Scooping is when you try to lift the ball into the air with your hands instead of letting the club do it. Almost every beginner does this. It feels natural — and it is exactly the thing that gives you those ugly thin and fat chips around the green. Once you stop scooping, chipping becomes one of the easiest, most satisfying shots in golf. Let me show you how.
First, why bother? Because the short game is where scores really drop. Close to 60% of all your strokes in a round happen inside 100 yards. So a clean, reliable chip saves you more shots than any big drive ever will. This is good news for a beginner — the fastest improvement is the closest to the hole.
What is scooping — and why does every beginner do it?
Scooping is a little wrist-flip at the bottom of the swing. Your hands try to scoop under the ball and throw it upward, like you would toss a scoop of sand.
You do it because your brain wants to help. It is the same instinct you use in tennis or basketball — you lift, you flick, you send the ball up with your hands. In most sports this works. In golf it does the opposite. The club is already built to lift the ball for you, and when you add your own flick, you fight the club instead of trusting it.
A lot of new golfers tell me the same story: they think they need a higher, softer club to get the ball in the air, so they flip harder and harder to help it up. Then one day I put a simpler club in their hands, set their weight forward, and ask them only to brush the grass. The very first chip floats up softly and rolls to the hole. Their face — this is my favourite moment in teaching. The loft was there all along.
Why hitting down makes the ball go up
Here is the physics, and it surprises everyone: to make the ball go up, you hit slightly down.
Your wedge already has a lot of loft built into the face — often 56 to 60 degrees. That angle is what launches the ball. When you scoop, the clubhead is travelling upward at impact, and this actually removes loft. The result is a thin shot that shoots across the green, or a fat one that goes nowhere. When you strike slightly down and forward, the loft does its job, the ball climbs, and contact feels clean and crisp.
So please stop trying to lift. Trust the club. Your only job is to deliver it down and through.
How to set up so scooping becomes almost impossible
Good chipping is 80% setup. Get the position right and your body almost cannot scoop. Here is the setup I give every beginner:
- Narrow stance — feet about one clubhead apart. This is a small, quiet shot.
- Ball in the centre, or just a touch back of centre.
- Weight forward — put about 70–80% of your weight on your front foot (the foot closest to the target) and keep it there the whole time.
- Hands ahead of the ball — your hands sit a little in front of the clubhead, so the shaft leans slightly toward the target.
That last point is the whole secret. Hands ahead at address, and hands still ahead through impact. Teachers call this forward shaft lean, and it is the single biggest difference between a real chip and a scoop.
One golfer wrote online that he fought his chipping for nearly twenty years and had tried every tip on the internet. Steeper swing, softer hands, new wedges — nothing. In the end it was one thing: his weight stayed on his back foot through the shot, so a scoop was guaranteed. He moved his weight forward and kept it there, and clean contact came back almost at once. Weight forward. Stay forward. This fixes most chipping in a single practice.
And let your body turn. If your hips stop and your arms keep going, your hands have no choice but to flip. A gentle rotation of your chest and hips through the ball keeps the club gliding forward and the hands leading. The body is the engine; the hands just hold on.
Which club should you use?
The golden rule: chip whenever you can, pitch only when you have to.
A chip flies low and rolls a lot, like a putt with a little hop at the start. A pitch flies high, lands soft, and stops quickly — but it needs more wrist and more timing, so more can go wrong. For a beginner near the green, the low, rolling chip is the safe, smart choice almost every time. Land it on the green and let it run to the hole.
You do not need to always grab your most-lofted wedge. Try a 9-iron or pitching wedge for a chip that runs. Less loft, less spin, more roll — and far less that can go wrong.
Two drills that kill the scoop in one session
You can beat scooping in a single practice with two simple drills. Both give you honest feedback right away.
The towel drill. Lay a small towel on the ground about two inches behind your ball. Now chip. If you scoop, the club dips early and hits the towel first — you feel it, you hear it. A proper down-and-forward strike never touches the towel. Do ten chips and let the towel teach you.
The tee drill. Push a tee into the ground about two inches in front of the ball, just above the grass. Your goal: hit the ball first, then clip the tee on the way through. This trains the club to keep travelling down and forward past impact, exactly where the flip used to happen.
Ten minutes with these two beats an hour of guessing. Small steps, done often, win in golf.
When does chipping end and pitching begin?
Simple: a chip is your low, running shot from just off the green. A pitch is your higher shot, with more carry and more stop, for when something is in your way — a bunker, longer grass, a pin tucked close behind the edge. Learn the chip first and solidly. The pitch, with its extra wrist hinge, comes later, once the scoop is gone for good.
The Dutch coaching says exactly the same, by the way — golf.nl and the others all teach weight slightly forward, a quiet pendulum of the shoulders, and rotation from the body instead of a flick of the wrist. Good fundamentals travel everywhere.
If you want to feel this in your hands, the short-game and chipping greens at Chi Chi Golf in Utrecht and at Golfschool Hoenderdaal in Driebergen are perfect — and you do not even need your GVB yet to practise there. This all builds on your grip, stance and posture , the foundation for every shot. When you are ready, the same weight-forward idea also cures those fat and thin strikes , and a little time with short-putt drills turns good chips into saved shots.
Come and hit a few chips with me. I promise you — the day the scoop leaves your swing, you fall a little more in love with golf. You can see all the lesson options whenever you feel like starting.