Oh, those double bogeys. They just ruin our day. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find a way to not get any. Just once?

I did that once in my memory. I shot an 85, a few strokes above average, but with not one DB. In my golfing heyday, breaking 80 was always a possibility, and I never did it without having a double on the card.

On a golf forum that I used to belong to, until I got tired of the know-it-all proprietor, I asked the 80± golfers which was harder, breaking 80, or playing 18 holes without a double bogey. No DB won hands down as the harder one to do.

Yesterday I saw Rickie Fowler put his drive smack in the middle of the fairway and up with one. Also yesterday, Sebastian Muñoz of the LIV Tour shot a 59–with a DB on his card.

So don’t worry about it too much. You’re going to get them. But you don’t want to get the too often. Here are a few ways to get the less often.

– Hit fairways. Use a club off the tee that is a fairway finder, no matter how much distance you have to give up. If you miss the fairway, switch from thinking about par to bogey. That doesn’t mean giving up on par, it generally means salvaging a good score (bogey) and leaving par in play at the margin.

– Greens are smaller targets than fairways, generally. Play onto the green if you’re sure you can hit it. Otherwise, plan on playing up to the green and chipping on.

– Play away from trouble. Get out safely, then play to the green. Death to penalty strokes.

– Don’t get too precise around the green unless you have a short game to back it up. Just get the ball on the green with one shot and let your putting take over.

– If you make a double bogey, forget about it by the time you have picked the ball out of the hole. Keep your mind moving forward to the next hole.

All this sounds like stuff you have heard before, and it is. I didn’t make it up. Let’s just call it a reminder that you shoot lower scores if you play smart and play within yourself.

This how you have to play to get into single digits, based on my experience having been there.

1. Get the ball on the green or green-high in 38 strokes or less.

2. Get your first short game shot* on the green. Two short shots in a row is a big no-no.

3. Hit greenside chips to one-putt distance.

4. Hit approach putts over 20 feet to one-putt distance.

5. Be very good putting from four feet and in. I mean VERY good.

* Pitches, chips, sand.

Golf is a complex game that must be played as though it were simple.

1. Play from the right set of tees. Don’t give yourself a problem you can’t solve.

2. Hit fairways with your driver. If you spray it, learn how to hit it straight. It’s not that hard to do. This, use your 3-wood instead, stuff is nonsense.

3. Know, I mean really know, how far you carry each iron. By that I mean your average distance, not your maximum.

4. Given the distance to the pin, all things being equal, pick the iron that will pass it, not just get to it.

5. Short game, short game, short game.

6. Did I mention the short game? Your long game that gets you up to or on the green quickly makes good scores possible. The short game makes the score. From greenside, down in two must be an expectation.

7. Putting. Get very good at approach putting and putts from four feet and under. That’s all you need to practice.

8. You’re a handicap golfer. Some holes out there are too hard for you. Get your bogey on them and get your pars elsewhere.

9. Play only shots you can hit. If you don’t have absolute confidence in what you’re about to do, then do something else.

10. If there is a shot or a club that is working really well, ride it as hard as you can all day.

There are two kinds of working shots in golf. There are the ones that go straight and get the job done. The others look like they belong in a highight reel, and get the job done.

The first kind are much easier to hit, and as recreational golfers, are the ones we should aspire to.

The second kind pop out every now and then, and they are the memories we take home. But they are not the ones we should chase when we practice.

Good enough is good enough. Once you have that, leave it alone.

Check out the Golf Sidekick channel on YouTube. This guy knows what he is talking about. He’s not into technique, but into playing the game.

Raymond Floyd wrote that “If somehow I was given your physical (golf) game, and we had a match, I would beat you 99 times out of 100. Because I know how to play the game better than you do.”

Golf is a game you play.

I got the recent Golf Digest magazine yesterday, which put the distance or direction debate to bed for good. At least for me.

There is a feature every month called “What’s in My Bag”, where a touring pro talks about the clubs in their bag. There is a sidebar that shows how far they hit each club.

This month the pro was Danielle Kang. I looked at the distance sidebar and almost fell off my chair.

When I was playing my best, my distances were hers, plus or minus a yard. And yet, she is one of the best female golfers in the world, I was a hack trying to get a single-digit handicap.

We can talk about short game and putting, I have no doubt that she is much better than I was in both those parts of the game.

But the real difference is in the long game. She is much straighter every time she hits the ball. I was just trying to get the ball on the green. She is aiming for a quadrant of the green and hitting it.

True, you need to be good around the green, but without a swing that hits the ball straight, you’re playing for bogeys and hard pars.

Birdies? She makes more in one round than I make all year.

Hi, there. It’s been a while.

I got to reminiscing about the days when I played my best and how I did it. My game revolved around the 150-yard maker that courses have on their par 4’s and par 5’s.

Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book has a part where he talked about 150 yards and in and how you should expect to get down in three from there.

So I decided to take that seriously. I developed my iron game and my short game so that I thought on every hole, “Just get inside the 150-yard marker.”

Because from there I knew I was home free.

So can you. Just sayin’.