Relationship between Putting, Chipping and the Full Swing

Let's start with the smallest and most controlled stroke. The days of wrist putting are long gone, if for no other reason than the greens today are much faster and you do not need to hit the ball hard to get it to the hole.
Everybody I see now putts with their shoulders. What does this mean? You start in a static position with your body and the club. To move the club you put your shoulders in motion. The further you move your shoulders back, the better the potential is to move the club faster going forward and consequently impart more force on the ball, resulting in the ball traveling further. Of course to be consistent in your solidness of contact, you have to keep your eyes over the ball, stay bent over, and avoid hip and knee motion during the stroke.

Chipping should be the same motion with one exception; open your stance to get your left hip out of the way of your swing. I would also suggest you do two other things to be more consistent in the stroke.

One, put your feet very close together, and second, choke down on the club to the bottom of the grip. Now, how do you figure out how much momentum is needed to hit the shot?

First understand that the momentum is created with shoulder speed on the forward swing. The wrists should not play a part in this stroke anymore than they do in a putt. The more hinges you create ie. wrist cock, breaking from the elbows, knee movement, the less control of distance and direction you will have.

Lastly, with chipping, you have heard that the distance you take the club back should be the same amount on the follow through. I disagree. I think the backswing should be shorter than the forward motion. I think the chip shot should be an aggressive stroke, meaning an acceleration. If you are accelerating, you impart more spin and your chances of going past the hole or at least to it, have increased. Ask yourself how many times do you chip past the hole with a proper ball flight. I would guess, very seldom. If you learn to chip with an excelerated stroke you do not have to worry about the ball rolling too far, the extra spin will help stop the ball. What this then allows you to do is get the ball to the hole on a more frequent basis. Getting the ball to go past the hole gives you the chance for a chip in or at least a good read on your first putt.

So, what does chipping and putting have to do with the full swing? Remember that in chipping and putting you had to keep your head steady, stay bent over and move the club by turning your shoulders. Since your arms are attached to your shoulders, it just makes sense that we move the shoulders to move the arms. If your shoulders move first, your arms never swing across your chest, your arms stay out in front of your chest. Whether you move your hips or not, the key to a full swing is placing your shoulders in control of your hands and arms while staying bent over until impact. The second biggest flaw I see in the full swing is a straightening of the right leg during the backswing. If this happens, there is no weight shift and your arms and club swing off plane. This straightening of the right leg normally happens due to your arms swinging across your chest and to the inside of your target line. Here is an exercise for you that can be done without hitting golf balls. Take a wedge, go to a wall, take your setup with your butt touching the wall. Stay bent over during the backswing and move your shoulders on a plane that allows the club and arms not to hit the wall. You should find that your weight shifts to your right leg and the swing feels more straight back and straight through. The forward swing should just be a reaction of the big muscles in your shoulders. They were stretched on the back swing and do not want to stay in this stretched position. So, you let those big muscles in your shoulders initiate the forward swing. As this happens the arms, hands and club move automatically. Let your hands and arms do what they want to do, do not try and direct them at the ball. The arms and hands should be moving at the target and then left of the target. In this process the right forearm will cross over the left producing a right to left shot.