5 Tips to Help Manage Your Golf Game

One of the least practiced aspects of golf is course management. I will give you five tips to help manage your golf game. By learning to manage your game you will find your scores dropping dramatically and your approach to golf will Generic Viagra a whole lot different.

If you listen to the commentators on the PGA tour you will hear them say things like "That now gives him an easy approach to the pin, cut back behind the bunker on the left" or "that's not what he would have wanted as he now has very little green to work with". Listen to what they say and you will learn that there is a totally new and exciting dimension to this game.

When designing a golf course the architect does so with particular challenges in mind. Fairway bunkers are not just placed willy nilly on the course. They are there for a reason and that reason is always to make the game more of a challenge and therefore more interesting. The same applies to pin positions and the tee Lowest mortgage rate finance in play on any given day.

Learn to look at the game through different eyes and you will soon become aware of subtle but important challenges that face you on each shot. Don't just tee up your ball and smack it as hard as you can with a driver hoping that it will go somewhere in the middle.

1. Keep the ball in play. A driver off the tee is not always the best option. Take a look at what confronts you on each hole and decide which is the optimum club to use to keep your ball in play. There is no point in smashing a great drive but finding out that you have run out of fairway by hitting it through the dog leg. In such cases take a lower club to get to the dog leg and to have a second shot.
2. Take your medicine. If you do go into the rough or a hazard consider the safe route and get the ball back in play. With luck you may still save par. At worst you are faced with a bogey. Trying to play a miracle recovery shot that you have little or no chance of succeeding with will only get you a double bogey or worse.
3. Consider what shot you want to play next. Work out where you want to be to give yourself the best chance of success with your next shot. If you are really confident from 120 yards out then play to that position. Study where the flag is and play your shot to avoid the danger. In most cases it is safer to aim for the middle of the green than to shoot at a pin that has been placed dangerously close to a hazard. With most holes there is a "better" side to land if you do miss. Err on the side of caution.
4. Focus on each shot as it comes. You cannot change what has happened so forget about your past shots, no matter how bad they were. If you must dwell on past shots concentrate on the successful ones. Do not worry about the outcome of the shot you are about to play. This can be hard to do but if you have set up correctly, have aimed at the target and have the correct club in hand simply go ahead and hit the ball. Remember that worrying about the outcome is pointless as you are worrying about something that hasn't happened yet and may never happen. Take each shot one at a time and concentrate solely on that.
5. Make the hole much bigger. When pitching and chipping imagine a hole that is ten or even twenty foot in diameter and try and get your ball to stop in this "hole". You should be able to 2 putt from 20 feet and you will be surprised how often you will get up and down by using this approach. On long putts imagine the hole to be two to four feet in radius and putt so that your ball comes to rest in this area. Again you will find that it will occasionally even go in but, if not, a two putt is assured. As your putting improves you can reduce the radius of your imaginary "hole".

If you can learn to manage your golf game not only will you dramatically drop your scoring average but you will find more and more subtle challenges all around you. It is this aspect of golf that makes the game such a challenge and so rewarding.

I sincerely hope these 5 tips to help manage your golf game will help to both improve your scores and increase the enjoyment of playing this wonderful game.

As a qualified EGTF golf coach Lawrence Bredenkamp takes great pleasure in helping people improve their game. Why not head over to www.playthelie.com/reviews.htmlPlay The Lie for more information on how to improve your golf swing and lower your scores?