When practising the set up it is important to split up the set up from the swing.

I was working on getting the alignment correct and the ball position in the right place for me to hit a draw.

I used clubs on the ground to make this as easy as possible.

I would then go through my usual routine to make the set up with every ball. Once the set up was in position all I was thinking of in the swing was the connection between the arms and the body.

If you are working on set up, don’t be working on technique in the swing. Get one thing sorted out before you go on to the next.

I was using my usual practice routine where I would hit balls in groups of 3 and also split practice into technique, feel and pressure situations.

Taking notes after each group of three balls and maybe even checking on the video how things are looking.

Remember, how it feels isn’t always how it is!

So, practice your set up and if the swing is ever out of sorts remember this is the first thing to check. Everything in the swing is built upon the foundations of the set up.

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Filmed at Ralston GC.

This is a method I have been using in my teaching for over 20 years which I find to be the easiest way to help players learn to chip the ball around the greens.

I like my players to have a routine to help them set up consistently. By using the image of having a clock face on the ground and the feet being where the hands of the clock would be and the ball being at 12 o’clock makes things easy to remember.

Once you have practised this for a while, you can discard the routine and just go to toes left, weight left and hands left, but only when you have a feel for the final position.

The actual motion itself is a rocking of the shoulders, with the hands and arms remaining relaxed and quiet. By quiet I mean passive.

There are no extra movements from the hands in the basic chip shot. Extra hand movements can lead to trouble for many golfers.

I like to grip down the shaft about an inch for better feel, play around with this as there is no rule on this. Experiment and see what works best for you.

When making the chipping motion, you may notice the right knee moves towards the target in the through swing. This is good as the weight is on the left foot which frees up the right leg.

If you can, practice the motion in front of a mirror and try to keep the in line position of the left arm and clubshaft throughout the entire motion.

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Filmed at Ralston GC.

The 3rd step in your practice plan should involve putting yourself under pressure to test yourself the way you will challenge yourself on the course in tournament conditions.

This involves having targets, goals and scores.

Often when practising the full swing I will make 3 fairways, one on the left, one in the middle and one on the right.

This will give you three different holes as you will be approaching each from a different direction.

In this case is was working on my iron play and hitting fades so I made up 3 greens.

My focus was on hitting 14 out of 18 greens as my goal, as this was my score the day before.

Each ball was played with the same club (5 iron) and every shot was to be a fade.

Again the 18 balls were split into 6 groups of 3, allowing me to take notes and record score.

If you go to practice, please give this 3 step system a try. I only hit 54 balls with full shots, but every shot had a purpose. This took much longer than most people I see at the range take to hit 100 balls, but much more effective.

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Filmed at Ralston GC.

Following up from the first video on practising the technique, we move onto developing the feel for shots.

Practising technique helps you, but it can only take you so far. How many times have you heard people moan about how they are hitting the ball well on the range, yet can’t take it onto the course.

In this video we talk about how you need to hit shots with different targets and changing clubs each shot. This makes the practice more random in which shots your are playing (similar to being on the course) yet still has a set structure in what you are developing.

Again, we use the 18 balls, split into 6 groups of 3. By doing this we can play 3 shots before taking notes on the quality of strike, the feelings you had in the swing and the results alongside which club and target you played.

At the end of this session you should have moved away from concentrating on technique and moved to how hitting the desired shot feels.

In the next video we will look at how to put yourself under some pressure to replicate the feelings of tournament play.

Get more videos here: http://wefixanyswing.com/videos/

Filmed at Ralston GC.

While practising today I got to thinking about the differences in how the pros practice compared to amateurs.

Pros will tend to have a plan for their practice sessions.

When I teach and also when I practice for myself, I always have a plan of what I would like to achieve from the session.

It is important to break down the session into steps. For me, I like to have 3 steps, technique work, feel work and then pressure work.

I will hit 18 balls in each step, splitting the balls into groups of 3 and then take notes after each 3 balls on where they went and how I felt.

This video is my going through step 1 with a 7 iron, practising hitting a fade.

The technical side of this was having alignment aids set out and changes in the set up and swing to hit this shot.

The next video will go into detail on step 2.

Get more videos here: http://wefixanyswing.com/videos/

Filmed at Ralston GC.