The chipping ladder is one of the most useful short game drills you can run. It's also one of the easiest to do wrong. You set up targets, chip until you've hit each one, and move on. The problem is that "until you've hit each one" can mean eight balls or eighty balls depending on luck, and luck doesn't improve your chipping.
The structure matters as much as the targets.
The basic ladder
Pick four or five landing targets at increasing distances from your hitting position. A coin, a towel, a tee. Each rung has a clear pass rule: land within one club length of the target, three times in a row, before you move to the next rung.
Three in a row matters. Not just three makes total. Consecutive makes. This requires you to actually execute the skill repeatedly rather than get lucky once and move on. If you miss after two in a row, you stay on the same rung.
One club to start
For the basic ladder, use one club throughout. Your most reliable chipping club for the type of shot these distances produce. Most players default to the lob wedge, which is often the wrong choice for bump-and-run situations. Pick the club you'd actually use in a round from fifteen yards off the green.
Once you can consistently clear the ladder with your primary club, repeat it with a different club. You're building a catalogue of carry distances and landing behaviors across options, not just mastery with one.
Adding time pressure
Once the basic ladder feels achievable, set a timer. Clear all four rungs in fifteen minutes. The clock creates mild urgency without real stakes, but urgency is what separates practice that transfers from practice that's just comfortable repetition.
You can add a restart rule: miss twice in a row on any rung and drop back one rung. This keeps attention high throughout the drill and prevents the lazy assumption that you'll eventually get lucky.
Variations for different skills
Blind ladder: chip without looking at where the ball lands. Walk to check the result after each ball. This trains proprioceptive feel for distance rather than visual feedback, which is closer to how touch actually works on the course under pressure.
Lie ladder: run the standard ladder from rough, from tight turf, from an uphill lie, from a sidehill lie. Same targets, different challenges. The lie variations force you to adjust setup and face angle rather than relying on a repeating flat-lie motion.
One-ball competition: one ball per target, one point for landing in the zone, zero for missing. Play eighteen "holes" this way. Your goal is to beat your previous score. This creates a scorecard and makes each ball count.
Connecting it to real scoring
After you can clear the ladder consistently in practice, move to hole-out work. Chip and putt out. Track your up-and-down percentage over ten attempts from a range of lies around the green.
That number, tracked across a month, tells you whether the chipping ladder work is translating to actual scoring situations or just producing clean technique in perfect conditions.
Offcourse tracks your scrambling percentage in rounds so you can see whether chipping practice shows up in your scoring stats over time.