Covering Ground
Golf may be boiled down to just two things: covering ground and holing out. That’s it.
In my book Easy Bogey How to Break 90 I describe in detail exactly what it takes.
To break the 90 barrier, practically no firepower is required. All you have to do is cover little bits of ground and do a decent job of holing out once you are in neighborhood of the cup. It’s really pretty easy.
Regardless of your golfing goals, you have my permission to make golf as simple as possible. Cover ground and hole out.
What do I mean by cover ground? It’s just that. It’s getting your ball down the field. It’s advancing it along. It’s reliably sending it down there without trying hard.
We have all been tricked. We have been tricked–and tricked ourselves–into thinking golf is difficult. It is not. There is a starting line and a hole in the ground. Golf your ball until your ball until it goes in the hole. Get it?
The golf course designer does not want me telling you this: Golf is simple.
The golf course designer is not in the keep it simple business. He is in the complication business. Bunkers, dog legs, elevation changes, trees, gulleys, deep grass and water hazards are placed, built, or left in order to deceive and beguile. These features do punish errant shots causing scores to blow up.
NOTE: Did you know most errant shots are brought on by greedy course management decisions rather than swing errors?
Golf courses are beautiful places. They are made scenic by mother nature and the course architect. But they do not mean golf is difficult or serious or complicated. Golf courses consist mainly of yardage. I urge you to also pay more attention than ever to the yardage of each hole. That information–found on the scorecard or yardage marker–is given to you by the architect. The yardage is a huge tip off. It’s a road map meant to keep you from bashing away aimlessly trying to hit far. Trying to hit it far is not golf.
“Players” check out how much ground they have to cover on each hole. Hackers and dabblers neglect this step. They think of it as “far.” Wrong approach. It is never far. It is an identifiable amount of ground to be gobbled up in well thought out realistic bite size pieces. 350 is not far. It’s 350. Using your skill level you have to intelligently cover that yardage, Then hole out. 460 is not far. It’s 460. And so on.
By the way, yardage is measured along the ground. It is not measured through the air. I very strongly recommend worrying less about making the ball go up. Covering ground is done by advancing the ball forward, not up.
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Rules of Golf Changes 2019
Ball in Motion Accidentally Deflected
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