While no player wants their ball to finish up in a hazard you must admit that it is the presence of hazards around the golf course that makes the sport both exciting and challenging. Who amongst us has not followed a tournament and enjoyed the spectacle of seeing a player negotiate his way out of an awkward situation?
Having said this, it is one thing to watch other people attempting to hack their way out of thorn bushes but you do not really want to have to experience it yourself. Therefore, just how can you at at the very least reduce the possibility of this happening?
The secret comes from and ability to read the golf course and plan ahead.
Before you play every hole you have to think carefully about where the hazards for the hole are situated and work out how each is likely to affect your game if you fall foul of it. Once you have done this you must then determine how you should play the hole so as to minimize the damage should you be unfortunate enough to finish up in one of the hole’s traps.
So, just what are the common hazards you will encounter on most golf courses? There are essentially six hazards which you are likely to come across:
1. The Rough. While troublesome the rough is possibly the easiest of the problems that you will come across and it is not normally too difficult to get your ball out of the rough and back onto the fairway.
2. Hilly Terrain. Getting your ball into the right position on the fairway for your approach to the green is always preferable to achieving distance and therefore, if you are facing a significant uphill slope along the fairway, you might want to think about hitting short of it instead of trying for distance and simply watching your ball roll back down the fairway and away from its intended target. This is especially true if the slope falls away to one side of the fairway and your ball is likely to not simply roll back down the fairway but to roll off into the rough or into some other form of hazard.
3. Bunkers. Bunkers are essentially a hazard for novice golfers rather than for anyone else and, with some practice, it is generally not too difficult to hit your ball out of the sand and indeed you can frequently produce some very good shots out of the sand. This said, all bunkers are not the same and getting caught under the lip of a deep and steeply sided bunker could present you with significant difficulty.
4. Trees and Bushes. Bushes and trees can turn out to be very nasty and even if you cannot play your ball and are forced to take a drop you could well find that the lie within the 2 club lengths stipulated by regulation is not a great deal better than your original lie.
5. Water. Landing in the water will generally mean that you have to take a penalty and reposition your next shot. Having said this, it it might be possible to hit your ball from the water as long as you can get to it and it not lying too deep, however these occasions are few and far between.
6. Out of Bounds. Firing your ball into an ‘out of bounds’ area is probably the worst of all the hazards because you will need to take the shot again and also to take a penalty stroke. This is certainly something that you want to avoid if at all possible because there is nothing worse than finding yourself driving off into an out of bounds area and being forced to walk back to the tee again and begin all over again with what will in fact be your third shot to the hole.
Donald Saunders has been publishing articles on a variety of topics for several years now. visit his latest website which supplies information on Club Car golf carts and Club Car golf cart parts together with much more. Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/golf-articles/how-do-you-overcome-hazards-while-out-on-the-gold-course-1483085.html
Ads By CbproAds
