Transcripts - Episode 25: How I Think Through Golf Hole Strategy

Welcome to episode 25 of the Birdie Board podcast.

This is a pretty exciting episode because it is our 25th. I publish these episodes through a tool called Buzzsprout, and they have some cool achievements that kind of help me track the progress of the podcast, and 25 episodes is one of those achievements. So after this episode, I’ll reach that achievement, which is pretty exciting for the podcast.

Another exciting thing is another achievement that they have on their platform, which is 250 downloads. As of the recording of this podcast, we’re at 247. So definitely this podcast is going to push us over 250 downloads, which I’m really excited about.

So it’s been a really fun podcast. I’ve been doing it for about half a year now. I was worried when I first started it that I’d run out of things to talk about, and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface yet of what to talk about with golf. So it’s been fun.

And in this episode today, I wanted to just go over how I approach some golf holes. Really, it’s like golf hole strategy, core strategy type of discussion. But I think the way I think about the golf holes would probably help a lot of you listening.

Now, I feel like I can strategize well, but I don’t always execute well. So it puts me in a lot of unique situations that I then have to strategize from again. So what I am doing for this episode is I brought up one of my recent rounds, and I just wanted to talk through the different holes and how I think about each of the holes.

So the first one is a par five. I probably should have pulled up the yardages. It’s probably about a 500-yard par five. And on the left-hand side and the right-hand side of this hole, there’s all greens. Probably about 200 yards up on the right-hand side there’s a bunker, and then another one on the right-hand side about 250 or so.

And this is kind of where it starts. So you’re on the tee box and you’re trying to analyze, OK, how can I keep my ball in play? Well, the first thing that I always do is I look at the course map because a lot of times I like to play new courses, I don’t always know what the hole is doing.

So I use Arccos, if you haven’t used it, it’s a pretty good app. I have had a little bit of trouble with it lately, where for some reason it’s not recording my par threes. But outside of that, it’s been a pretty reliable app for me over the years. I’m hoping this season that bug has been fixed, and if not, I’ll probably try to look for a new app.

But anyway, so I’m looking at this Arccos app and it’s showing me what the hole looks like. So I can see that the hole is pretty wide up until that first bunker. So even though there’s trees on both sides, there’s a very big landing area up until that first bunker.

Now, the landing area narrows up to that second bunker by probably about half. So if I were to guess, maybe 100 yards wide at the fattest point near the first bunker, maybe 50 near that second bunker. So of course, the risk is like, OK, if I can push it up near that second bunker, which is probably like 250 yards, then I’ll have a shorter shot to the green.

But the error rate for me to get it up to do that is probably 70, 80%. The chances of my game to get up to that skinnier area of the fairway and not hit it in the woods to the left, or in the bunker to the right, or the woods beyond the bunker to the right, it’s fairly low.

So what I decided to play this shot as is instead of pushing it up to that skinnier area of the bunker, I knew like, OK, this is a par five. It’s probably a three-shot hole to get to the green, maybe even four for my handicap. So I’m just going to play it to the fat area.

So I played it 200 yards, got it up to the first bunker. I took a six iron off the tee box, and as probably it happens for a lot of amateurs, I shanked my six iron. So it does go about the distance I want it to go, 186 yards, but it actually went into the woods to the left. And thankfully it wasn’t out of bounds. The woods were just like a red stake area. So I was able to find my ball and play it, but it’s pretty deep into the woods.

So I did see an opening, and I thought, OK, I’m just going to get it up to the second bunker in the skinnier area. What’s nice though is the lower my clubs get, the more control I have over my shots. So I took a 50 degree, and I was able to hit it right around 105 yards and get it up to that skinny area of the second bunker.

So now I’m probably like maybe 180 yards out from the hole, and I have a decent shot in, and I take an eight iron, and guess what happens? I shank it off to the right. Now, this shank wasn’t as bad as the first shank.

But what I did though is I played my error in this case. So I knew that the hole was kind of off to the left from this shot. So I didn’t have a clear shot straight at the hole. I could be aggressive and maybe try to get it to the hole, but I would have had to hit it like 180 yards through the air over two bunkers and land it on a green. That’s probably, from that angle, maybe 10 or 15 yards deep, a challenging shot for even the pros.

