In Better Recreational Golf, I have a small essay on the chapter titled Playing the Game, called Be Your Own Caddy. The point I made was that you need to have a good reason for every shot you hit.

It has to be a shot you know you can hit, that you have confidence in, and one that leaves the ball in a good spot for the next one.

Yet, more often than not, all we think about is how to get the ball from point A to point B, without giving much thought to our selection of exactly where point B should be.

If we had a caddy with us, those two questions would be the topic of some conversation. The caddy would not be satisfied until you had good answers to both of them.

To play your best golf, you have to step into the role of your caddy and discuss things with your other self, the player self, until you both are in agreement.

Now this might not work for everyone, but I believe that if before you take a club out of the bag, you explain to yourself why you want to use this club, and what shot you’re going to hit with it, and to where, you might start thinking a little clearer about the choices you make.

You would consider the lie, the wind, the landing area, and the distance. Then you hit the shot you can hit, rather than the shot you want to hit, or would be good if it works out.

Take your salary, convert it to an hourly rate, and compute how much is costs you, at that rate, to play a round of golf. Add on a quarter of your green fees to that hourly rate, too.

Now ask yourself if you would pay a caddy that much money for the same advice you usually give to yourself. For most of us, I think we would demand a little more.

Hitting shots is only part of golf. Hitting the right shot to the right place is how you use your hard-earned skills to shoot a low score. You do that by being your own caddy.

Many golfers shoot about four or five strokes above their usual score when the play a golf course for the first time. If you pay attention to a few details, that doesn’t have to happen.

When you’re in the clubhouse paying your green fees, ask about these things:

– are there notoriously troublesome holes, and if so, how do you play them?
– how fast are the greens? Are they faster than the practice green?
– are there elevated tees on any par 3s? If so, how much more club should you use?
– for big hitters: are there any par 5s that you should not try to reach in two?
– are there any greens that have big trouble if you shoot over them?
– are there any greens that are sloped so much that you do not ever want to be above the hole?
– are there any water hazards that cross the fairway and can be reached from the tee?

This is a lot to ask, but if you ask succinctly and listen to the answer instead of getting into a conversation, the staff won’t mind helping you.

Get a scorecard and read the local rules. Ask about anything that isn’t clear to you.

In general, tee off to the center of the fairway. Aiming for the 150-yard pole, if there is one, is seldom a bad idea.

When hitting into the green, aim for the center. Aim for the pin only if the approach is wide open and there is little or no trouble if you miss the green on that side.

Chipping can be different from course to course. There can be light rough around the green, heavy rough, or no rough.

The only way to solve these problems is to be prepared for them. Learn how to chip out of varying thicknesses of rough. Learn how to use your putter from off the green.

Learn how to chip up to a raised green when your ball is on an upslope to the putting surface.

Play from the right set of tees! If you can’t reach half the par 4s with a 6-iron or less, those tees are to long for you.

If you know you will play this course again, make a note of what clubs you used on each tee and a note of the one you would use, if different, when you play the course again.

When you get to your tee ball, go over the spot you now see to be the best landing area for your tee shot to set up the approach to the green. Look back the tee, then turn 180 degrees to find an aiming marker for this area.

Make any other notes about where to hit, or where not to hit the ball on any particular hole, especially around the greens.

Play conservative golf. Play our own game and see what happens. It will likely be good enough.

Yes, you heard me. How to play single-digit golf, and it’s not that hard to do, or I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m not saying scratch golf, that’s another matter entirely. But coming in at nine strokes over the course rating? That’s a lot of room for error.

Let’s see. Shotmaking skills.

First of all, you need to be able to hit the ball straight, consistently. Not every shot, but seven out of ten need to go where you want them to, and the other three must be playable.

Second, you need to be good at approach putting. Three-putt greens are most often caused by leaving the first putt too far from the hole. That said, it’s OK to be very good from four feet in as well.

With your short game plus putting, you need to have a chance to get up and down from most places around the green.

Now the playing skills.

Know the yardages of your irons, and know how to hit them different distances. Say you hit your 7-iron 148 yards, and the pin is 144 yards away. You should know how to shave four yards off the shot.

