How Matt Fitzpatrick’s cross-handed chipping technique can help your short game

Mark Townsend 20 May 2025

Matt Fitzpatrick first used his cross-handed chipping technique in tournament play at the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. Since then he has won the US Open, prevailed at Harbour Town, added a further six victories on the DP World Tour and played on a second (and winning) Ryder Cup team.

And we saw it again at last week’s PGA Championship where the Englishman’s tied eighth place was his best major finish since that memorable 2022 US Open win at Brookline.

In a Skechers day at The Hallamshire that day he expanded on why he moved to the cross-handed technique around the greens and why it might work well for the club golfer.

The basics
‘I started off using it for just basic chipping. I had issues when I would break my wrists too much so I would take the club away on the inside and then the ball would fall off the face and you wouldn’t get the correct flight or the correct strike. So I was getting one that would come up short and one that would go too far without any spin. This was always a practice drill going back that I would use with Mike Walker and Pete Cowen.

They would use it to sync up the body because, if you don’t, then you end up shanking it. So this makes me chip it correctly otherwise it will come off the hosel. The biggest thing that I’ve noticed is it feels like there’s always a straight line from my shoulder all the way to the clubhead so, with that, you’re always keeping the radius the same. When I was going with the normal grip the radius would get really narrow whereas with cross-handed it’s always staying the same and it’s an arc.

Ball position
‘That is obviously dependent on the shot and how you see the flight and how you want to manipulate that. Obviously the further you move it back, the lower it’s going to be and the further you move it forward the higher it’s going to be. For me, I’ve just got better and better at doing left hand low, I always felt comfortable with it but I think doing this now it definitely feels like I’ve got more variety. I first used it in a tournament at the 2017 PGA. I practised and practised it and I missed one left on number one and I looked at my caddy and he was like, well you’ve been practising it, you may as well give it a go.

Originally I started doing it just out of the rough because again, when you’re in the rough, you kind of need the speed and you need the correct technique. If you take the club away on the inside it’s going to grab it even more and there are going to be huge inconsistencies. With this it forces me to keep the clubhead effectively in line with my shoulder all the time so that way it’s going to be much better contact, it’s going to be square the whole time and you’re going to have a much better outcome.

Different flights
‘I don’t hit that many chip-and-runs but, if I do, I would still do cross-handed. I’m so used to going cross-handed now that going the other way kind of feels a little bit awkward. If I really want to lob it I know I can just open it up massively and just literally make the same movement.

I’m trying to actually build it up to about 50 yards because I know it’s really consistent and the flight and spin are so consistent. With a normal grip that is a lot harder and the good thing is I control the distance using my body rather than just my wrists. Now and again, if the ball is above my feet for example, it might be easier to go conventional.

Bunkers
‘That will be conventional as you can’t get the speed and it’s hard to get the angle into the sand. I’ll have a little bit of wrist set but you need much more in the sand.

The spinny ones
‘At first these were trickier but, the more I’ve done it, the more I kind of I’ve almost put a bit of a natural kind of touch on it where I can manipulate things a bit more. To start with it was obviously feeling very stiff and now it definitely feels a bit more that I mix things up. Technique wise I don’t need to work on it because it just happens because of the grip. The thing to improve is to get used to different clubs and lies.

Full swing
‘I used to use this technique in practice for pitching and half shots. It helps to shorten my swing and to keep things really connected.’