CHIP AND DON’T STOP CHIPPING!

Inesis chipper: from the brief to the first lines.

By Inesis

June 15^th, 2022

CAN YOU REALLY NAIL EVERY CHIP?

Who among us hasn’t made it to the green in two only to leave with a bogey on your score card thanks to a bad chip?

Well there’s an almost magical club you can use to make chipping easier, and that’s the chipper. The chipper is an unusual club: half iron, half putter. It has very “beginner golfer” vibes to it and it’s even a bit laughed at. What is this club? Is it permitted? It has to be said, nailing every single chip will quickly annoy the other players in your party...

The Inesis range already has a chipper. It’s also one of our oldest products, which our designers and engineers really needed to use as a source of inspiration. Club product manager Nicolas’ brief was simple: to design a club that breaks away from the image of the beginner’s club, is easy to play with and is in keeping with the new Inesis putters.

It was Inesis designer Thomas’ job to bring this brief to life:

“With a chipper, it’s almost as if you’re widening the green surface. It’s a sort of putter for little chips from the pre-green and for chip shots from the fairway. So it made sense to design it in keeping with the putter range released in 2021.

I used the Half Moon putter as inspiration; its shape makes a very interesting template for a chipper. It also has a weighting that’s very close to the target for the chipper. We swapped the face for a 37° face, which equates to the loft of a 7 iron, to help lift the ball during the first third of the total distance.

Then I drew a very round shape to give it a highly reassuring character. The hosel has been carefully designed to be perfectly integrated with the rest of the head.

Of course, we kept the idea of alignment that’s a feature of the putters – in perfect keeping with the markings of the Inesis balls – which is extremely effective.

In terms of the finishing touches, we closely followed the design we used with the putters: simple and elegant.

The chipper will also have a specific grip, but it will still be cylindrical to comply with the R&A rules and to produce a club that’s approved and authorised for competition.