While we’re at it, play to pin-high or beyond from the fairway, Always have enough club in your hand, because you don’t always make perfect contact. Your iron from the fairway is the key to making a good score possible, so play these shots conservatively.

Know what your best shots are, and hit them as often as you can. Make the course bend to your skills. Know what your weak shots are and avoid them while you’re working on them.

Always keep bogey in play. Your scorecard can handle bogeys, but doubles add up too fast.

Play from the right set of tees. If you’re hitting long irons or hybrids into half of the par 4s, those tees are too long for you.

Finally, forget your score and just play golf. Don’t ask too much out of any shot, and thereby keep the ball in play. Enjoy yourself, play one easy, controlled shot after another, and you’ll pull it off.

Here’s the formula for shooting a 79, which on most courses is single-digit golf: par all of the par 5s (20), half the par 3s (14), and half the par 4s (45). You might just stumble across a birdie or two. None of that sounds too hard, does it?

(and what to do about it)

When I watch players who don’t break 100 (notice I didn’t say “can’t”), I see two reasons. One is that they hardly ever hit the ball straight. Two is that they don’t have a good idea of how to play the ball around the green.

I see two reasons why players struggle to break 90. One is that they don’t hit the ball straight often enough, and two is that they don’t have a good idea of how to play the ball around the green.

Let’s solve the hit straight thing first. I have lots of posts on this subject, under the label, golf swing. Look them up. They get specific. I’m going to stay general today.

The number one reason why you don’t hit the ball straight, if this is a problem for you, guys, is that you try to hit it too hard. That’s not the only reason, but it is the main one, especially if you’re under 40. Do two things for me. First, slow down your swing. Slower than that. You don’t have to belt the ball for it to go straight (and far). Centered, on-line contact is the key, and you get that by slowing down to control the clubhead.

Women, many of you need to do the opposite. You need to hit the ball harder. You don’t swing hard enough, and you lack control of the clubhead because of that. You can swing too slowly. Step it up a bit. Make an athletic swing.

Now the green thing. All I can say is this takes practice. I go to the range and see the tees lined with golfers and there’s just me on the practice green. I’m not kidding. Maybe someone will come along, throw down a few balls, hit some putts for five minutes, leave, and think they practiced.

As for chipping, I see all sorts of chipping strokes around the practice green, and none of them work. People spend their time trying to make an impossible stroke start working. I want so much to go up to them and say, “This is the easiest shot in the game if you know how to do it, but what you’re doing now isn’t it. Go into the clubhouse, sign up for a lesson and have the pro show you. You won’t regret it.” I won’t say that to them, but I’ll say it to you.

A putting lesson might be a good idea, too, come to think of it.

And then practice, like I said. I spend about 90 minutes when I go to the range, and an hour of that I spend around the green. Why? I’ll never have a great swing. Takes too much time to develop. But I have a good enough swing, coupled with a dynamite green game (chipping and putting) that lets me shoot some very respectable scores.

No reason you can’t either.

Do you play one golf course all the time? Try going to different courses. You’ll get more fun out of golf, and you’ll become a better player.

Here’s what happens when you play the same course over and over. You get into something of a rut. You don’t have to think too much, because you know just what strokes to play on a particular hole to get your 4. The only challenge is to see if you can do it.

Even though you play a good course, it does not require all the shots you need to be a complete golfer. You never get the chance to learn something new.

And when you do go to a new course, you probably have to hit shots and use clubs you have little experience with, and you often hit the wrong shot because you haven’t learned how to read a hole.

A subtle danger is that you might be under-handicapped by playing only one course. Since you know it so well, you play it so well. A few years ago, a local amateur shot a 62 on his home course. I looked up his scores in the GHIN website and found that all twenty of his handicap scores were on the that same course. I wonder how well his handicap of 3 would travel.

I play on five different courses, each one of which demands different shotmaking from the fairway and around the greens. Playing well on one makes me a better player on the others, to boot.

I throw in a new course every so often, to keep my course-reading muscles flexed, and thus I feel I can go anywhere and play a creditable round of golf right off.

