[rvwink]

Completed my 4800 chip in 30 degree weather this morning, I am so encouraged by todays results, that I now intend to complete my Pilgramage at 5,000 as originally planned. They call it basic motion, and I understand the premise, but in a way the name is misleading because imo doing a zero pivot chip properly is anything but a "basic" action. The ingredients currently fighting for my brains attention and focus as I make chips are as follows.

1) Piston action- Proper backswing and piston forward swing. Demonstrated by Ted Fort in his recent video with Yoda. This is probably the number one task I had to learn. I particularly am concentrating on getting my right elbow further forward (under my stomach) as a consequence of my piston action. (An important lesson that helped me in my struggle to hit consistently accurate chips.)

2) Extensor action- This has been a very helpful addition from Theodan. I certainly knew about extensor action and have used it in the past. Unfortunately, in trying to imitate the backswing arm action and forward action on the video, I failed to think about employing it in my chips and this was a mistake.

3) Hitting the ball with your pressure points (PP1 and PP3) and your hand position, rather than with the club face. PP1 is particularly helpful to me in making sure I ground my club face immediately after ball contact. Aside from the fact that I am consious that it trails PP1, I don't think I am getting full benefits from PP3 yet, but I will keep monitoring it as well hopefully to enhance my feel in how hard to hit the ball to a particular distance as suggested by Thom.

4) Delivery Line Tracing- This was suggested very ecently by SolarBear and it immediately paid dividends. Still working hard on making sure I incorporate the "out" along with the "down" and "forward".

I now fully understand why one needs 5,000 chips to properly learn the necessary technique. The mind starts focusing on one concept at a time and it take a hell of a lot of repetitions to get proper coordination of the 4 different disciplines combined into a proper chip. My next journey will be to hit 2500 acquired motion chips between now and April. As I reach the conclusion of the first leg of my off season training, I am particularly grateful to Yoda for continuously pointing me in the right golfing direction.