Green Grass Golf Shop

Playing really great golf is exceptionally hard, nobody is here to argue that. However, avoiding trouble and preventing yourself from losing a lot of balls and strokes on the course can be much easier than I think a lot of golfers realize. There are some super simple things that we might be doing while we’re playing that we don’t know make the game MUCH harder than it needs to be. Super simple things like where we choose to tee up the golf ball can make the course play even more narrow and bring the trouble in to play much more quickly. But, just as easy as it is to set up in the wrong place, we can fix that and make it much harder to lose golf balls by doing just two simple things the next time we’re out on the course.

1.) Play Your Shape!

Above you can see a simple illustration of a golf hole, and from what I’ve seen most amateur golfers will have a shot shape pretty similar to the one I have illustrated in the picture there. We have two different color lines and shots drawn out in the picture there (red bad!). As you can see, with the red arrow, setting up in the middle of the tee box with that left to right shot shape brings the rough into play a lot more quickly, your margin for error is much thinner. With the green arrow, setting up on the right side of the tee box, the way the ball curves sends it much more in line with the shape of the hole, your margin for error is much wider, you have a lot more space on that line in the fairway. Now like I mentioned, this is for your typical right-handed golfer with a left-to-right shot shape, also commonly referred to as a fade or slice, like I see from a majority of amateur players, and certainly some better players, too. For a left-handed golfer with a fade, or a right-handed golfer with a draw that curves in the opposite direction, the opposite would be true. If you have a right-to-left shot shape, the opposite of the curve in the picture, you’d set up on the left side of the box, with the curve in the opposite direction sending the ball more down the middle of the fairway. Simply setting up on the correct position when you’re teeing the ball off can play a massive role in where your ball ends up landing, and from what length of grass you end up hitting!

2.) Hit Away From Trouble!

Above we have another illustration, you can see from the picture there we have a different hole, this time with water lining the entire left side of the hole. One thing we can do to help us avoid the water is to tee up the ball on the same side as whatever we are trying to avoid, thereby effectively aiming on an angle slightly more away from the thing we’re trying to hit away from. This is illustrated by the picture above, you’ll see with the green lines, aiming down the middle of the fairway from the left side of the box with the water on the left points the straight arrow on a lot safer path away from the water. With that our margin for error is much wider, even with a pull or a hook we have a much better chance of keeping our ball dry. With the red arrow, from where a lot of players might tee up as far away from the water as possible, effectively you’re aiming more toward the water than the green arrow from the left side of the box. When you do that, your margin for error becomes much thinner. The same shot from both the left and right side of the box can see one finding the water and one even staying in the fairway. The position from which you choose to tee up your golf ball can make the difference between the round of your life and one that sends you to the range afterward to find out what went wrong.