How To Avoid the Blow-Up Hole

More than a few times you have a good day at the course, but because of a few bad holes you still don't turn in a score that reflects your good play. "If only I hadn't fallen apart on these three holes," you say, but there is no "If only" in golf.

You own bad holes as well as good ones, and you own the reason why you have bad holes. Sometimes a bad shot puts you in a place that is hard to recover from, but how you think from there makes all the difference.

If a bad shot makes you lose a stroke, accept the penalty and don't try to get the stroke back on your next shot. Instead, think only this one thought: "Since I can't play into the green from here, what shot can I hit now that will give me a clear shot into the green with the one after it?" Too often what I see is golfers thinking: "How can I still get my par?"

While a par is still possible, you won't get one by pursuing it. You will get one by hitting one sensible shot after another. That might lead to a par, or it might lead to a bogey or a double. It won't lead to the triple or the quad, however.

Use one stroke to get out of trouble and play on from there. Trying to hit a trouble shot and a scoring shot at the same time is usually a formula for disaster.

One day I drove into deep weeds on a par 4. I could have advanced the ball, but the certain shot was to chop laterally back into the fairway. From there, my 8-iron third landed twelve feet from the pin and I made the putt for my par.

There are times when declaring an unplayable lie can be your best friend. I once hit a drive into a fairway bunker on a par 5. The ball was against the front edge of a steeply sloping wall. Getting the ball out of the bunker would have been a challenge, and getting it out and into the fairway would have been out of the question with my rudimentary skills in bunkers.

I declared an unplayable lie and dropped the ball in the back of the bunker under Rule 28, where I had a shot on the ball to send it down the fairway. I ended up with a 6 on the hole.

When you get into trouble, think about how many strokes it will safely take you, realistically, to get the ball in the hole, and play the rest of the hole that way. That should prevent those "if only" scores from showing up on your card.


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