Stand on any par four on a Saturday morning and watch where club golfers aim their approach shots. Almost without exception, they aim at the flag. It does not …
Watch the US Open this week and you will see the best players in the world treat thick rough with a respect that most amateurs never quite manage. When a Tour …
Watch a US Open at a links-style course and you will see the best players in the world reduced, for a few hours at least, to something close to mortal. The …
Ask a club golfer which shot frightens them most and the honest ones will not say the long bunker shot or the downhill four-footer. They will say the little …
There is a quiet decision made on the first tee of almost every amateur round, and it is usually the wrong one. A group arrives, looks at the markers, and walks …
The driving range is a flat lie machine. Every ball a club golfer hits in practice sits on a level mat or a level patch of turf, the feet square to a level …
There is a particular look a certain kind of golfer gives you when you tell them you only played nine. It is somewhere between sympathy and suspicion, as though …
The greenside bunker is the only shot in golf where the player is, in the literal sense, trying not to hit the ball. Every other shot in the bag is a contest …
The provisional ball is the one shot in golf the rules of the game have explicitly designed to save the player from themselves, and it is the one shot in golf …
There is a phrase the Tour commentator uses, two or three times a Sunday telecast, that the average amateur has heard a thousand times and has never once made …
