Padraig Harrington, winner of three majors including two Open Championship titles, shares the key to having a solid short game when chipping and pitching around the greens.
Welcome to Golf Channel Academy. I’m your host, Martin Hall. We’re here at Grand Cyprus Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. And I am delighted to be joined by Podrick Hurrington. He is a three-time major champion, six-time RDER Cup player, 30 worldwide wins. You don’t do that without a fantastic short game. Great to be with you. Let’s understand how you hit so many great short game shots. Yep, this has always been the strongest part of my game. Uh, I grew up with no practice range. So, all the practice time I did as a kid was basically around the short game area. To be honest, as a kid, I wouldn’t have known what I was doing. I just got the ball close to the hole. But over the years, I’ve learned a bit from watching my amateur partners in proams. So, we’re just going to really start off by covering the basic chip. Once you get this right, then you can start doing the fancy stuff. So, what I tend to see with a lot of amateurs is they set up reasonable, but as they go to hit the golf ball, they want to get it in the air and they fall back onto their right leg. So, essentially their center of gravity that they’re staring them as they’re coming in to hit it is going backwards. If this is going to go backwards, you’re going to hit behind the ground and get that double hit. So, for me, because in this chip shot, you don’t have that much time to transfer your weight. I like to see amateurs set themselves very much on their left leg. So, as you can see, once I set up in my left eye, my sternum moves right on top of the ball or even left of the ball. So, watch what happens when I take a practice swing. My practice swing is actually about four or five inches left of the golf ball. Whereas most amateurs as they’re coming in, their practice swing is brushing the grass 8 in behind the ball. If you continually practice like this, you’re never going to get a good contact. Your hands are going to be very active. All sorts of funny things are going to be happen. You might get the knees going if you’re back here. So, you’re going to get a lot of this even have a fresh air like I just did there. Whereas, if you sit on your left hand side and always make sure your practice swing is left, if you’re chronic, even making sure it’s a foot left of the ball. Once you’re on that left side, sit up there. Then you can hit that nice quality strike. So, when you are setting up there, Podrick, how how much weight would you feel you have on your left side there? Would it be 70% maybe? As much as you can get there. Basically, my heel is off the ground. I’m exaggerating it here. I’ve pushed the ball forward or pushed my weight forward. I’ve taken my heel off the ground. I’m all the way here. I’m I’m 95% over here as my practice drill on the golf course because I’ve got used to it. I’m reasonably comfortable on the golf course. I’m going to be like 75% over here on the golf course. But I I’ve earned that. I’ve worked hard to get in that position. For most amateurs, set it up as far left as you can. get your practice swing left with the golf ball and then your chipping problems will go away. There is an amount of release of the body. It turns a bit, doesn’t it? It it does, but you don’t have to think about once you’re in this position. It’s going to get out away. Okay. It is going. So, I’m not consciously going, I’ve got to turn because sometimes when people try and turn, the club will get behind and then they’ll have to catch up. So, the basic the basic chip shot, the basic contact, the mistake you see amateurs make, weights too far back. So get the weight forwards. They can either be too far far back to start off with or what tends to happen is they start in a reasonable position and move back. They don’t have the time to get forward. So they’re hitting from behind it and that means their hands get active and they get this funny sort of hit. All sorts of of lack of control. Whereas if they stay here, everything responds. And you can see it’s a much crisper action once you’re left at the ball. Everything responds to that position sitting on that left hand side. Let’s have one more good one. One more good one. [Music] Very nicely played. Now, that’s a great foundation to get us
1 Comment
Much respect to Padraig, respect his game, and his lessons are very helpful to us high handicappers.