John Daly was featured on the Golf Channel a few weeks ago. Of course they showed his huge backswing but John also shared the most important tip that he has always used for chipping tempo. He demonstrated how he hits balls with his leading arm only, every time he practices.
Most right handed golfers have less control with their left hand and arm so this tip is not something that will be easy in your first attempts. Even John pointed out that it is difficult to connect perfectly with the ball with every practice swing. His goal is to hit shots up to 30 yards. His focus is on rotating his body as he swings through the ball. If you don’t rotate your body to finish your swing, you will not be successful with the single arm swing.
Chipping seems to be the easiest shot in golf but when the pressure is on and we want that perfect chip, our bodies seem to freeze up. We seem to go into an arms only swing mode. Our practice swing may be perfect but when we step forward to hit the ball our mind and body go into freeze mode. How often are your chips fat or thin? What causes this?
John explained that we are forgetting to:
•shift our weight
•get our body to rotate through the ball and
•finish facing our target.
John’s practice technique uses only his leading arm to develop these habits:
1/ Take your club back far enough to let the weight of the club do the work.
2/ Use your swing tempo to manage the acceleration of the club (don’t rush it in the transition)
3/ Coil and then release your hips, shoulders and arms as you shift through the ball
4/ Ensure that your leading elbow is straight throughout the swing (back and forward)
Finish facing the target
[Point of Interest: Jason Palmer is a 30-year-old professional golfer who just earned his 2015 European Tour Card by overcoming his chipping yips by hitting with his only his right hand for all chips and sand shots of up to 50 yards. This is the opposite hand from Daly’s practice plan but the single hand hit must be doing something to fool the brain. Possibly some of us have a disconnect between the right and left side of our brains because the right half of our brain controls the left side of our body and the left half of our brain controls the right side of our body. COULD THERE BE MORE TO THIS STORY?]
Practice hitting many balls with your leading arm only as it may take 20 or 50 hits before you find some consistency. John also uses his one hand swing practice for fairway irons and sand traps. Adding your trailing arm will give you more club stability and consistency but you need to keep the same tempo and finish to achieve success.
GOLFSTR+ is the ideal chipping aid. It controls your straight leading wrist and limited lag in your trailing wrist when you are chipping. You should use it to practice chips with John Daly’s practice plan. Buy it today on www.golfstr.com
