Why you can’t stop chunking your irons – and how to stop it

There are few issues in golf that cause players as much consternation as chunking their shots.

Firstly, the shot generally doesn’t go where you want and certainly doesn’t travel as far as you’d probably like. Secondly, it can become quite painful if you are consistently jarring a club into the ground while playing, you can damage your clubs, your wrist, your elbow, your shoulders, and even your knees. Third, greenskeepers will give you the evil eye.

So what is it that you are doing wrong?

Like most technical issues in golf, the issue is usually a compound problem, where several factors converge to give you a hard time.

Here we look at a few of those things and let you know how you might fix the problem.

One of the most crucial elements of excellent contact is proper posture. By allowing your hands to dangle below your shoulders and bending from the hips, you create a balanced stance that will help you to maintain your athletic form throughout your swing.

Ball location is among the most crucial principles. You may chunk the ball by just playing it just a hair over an inch too far forward at address.

You may test this by taking a practice swing and seeing where your club touches the ground in relation to your feet. If your club strikes the ground in the centre of your stance, you should ensure your golf ball is there when you get ready to launch.

If you swing with your heel on the ground, the bottom of the swing typically happens before the golf ball, resulting in fat shots and often big divots. Allowing this trailing heel to rise will cause the bottom of your swing to go appropriately under and after your ball.

Ideally, your stance for a ball on the ground should be about hip width, give or take a touch.

If your stance is substantially broader, your hips will typically wander too much side to side, and your hip will strive to be over each foot making you unbalanced. If you do not recenter yourself the same amount as your hips travel side to side, the club will frequently strike the ground before the ball.

It is critical that you correctly position your golf club on the ground behind your golf ball at address. When it is accurate, this might appear strange to players, especially for the more lofted clubs in your golf bag. The leading edge of a golf club is the aiming line, and the higher lofted the club, the more crooked that top line may seem.

What you put into your backswing is generally what you receive out of your forward swing. If your backswing is a straight line back with a tendency to travel towards the sky and is simply a raised action, all you’ll have is straight down, which tends to become caught and give you a jarring experience. Understanding that your backswing is circular in form can help you prevent this acute digging motion.

If you have an excessive forward push or shaft lean when setting up, this can easily lift the club off its bottom and leave only the sharp corner of the leading edge in touch with the ground, causing it to dig and become stuck.

It is a good idea to slow things down if you are chunking a lot, perfect your form, and then try to add some club speed after you’ve refined the shot.