Here’s How and When to Play a Chip Shot with Your Hybrid

When you need to hit a chip shot from near the putting surface, which club do you usually grab?

Some players like to chip with their sand wedge, while others will use a pitching wedge, or even a lob wedge.

Whichever it may be, chances are that there is probably one club in your bag that sees most of the chipping duty as a result of the confidence you have built in it over the years.

It’s perfectly fine to have a favorite chipping club, but you do want to also have as much diversity as possible in this part of your game. You’ll face a range of situations when you have to chip, so knowing how to chip with various clubs is going to help you make your way around the course.

Sometimes, you’ll need to play the ball high in the air, while other occasions will call for a low chip-and-run shot.

For those times when you want to keep the ball down, consider using your hybrid club.

While this is usually a club used for long shots, playing chip shots with a hybrid is a great way to take some of the risk out of the shot while still having a good chance to get up and down.

Why Chip with a Hybrid?

So, why would you reach for a hybrid club when there are so many other options in your bag to do the job? It’s all about making things as easy as possible.

Sure, you could take on the chip shot with a lofted wedge, but that will bring in the possibility of hitting the shot fat and leaving it way short – or hitting it thin and sending the ball scurrying across the green. With a hybrid, you have more margin for error and the chances of an ugly outcome will be reduced.

When picking clubs on the golf course, you always want to make your job as the player as easy as possible. You don’t get bonus points for taking on the hardest version of a shot – the only thing that counts is getting the ball into the hole in the fewest possible strokes.

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When the opportunity presents itself to play a chip shot with a hybrid club, you should at least consider it, as this might be the easiest option you have available.

Finding the Right Spot

As you might be able to guess, hitting a chip shot with a hybrid club is not something that you’ll be able to do with great frequency. Many of your chip shots will be such that you have no option of hitting a hybrid – you’ll need to use one of your wedges.

For instance, if the ball is sitting down in some deep grass off to the side of the green, you can immediately eliminate the hybrid from your list of options.

Only when the situation is just right will you be able to make this work properly.

What does the right situation look like? For starters, the ball should be close to the green.

You aren’t going to be able to carry the ball very far before it needs to land and roll out, so typically you’ll want to be within a couple yards of the green.

Also, you will need to have a clean lie, either on fairway-length grass, or in the first cut of rough (if that cut is rather short). Anything longer than that and the hybrid chip just isn’t going to come out cleanly.

Finally, you need to confirm that you have enough room to work with in order to play this shot.

Remember, there is likely to be a lot of roll out on the end of this shot, since the ball won’t have any backspin to speak of when it lands – and it will be landing at a shallow angle.

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The roll out is part of what can make this shot so effective, but you need to have plenty of space in order to let it work.

A Simple Technique for Chipping with Your Hybrid

The good news with regard to chipping with your hybrid club is that you don’t need to learn any complicated techniques in order to get good results from this method. In fact, you are basically going to copy a technique that you already have in place – your putting stroke.

The idea here is to use your putting stroke technique while holding your hybrid club in order to pop the ball quickly into the air and up onto the green.

As a bit of a refresher, there are a couple of key elements which are hopefully already in place in your putting stroke.

For one thing, you don’t want to be using your hands actively. Your hands hold onto the club, of course, but it is your shoulders that do the work of moving the club back and through.

In addition, you want to keep your head very still during the stroke, to make it as easy as possible to achieve a clean strike on the sweet spot.

Bringing together quiet hands with a steady head position should lead to nice results, whether you are putting or playing chip shots with your hybrid.

While the technique is simple, you do need to work on this shot in practice before you use it on the course.

Why? Distance control!

The ball is going to come off the face of your hybrid quite quickly, and you’ll struggle to hit your shots the right distance at first. It will take a little bit of work in practice to get used to how these shots react coming off the club.

In time, you’ll get comfortable with the distance control element, and the hybrid chip will become an important part of your short game.

Are you ever going to play the majority of your chip shots with your hybrid club? Of course not.

You may find quite a few opportunities to use this shot, however, so it’s certainly worth having in the bag.

Get to work on it sometime soon and add yet another option to your growing list of short game skills.