Golf Chipping Drills for Beginners: Build a Consistent Short Game

At a Glance: The best golf chipping drills for beginners focus on three things: solid contact, distance control, and landing the ball on a specific spot. Drills like the tee contact drill, landing zone drill, and up-and-down game each train these skills by helping you make cleaner contact and better control the rollout.

Most beginners spend the majority of their practice time on the driving range hitting full shots. The problem is that nearly 70 percent of those shots in a typical round happen within 100 yards of the hole. Chipping practice is where scores actually come down, and even small improvements around the green can lower your score significantly.

Chipping Fundamentals Every Beginner Needs to Know

The Basic Setup

Good chipping starts before the swing. Narrow your stance so your feet are about one clubhead apart, position the ball slightly back of center, and lean your weight onto your front foot. Let your hands sit slightly ahead of the ball at address. This setup promotes a descending blow, which is what produces clean contact and gets the ball airborne without scooping.

As GOLF.com Top 100 Teacher Kellie Stenzel explains in her breakdown of chipping contact, keeping your weight forward through the stroke is what prevents the instinct to lift the ball and produces the forward brushing motion that makes chips crisp and consistent.

Minimize Wrist Movement

One of the most common mistakes beginners make when chipping is using too much wrist action through impact. Flipping the wrists causes inconsistent contact, which leads to chunked shots that come up well short or bladed shots that shoot across the green. The chipping motion should feel more like a putting stroke than a full swing. Let your arms and body move together as one unit, keep the wrists quiet, and let the loft on the club do the work.

The Landing Spot Approach

Distance control matters more than trying to chip directly to the hole. Pick a landing spot on the green and focus on hitting that spot consistently. Once you can land the ball in the same area reliably, the roll-out becomes predictable and you will start getting closer to the hole without changing anything about your swing. This is the same approach tour pros use when practicing their short game.

Golf Chipping Drills for Beginners

The Tee Contact Drill

1. Place a tee in the ground on the target side of the golf ball just a few inches ahead of it

2. Set up with your normal chipping stance and address the ball

3. Make your chip stroke and focus on brushing the tee out of the ground after contact

4. If the ball gets airborne and the tee pops up, you made a proper descending strike

The Purpose: Train a forward, descending blow by giving you a physical target to brush after the ball. This removes the instinct to scoop and builds the low point habit that produces solid contact on every chip.

The Landing Zone Drill

1. Place a towel, headcover, or alignment stick flat on the green at your target landing spot

2. Step back to your chipping distance and pick a consistent starting position

3. Hit chip shots and track how many land within or on the target zone

4. Move the target to different distances and repeat to build distance control at multiple ranges

The Purpose: Shift your focus from the hole to the landing spot, which is how distance control is actually built. As PGA.com notes in their chipping drill breakdown, keeping the same target while using different clubs teaches you how trajectory and rollout change with each club, which builds smarter decision-making around the green.

The One-Hand Drill

1. Set up in your normal chipping stance

2. Remove your trail hand from the club and hold it with your lead hand only

3. Hit chip shots with one hand, focusing on keeping the lead wrist firm through impact

4. Once the lead hand feels consistent, add the trail hand back and repeat the same motion

The Purpose: Train a firm lead wrist through impact, which is the position that produces a clean, consistent strike. As Golf Digest explains in their breakdown of Lorena Ochoa's chipping drill, maintaining the wrist angle through impact is what separates consistent chippers from those who produce a different ball flight on every shot.

The Clock Drill

1. Place four balls around a hole on the practice green at equal distances, like numbers on a clock

2. Chip each ball to the hole from a different angle and lie

3. Count how many shots finish within three feet of the hole.

4. Repeat from a longer distance once you hit a set number close

The Purpose: Practice from different angles and lies in the same session, which is what builds real on-course consistency. Varying the lie and direction forces you to make small setup adjustments rather than grooving the same shot over and over.

The Up-and-Down Game

1. Drop three balls in different spots around the practice green at varying distances and lies

2. Try to chip and one-putt each ball to complete the hole

3. Count how many up-and-downs you make out of nine or eighteen attempts.

4. Set a goal score and try to beat it each session to add pressure to your practice

The Purpose: Add a scoring element to your chipping practice so the pressure of the drill mirrors the pressure of a real round. Short game practice that includes scoring and accountability translates directly to lower scores on the golf course.

How to Build a Consistent Chipping Practice Routine

Mix Your Lies

One of the fastest ways to improve your short game is to stop practicing only from perfect lies. On the golf course, chips come from different grain angles, tight lies, rough, uphill slopes, and downhill slopes. Practicing from different lies forces you to make small adjustments to your setup and ball position, which builds the adaptability needed for real on-course consistency. Spend part of every chipping session hitting from an imperfect lie and notice how your contact and trajectory change.

Use Trajectory Control at Setup

Beginners often try to change the height of their chip shots by adjusting their swing. The more effective approach is to adjust your setup, not your swing. Moving the ball back in your stance lowers the trajectory, while moving it slightly forward raises it. You can also open the face of a sand or lob wedge to add height without changing your motion. Together, these small adjustments let you control trajectory without introducing new swing variables.

Keep Sessions Short and Focused

A focused 20-minute chipping session with a clear drill and a specific goal will produce more improvement than an hour of aimless practice. Pick one or two drills per session, use a target on every shot, and track your results. Feedback is what makes practice productive, because without a target or scoring system, it's easy to repeat mistakes without realizing it.

Make Your Short Game Practice Count with BRUCE BOLT

The same grip that holds up on a full swing has to hold up on chips and pitches. A glove that slips on a short chip disrupts the wrist angles and lead arm position you built in practice. 

Consistent chipping comes down to a steady connection between your hands and the club on every shot.

Browse the full collection of BRUCE BOLT golf gloves and find the right fit for your short game.