Dan Grieve's Fix for the Flippy Chip: Stop Early Forearm Rotation

Short-game coach Dan Grieve says a common chipping fault -- too much forearm rotation early in the swing -- is what causes club golfers to flip the clubhead at impact and produce inconsistent, high-spinning strikes on shots that call for a low, running flight.

What causes the flippy chip?

Grieve says the problem starts when a golfer rotates the forearms too early in the takeaway rather than letting the lead shoulder and chest initiate the motion. That early rotation opens the clubface at the top of the swing. Because most golfers sense the face has opened, their instinct is to manipulate and over-release the club coming down to square it back up, which shifts the swing path inward, lowers the bottom of the arc and leads to scruffy contact.

How does Grieve fix it?

Grieve starts with setup: moving the ball back in the stance and lining it up with the trail heel so the sternum sits ahead of the ball at address. From there, he uses two drills. The first places a reference ball on the ground and asks the golfer to keep the clubface pointing at it through the top of the backswing, which prevents the face from opening. The second removes the trail hand from the club entirely, forcing the golfer to initiate the takeaway with the lead shoulder and chest while keeping the club on plane.

Keeping the clubhead outside the hands, not inside, is the checkpoint Grieve uses to confirm the fix has taken.

Grieve says the follow-through on these chips should stay knee-high at most, with a smooth "tick-tock" tempo, and that golfers should practice the same setup from different lies since loft and ball position change how the shot releases.