If you need advice on how to improve your short game, there probably isn’t anyone better to listen to than Phil Mickelson.
Mickelson is an absolute magician with any form of wedge in his hands around the greens.
And the great thing about Mickelson is that he shares numerous chipping tips with amateurs looking to improve their short games.
The 55-year-old has six major championships and 45 PGA Tour titles to his name – an incredible tally that puts him amongst the real legends of the game.
It could be argued he is the best at wielding a wedge in and around the greens in the history of the game.
Now he has given amateur golfers a tip on how to hit arguably the most difficult short game shot of them all.
Phil Mickelson tells amateur golfers how to hit a ‘very hard’ shot
Mickelson is known for his incredible ability to hit high flop shots, low and spinny checkers, and plain and simple, run-of-the-mill chip and runs.
Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
However, there is one pitch shot that even he doesn’t recommend using!
When speaking on his brand new YouTube channel, Mickelson told amateur golfers the technique required to hit a ‘hook chip shot’.
He said: “Never, ever chip with the ball in the middle of your stance and your hands back, ever…unless you want to hit a hook. Ok, most of our shots, as we swing through with an open face, it creates cut spin, but a lot of times, a green is angled, and if we slice spin it with that slope, the ball takes off. A lot of the time, we don’t have the lie to do it, but if we have the lie, we can hit a hook spin shot. Here’s how we do it.
“What I’m going to do is, I’m going to put the ball in the middle of my stance, I’m going to sit my hands back and drop them low. So now I’ve got the lie wanting to hook it. So now I’m going to take it back and I’m going to try and flip it and try to get hook spin on it. My hands are set low and back, and I cast it and I let it flip and it kicks a little right, so when the green is sloped, it will kind of hold straighter, it won’t tear away.
“It’s a very hard shot to hit, I don’t recommend it, I don’t think it’s great. It’s hard to judge the distance because you have all of this flip. It’s not a great shot to hit, but at least you know how to hit it. It takes a lot of practice, and it’s not like you use it a lot, but it is nice to have.”
What Bryson DeChambeau said about Phil Mickelson’s flop shot at LIV Virginia
Back at LIV Virginia in June, Mickelson hit one of the most memorable shots of his career to date.
With his ball sat on the upslope of a bunker, and the pin almost behind him, the man from California hit a flop shot with maximum power.
The ball flew up in the air, almost in a sideways direction. It landed softly on the green and rolled into the hole.
And Bryson DeChambeau shared just how impressive the shot was after watching it first-hand.
He said: “Yeah, so Phil hit a drive up the right-hand side, blocked by a tree, tried to chip it around it, came out straight out of the rough, and it landed up on that upslope. When I saw it landing, I’m like, my gosh. He’s such a grinder. He works so hard, and I just felt — I actually felt a little bad for him at that point in time because he was playing pretty well and just couldn’t get anything going towards that back half of the round.
“Man, he created some Phil Mickelson magic there. Vintage Phil. To see him get up on the side slope, and he’s just staring at it. You could just see his wheels turning, and then he hit the shot, and I got the perfect angle of it. It literally looked like the top of this roof right here. Just came back down, landed perfectly, and I go, oh, my gosh, he’s going to make it, and it went in the hole and I was like, that’s got to be one of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen in my entire life.“
When you manage to impress DeChambeau to that extent, you must know you’ve done something special.
And that was certainly the case with Mickelson’s flop shot in Virginia last month.