Here’s why you’re skulling your chips — and how to stop

There are few things more deflating that stepping up to a greenside chip or pitch with hopes of getting the ball close, only to end up skulling the ball over the green or into serious trouble, like a deep bunker or penalty area.

Why do these shots happen? Golf instructor Kelley Brooke has the reason — and even better, a solution to fixing to the problem.

In a video posted to the LPGA Professionals YouTube page (see above), Brooke explained that there are two primary reasons why a player might skull the ball.

“The first reason is that their setup isn’t great and their weight shifts too much to their rear foot,” she says. “They hang back on their rear foot and they hit up on the ball. Ideally, we’d like to hit down on the ball.

“The second reason is that people get way too wristy when they pitch.”

Brooke then offers two fixes for these problems.

“As I said, we don’t want to be on your rear foot when you strike a ball because you’re going to be hitting up on it,” she says. “What we want to do then, is we want to make sure that our feet are closer together when we pitch and we really want to roll those knees.”

By rolling the knees, Brooke demonstrates a weight shift at address in which approximately 70 percent of her weight is positioned on her lead foot.

“At that point, I’m going to forward press my hands,” she says. “During the back swing, I don’t want to shift my weight because if I do, I’m going to skull that ball. We want to stay on the front foot.”

If staying on the front foot is a struggle for you, Brooke has a drill that can help.

“Put your feet very close together and then you’re going to lift your rear foot up and put it behind you, so you have no weight on it at this point. It would be almost impossible for you to shift your weight. So what this is teaching you is to be on your front foot at impact.”

From this position, you can hit pitches simply by rotating around your lead leg, Brooke says.

If your weight shift is sound and you still find yourself hitting skulls, Brooke says it’s likely that you’re using too much wrist. In that case, an alignment stick is all you need.

“Grip the alignment stick on your lead side of the club with both hands,” Brooke says. “Set up, notice that alignment stick is outside my rib cage. Take some 10-yard shots with the alignment stick. Try not to hit your rib cage.”

If you the alignment stick ends up hitting your rib cage, you’ll know your wrists are engaging when they shouldn’t be.

Give Brooke’s solutions a try during your next practice session and start hitting crispier chips.

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Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.