I Copied Matt Fitzpatrick And Started Chipping Cross-Handed. It Actually Worked.

I come to you with a confession:

I can’t chip or pitch a golf ball to save my life.

This has been a lifelong problem. While some people struggle with the putting yips or a nasty slice off the tee, my ultimate bugaboo has been chipping.

I would rather go to the dentist than face a pitch shot off a grainy lie with a bunker to carry (and I loathe the dentist).

There has been a wide variety of issues over the years. Stretches of hitting my chips too thin. Stretches of hitting my chips too fat. Too low off the face. Too high off the face.

The most humiliating, however, is the mental breakdown of barely accelerating into the ball and leaving a chip shot mere feet in front of me.

I’ve changed my technique a million times. Hands forward, hands farther back. Play the ball up in my stance with more of an open face. Play the ball off my right foot. Use the bounce or stick the leading edge in.

During a round, I pray to find my ball in a bunker or perched in fluffy rough. Anything where the margin of error gets expanded.

When I do find myself anywhere around the green with a tight lie—or, hell, even just a standard fairway lie on a straightforward pitch shot—I immediately look to see if I can putt it. While the prospect of using an 8-iron or some lower-lofted club alleviates some of my harrowing short-game experience, I find that judging the distance with these clubs is still nightmarish.

On top of all of this, the chipping and pitching woes might be genetic. My dad hates this part of the game so much that he will take a putter out from anywhere possible—even 30 yards from the green.

Am I incurable?

Perhaps. But maybe I just found a solution.

I started chipping cross-handed

It’s kind of annoying that I didn’t think of this years ago.

I’m almost 34 years old and have been playing golf since I was eight. That’s about 26 years’ worth of terrible chipping and pitching.

In high school, I started to putt cross-handed and it immediately felt better. My stroke became less handsy. While I could never claim to be a standout putter, I have always felt irrationally confident standing over putts.

And it’s also worth pointing out that I’m not a 100-percent righthand dominant person. Growing up, I swung lefty in baseball and shot a hockey puck left-handed as well. I’m not sure I would call myself ambidextrous in the full sense of the word but I’m something in between.

If I could just get myself in positions where every putt wasn’t a 15-footer for par …

With our Tennessee weather finally turning from ice storm-ish to pleasant, I’ve been heading out to start my golf season.

Naturally, I begin range sessions with a few light pitches. The normal disarray of shots ensues.

During one of my recent sessions, the thought occurred to me that I could literally try anything and it would, at the very least, not harm my short game. No potential solution was off the table.

I tried to hit pitches with just my left arm. Nope. I didn’t have any control of the club face.

I tried to hit pitches with just my right arm. Woah, that worked. The ball was coming off cleaner and higher. The only problem was that the distance control element was way off.

“I wish there was a way to have that same feeling with both hands on the club,” I thought to myself.

That’s when the idea of using a cross-handed grip came into my mind. After all, I had been seeing it on TV a lot recently. Matthew Fitzpatrick—who has been using the strategy for years now—nearly won The Players and then did win the Valspar.

Unconventional? Yes. Crazy? A little.

But it is good enough for him so maybe it would be good enough for me.

There was only one way to find out.

The feeling of chipping cross-handed

It seems a little wrong to swing a golf club cross-handed, even if it’s for a short pitch.

My first couple of attempts with the experiment went poorly. I hit both shots thin.

But once I got the hang of this new sensation, everything started to click. That right-hand-only feeling I had before was being transferred to the cross-handed pitching—but now I had stability to control my distance better than before.

The face just isn’t moving as much. It feels more like hitting a tennis ball with a racquet, keeping everything at the same angle.

It isn’t a perfect system yet just because it’s still uncomfortable. But I’m suddenly hitting a much higher percentage of chip and pitch shots with solid strikes.

I’m not completely sure of the technical reason but it does feel like the sole is flatter to the turf and the heel isn’t digging in as much. There is more predictability at impact.

Call me wild but I’m going to keep using this. There might be a learning curve to get in the groove but I’m starting to get excited about chipping for the first time in, well, forever.

Have you tried cross-handed chipping? Am I insane? Let me know below in the comments.