The golfer who has learned to adapt his or her skills to any course and still play his average game is getting the most out of this great sport. I would hope that’s the kind of golfer you want to be.

The most important golf shots for a recreational golfer are, in order:

1. Iron to the green from under 150 yards
2. Greenside chips
3. Tee shot
4. 3- to 4-foot putts
5. Pitching from 60-90 yards

If you’re good at these shots, you’ll score pretty well.

Comments:
1. Being able to hit the green reliably from inside this distance is the origin of good scoring. More than any other, this shot determines what your score will be. You will shoot much lower scores if the shot after this one is a putt rather than a chip.

2. You should be able to get up and down at least half the time when your ball is only one or two yards off the green. This skill is probably number two in importance as a back-up to your irons, since no one hits the green every time, even from close in.

3. Driver eventually, but use your fairway wood if the driver is too hard to control. You must get the ball in the fairway to have a chance to get a good score. If not, you’re playing damage control for the duration of the hole.

4. Approach putts are important, too, because leaving them short is the primary cause of three-putt greens. But these little putts are a chance to close out the hole. Missing two or three of these per rounds hurts your score needlessly.

5. This is a mini-version of the iron into the green, but with something added: you must be able to pitch accurately to a known distance. On the green is good, but you can do better than that. If you’re 78 yards from the pin, for example, you should know how to get the ball within five yards of it.

When I go to the range, I take my driver, 6-iron, sand wedge, and putter. Sometimes I’ll substitute and 8-iron and a gap wedge. But with just four clubs, I can practice all these five shots.

Distance in golf is cool. Distance is fun. But at the recreational level, where we get to play from whichever set of tees we want to, accuracy is King. To show you why, consider the ability to hit just two particular shots, over and over.

They are the tee shot into the fairway, and the 5-iron from the fairway. If you can hit these shots straight, you can hit the green in regulation on five out of six par-4 holes on your golf course. That also means you can hit the green on every par five in regulation. That means you can hit the green on at least two of four par 3s.

Guess what you would score if you did that?

The tee shot into the fairway needs to be hit with the longest club that you can put into the fairway three times out of four. Even the professionals don’t do better than that. But if you can do that too, you’re playing the hole on offense instead of playing catch-up.

The second shot, the 5-iron from the fairway, is more demanding. That will take a bit of practice. Start with your 9-iron and gradually work up.

All this is predicated on playing from the set of tees that are appropriate for the length you have. Multiply your average drive, in yards, by 25. That’s the length of course you should be playing.

I know, hitting the ball straight is probably the biggest problem a recreational golfer has to solve. Easier said than done. One way to do it is to dial back and stop trying to hit the ball a long way. Play well within yourself. It doesn’t matter how far you hit your 5-iron, for example. It does matter that you hit it straight.

If there are other problems in your swing that cause the ball to veer left or right, get them fixed with lessons and practice.

Golf does not ask that much of you. The game is not really that difficult. Build it around making clean, accurate contact with the ball, rather than powerful contact. Make a mantra of, “Easy swing, straight is good.” With that attitude, and these two basic shots, you can play very good golf.

When you need a free par, the par-5 holes are just what you’re looking for. Think of them as extra-long par-4 holes on which you’re playing for bogey, and you’ll be just fine.

The typical length for a par-5 hole is 485 yards from the white tees, and 415 yards from red tees. This really isn’t very far if you have three shots to cover that distance. The key to getting those pars is keeping the ball in the fairway.

From the white tees, leave your driver in the bag. Hit 200 yards or so off the tee with a hybrid iron or fairway wood. Your second shot with the same club will leave you within 100 yards of the green. From there, it’s a pitch-and-putt par-3 hole. Couldn’t be simpler.

The same strategy will work for shorter hitters playing from the red tees: fairway wood off the tee, fairway wood off the fairway, pitch to the green, putt, putt = par.

Just because the hole is long is no excuse for hitting a driver off the tee, unless you hit your driver very well. You get four chances every round to get an easy par. Don’t blow the opportunity.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com.