactly where you pictured it — stop and write down how it felt. What you were focused on. Where your attention was. How tight your hands were. What your intention was.
Scientific evidence shows that the physical act of writing creates new neural pathways. Your brain consolidates what it's learned in a different way when you commit it to paper. Your practice journal isn't a nice-to-have. It's a training tool.
If you're not capturing what works, you're relying on your memory to retrieve it under pressure. And memory under pressure is unreliable.
The short game is where rounds are made and lost. Most amateur golfers know this. Most of them also spend 90% of their practice time on the driving range.
The chipping tips here aren't about a secret technique or a new swing thought. They're about understanding how the shot actually works, what gets in the way of it, and building the kind of focused, present-moment practice that creates real change.
Graeme McDowell — former US Open champion and someone I've spent a good deal of time working with — once said to me that questions are the answer. So here's the question to take to the practice area:
What is my intention, where is my attention, and how is my attitude?
Get those three things right, and the chip shot tends to take care of itself.
Want to go deeper on the mental side of your short game?
The Mind Caddie app includes structured audio programmes on focus, pressure and on-course performance — built around the same principles I use with tour players.
Money back guarantee if you follow the app for three months and do not see an improvement in your game.
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