Chipping drills you can do at home are the simplest way to keep your short game sharp when the course is closed or covered in frost. All you need is a towel, a bucket or laundry basket, a mat or a strip of old carpet and a handful of foam practice balls. Every drill below trains the same three skills: clean contact, a landing spot and distance control.
Winter is when most of us let the short game slide, and then we spend the first rounds of spring chunking chips. We're a family-owned golf company in Boise, Idaho, selling clubs direct to everyday golfers, and these seven chipping drills are built for a garage, a basement or a backyard, each with reps, a score and a place in a 20-minute weekly routine.
You don't need a simulator or a net. Most of this is already in your house:
Use the wedge you chip with most on the course.
Indoors, use foam or plastic balls only, and take a slow practice swing before the first rep to check you have room around lights, windows and the TV. Hit off a mat or carpet rather than bare concrete or tile, which is kinder to your club and closer to the feel of turf. Outside, real balls on real grass are fine as long as nobody is in the line.
Contact means hitting the ball before the ground. The landing spot is where the ball should land so it can roll the rest of the way. Distance control is matching the length of your swing to the shot in front of you. Every drill here works on at least one of the three.
If your setup needs a refresher, our guide on how to chip in golf covers it in full. The short version: a narrow stance, most of your weight on your lead foot, the ball back in your stance, hands ahead of the ball and a stroke that rocks with the shoulders like a putt.
It also helps to know the rule of 12 for chipping. Subtract the club's number from 12 and you get roughly how many parts the ball rolls for every part it flies, so a 9-iron rolls about three times as far as it carries. It's a rule of thumb for a fairly flat green, and you'll feel exactly why in Drill 7.
Work through these golf chipping drills in order the first week, then mix them into the routine further down.
Trains: landing spot and distance. It moves your eyes off the target and onto the spot where the ball should land.
Setup and score: lay a towel flat about 3 to 5 feet in front of your mat, with a basket a few feet beyond it. Hit 10 chips, trying to land every one on the towel and let the roll do the rest. Score one point for each of the ten that lands on the towel and finishes close to the basket. At 7 out of 10, move the towel closer or farther and go again.
Common miss: aiming at the basket and flying the towel. Make the towel the last thing you look at before you swing.
Trains: feel for the landing spot and roll. Put the club down and toss balls underhand toward the basket, landing each one on the towel so it rolls on to the target. A low toss lands sooner and rolls more than a high one, which is exactly how a chip behaves.
Score: 10 tosses, one point for each ball that finishes in or touching the basket. Then hit 10 chips to the same target and compare. Over the winter, you want your chipping score to creep toward your tossing score.
Common miss: rushing. Pick the landing spot before every toss, just as you will before every chip.
Trains: ball-first contact. Run a strip of masking tape across your mat and set a ball just in front of it, on the target side. Hit chips without letting the club touch the mat before the tape. A scuffed line, or a dull thud behind the ball, tells you that you caught it heavy.
Score: 10 balls, one point per clean strike. Get to 8 out of 10 before you move on.
Common miss: your weight drifts back and the bottom of the swing lands behind the ball. Keep most of your weight on your lead foot from start to finish.
Trains: hands ahead and quiet wrists. Grip down with your lead hand only and hit short chips to the towel. Without the trail hand to take over, any flick at the bottom shows up right away as a thin shot or a ball that pops almost straight up.
Score: 10 lead-hand chips, then 5 trail-hand chips, one point for each that lands on the towel.
Common miss: the clubhead passes your hands before impact. Feel the handle lead all the way through and keep the swing short.
Trains: distance control. Picture yourself in the middle of a clock face and use three backswing lengths, with your lead arm going back to roughly 7, 8 and 9 o'clock. Set three targets, such as 3, 6 and 9 feet away indoors, or farther apart outside.
Score: 3 balls at each length to its own target, 9 balls in all, one point for each that stops within a shoe length.
Common miss: a long backswing followed by a slow-down into the ball. Let the swing length set the distance and keep the rhythm the same on all three.
