Vertical Grooves Vipper Life-Tested Review

Some players relish in the art of the short game, illustrating a unique masterpiece with a pallete of trajectory, carry, spin, and roll options for every shot. Other players, however, step into greenside shots hoping to make decent contact, get the ball on to the green and leave a somewhat makeable putt. For players who fall into that second category, there’s an emerging club to consider, the chipper.

A chipper is a golf club that’s designed to simplify greenside shots and enhance consistency by allowing you to basically use your putting stroke to chip from off the green rather than employing a traditional chipping technique that can lead to thin and fat shots and a lack of consistency for some players. 

One of the latest and greatest chippers to hit the market is from Vertical Grooves, called the Vipper. Vertical Grooves claims the Vipper eliminates thin shots and improves contact around the greens. We checked out the Vertical Grooves Vipper first hand for this review. Here’s everything you need to know.

Chippers are different from any traditional club in the bag because they blend various elements of several clubs into one package that’s designed for simplicity and consistency. With 39° of loft, the Vipper has roughly the loft of a 9-iron from a game improvement set. So why not just chip with your 9-iron instead of adding another club to your bag? Well, you could, but since a chipper is designed to be used with a simple putting stroke motion, it carries a lie angle much more similar to a putter than an iron or wedge. The Vipper’s 67° lie angle is in between that of a standard putter – typically around 70° – and a regular 9-iron, which is usually in the lower 60’s.

The Vipper also has more bounce than a typical iron, checking in with 8° of bounce, which helps it glide through the turf more like a wedge than an iron.

The length is another area where the Vipper is optimized for short game shots compared to pulling a short iron. The Vipper is shorter than an iron, which gives you more control.

Vertical Grooves Golf wouldn’t live up to its name without putting vertical grooves on the Vipper. Those black grooves give a visual alignment cue at address to make lining up your chips easy. The Vipper also has horizontal microgrooves.

The Vipper is designed for players who want to simplify their short game. The way it’s built, you can hit it pretty much like a putter, and expect to make consistent contact and get a consistent, bump-and-run style result. 

When our tester warmed up with the Vipper, he dropped a few balls about three yards off the practice green and started hitting chips with a putting-like stroke. Of the first six shots he hit, he holed three of them, so it’s safe to say the Vipper made a strong first impression.

After playing on the course with the Vipper, he noted how easy it was to hit standard greenside shots, getting consistent contact and a predictable result.

What the Vipper packs in effectiveness, it lacks in versatility. I wouldn’t recommend trying to use the Vipper out of the bunker, or trying to open the face to hit flop shots when short-sided with the Vipper. As a chipper, it’s a bump-and-run club that’s most effective when you have some room to run the ball to the hole. Since it’s not designed for the short game artists out there, this shouldn’t come as a surprise or as a turn-off for the players who fit into this club.