Avoiding bad bouncing chips ?

[Gerald]

As my chipping has become better over the last few weeks, by using a 9i instead of a GW or LW ..... I still have sometimes a perfect chip with a nasty first bounce at an angle ..... which results mostly the right distance, but still over 5 ft. from the hole.

And the only reason is actually the bad first bounce.

Any tricks to avoid this...... ?

[Joeyvee]

Ha.. Me too. I use an 8 iron for a lot of chipping and roll outs and its amazingly more accurate FOR ME than using a SW or LW. problem is sometimes I'll have a good swing, it's right at the pin then it'll land (on a flat green) and roll way left or right. I don't know. I guess I'm putting a tiny bit of spin on it even with a miniscule stroke.. I feel your pain bro. Great question. I took it as so inevitable I never gave thought to trying to correct it. Sometimes it'll roll right at the damned hole though :) and it's usually a better shot and a lot closer than I could ahve gotten with SW or LW so I've been happy with the accuracy. But if I could figure out why it's missing I could drop even more strokes. That shot and some better irons has gotten me from cosistent 103's and 105's to low 90s :)

[O.B. Right]

On the rare occasion that I actually make a chip that spins, it generally lands and kicks right. The only time this happens is when I'm just off the fringe and "chop" the ball .. ie . .drive the club down to the ball and let it basically bury in the ground at the ball. The ball will then pop up a few feet, land on the green and kick right. I assume this is because I come over the top and impart side-spin on the ball when I don't mean to and if I fix it, the ball will check or spin back instead of right.

So - maybe you're putting sidespin on the ball from bad technique?