Trains: everything at once, with a little pressure, and it's the most fun of the golf chipping games here. Put a coin or cup on the carpet as the hole, chip from nine different spots and putt out each one. Every hole is a par 2.
Score: add up your strokes for the 9 holes. Par is 18, and it's the number you'll track all winter.
Common miss: going for the chip-in every time and leaving awkward putts. Aim to finish each ball within a putter length of the hole.
Trains: club choice. Hit the same chip with a 9-iron, a pitching wedge and a sand wedge to the same basket. With the 9-iron the landing spot moves closer to you and the ball rolls more, while the sand wedge has to land farther along and stops sooner. That's the rule of 12 in action, and it shows the line our pitch shot vs chip shot guide draws in more detail.
Score: 5 balls per club, one point for each that finishes in or touching the basket. Note which club scores highest.
Common miss: the same size swing with every club. Shorten the swing as the loft goes down, since the lower club rolls farther.
Practice with the club you'll actually reach for around the green, not whatever happens to be leaning against the garage wall. More loft sends the ball higher and it rolls less, while less loft keeps it lower and it rolls more. Neither is better on its own; it depends on how much green you have to work with.
If you're torn between two lofts, our 56 vs 60 degree wedge guide walks through how each one plays. A 52, 56 and 60 degree wedge set covers three common chipping lofts in one go, sold direct with no middleman, or you can browse our full range of golf wedges.
For winter golf practice, three short sessions a week will do more than one long one, because the feel stays fresh.
| Minutes | What to do |
|---|---|
| 0 to 5 | Warm-up: Drill 2, then 5 one-hand chips (Drill 4) |
| 5 to 15 | Two drills. Session 1: Drills 1 and 3. Session 2: Drills 5 and 7. Session 3: Drills 1 and 5 |
| 15 to 20 | Scored game: Drill 6, 9 holes |
Always finish with the scored game; it's what turns short game drills into practice that carries over to the course.
Fill in a card like this after each session. It's the only honest way to know your chipping practice is working.
| Drill | Reps | Target | Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 | Wk 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Towel landing spot | 10 | 7 on the towel | ||||
| Tape-line strike | 10 | 8 clean | ||||
| Clock drill | 9 | 6 close | ||||
| Up-and-down game | 9 holes | 18 or under |
If a score stalls for two weeks, move the target or swap the drill. Getting better is the point, and getting comfortable isn't.
Pick a landing spot and practice landing the ball on it. A towel 3 to 5 feet away, a basket beyond it and a few foam balls are enough. Short, scored sessions of about 20 minutes, a few times a week, will do more for your touch than an occasional hour of hitting balls with no target.
Yes, as long as you use foam or plastic practice balls and give yourself room. Hit off a mat or carpet rather than a hard floor, clear anything breakable and check the ceiling before you swing. Indoor chipping drills mostly train contact and landing spot, which is what most golfers need anyway.
It's a rule of thumb for choosing a chipping club. Subtract the club's number from 12, and the answer is roughly how many parts the ball rolls for every part it carries. A 9-iron works out to about three parts roll to one part carry, and a sand wedge, usually counted as an 11, comes out close to even. Green speed and slope both change the roll, so treat it as a starting point.
A little and often beats one long session. Three 20-minute sessions a week is a realistic winter target for most everyday golfers. Keeping score matters more than the clock, because it tells you whether your contact and landing spot are actually improving.
Most chipping trouble comes from a few habits: weight hanging back, hands falling behind the ball and flicking at impact, slowing the club down before contact and aiming at the hole instead of a landing spot. Drills 1, 3 and 4 go straight at those. If the setup itself feels off, start with the chipping guide linked earlier.
Chipping is one of the few parts of golf you can practice properly in a garage, and winter gives you the time to do it. Land the ball on a spot, hit it before the ground, match the swing to the distance and keep score, so you know these chipping drills are working.
Start tonight with Drill 1: lay down a towel, hit 10 chips and write down how many land on it. Once your contact feels solid, a natural next step is learning how to spin a golf ball, so your longer chips and pitches check up when they land.
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