So what I did instead is I played this as a two-shot at this point, and I aimed to the right. So even though I didn’t have the best of shot and shanked it a little further right, I did have a shot into the green at that point, and I had a shot into the long end of the green.

So I took an eight iron again, hit it 162 yards, which ended up being just a little long, but I was able to chip on and two putt from there. And I played it long as well because there was a bunker in the front left. So if I was on the front right, I’d be OK, but the front left, there would have been trouble.

On the backside, it was all grass. So even if I went long back left or long back right, I’d be OK. That wouldn’t be the same for the front side, where if I went short left, bunker, but short right would be OK.

So I played again the shot that had a higher chance for success. Now, that’s playing my error. So best case scenario, I don’t hit it long and I land on the green. Worst case scenario, which is what happened here, I hit it a little bit long left and I had to chip back onto the green, and I ended up two putting it.

So if you’re keeping track, that ended up being a double bogey for me for that hole. But I’m about a 20 handicap, so I had two strokes on that particular hole. So I ended up getting a net par, and in competition golf, that’s probably about all you can ask for, especially a harder hole like this, a hole that you made some mistake.

I made one major mistake off the tee box, shanking it into the woods, and then a smaller mistake after that where it was a little bit of a shank, but it wasn’t quite in the woods. I had a better shot into the green. I was able to walk away with a net par. So that’s how I approached that par five.

So I wanted to walk through pretty much one of each hole. So the next one I’m going to walk through is a par three. So this par three was about 135 yards. It’s kind of like an odd long bunker or odd long green, with two bunkers in the front split by a little strip of grass, and then a bunker on the backside.

So when I look at this hole, I ask myself, where are the safe areas? Well, far is not safe. Far middle is not safe. And short left and short right is not safe. What is safe is short middle, and then far left and far right.

So the way the hole looks too is you probably have a little bit more room off to the left because even though there’s a bunker far middle, it extends a little bit more to the right than the left. So I see my safe areas a little bit more to the left, or short middle.

So what I’m playing, if you can shape your shots, and I shape a natural draw with my shorter irons, I’m not like a pro, I’m not trying to brag on myself or anything like that, but I can draw on command. So what I’m trying to do is turn my ball into the gap kind of angle to the left of that back bunker.

So what I do is I shoot toward that middle spot in the front. And what I’m thinking in my head is if my ball goes dead straight, then fine, I’m in that short little spot in the front of the green between the two bunkers. If I draw it like I’m trying to do, then it will start turning toward the hole, and that’s the type of shot I want.

If I draw too much, then I’m going to get enough length, but it’s going to end up falling to the left of that far bunker, either short to the left of the green, which we talked about is open, or far back left, which is avoiding the bunker as well.

So I have one shot safe short, a shot that’s on. I have a long left shot safe, and a medium left shot safe. That’s four different outcomes that my ball would be safe with this strategy. Where it’s not going to be safe is if I don’t hit it far enough and I draw too short, which isn’t likely with my pitching wedge, but I would land in that front left bunker.

Then anything far right, if I ended up just pureing it and I didn’t put any draw on it, it would be far back far left.

The outcome that I think is least likely with my particular swing would be short right because I’m trying to draw the ball and I’m aiming past that anyways.

You can start to see how this mindset plays out. You’re trying to think of how many positive outcomes can I get with the strategy I’m approaching. This doesn’t have to be in depth, really, really deep thinking or anything. You’re just taking a look at the hole and you’re trying to make a decision on which direction everything can go, and which outcomes would be least detrimental if you messed up.

In this case, it turned out really good for me. I did exactly what I wanted to do, and I hit it about 33 feet from the hole, and I made it with one putt and walked away with a birdie, which was incredible for this round.

Let’s finish up with a par four. For this par four, it’s mostly straight. I would say it’s probably about a 400-yard par four, but it kind of curves to the left just a little bit at the, I don’t know, I would say maybe 275-yard point. It kind of tucks back to the left. Now it’s not a hard dog leg, but it’s definitely protected by a little bit of trees and a bunker off to the left, and then a short bunker probably around 275 or so.

Watching this hole, I can see it kind of goes off to the left, and I can see that there’s a lot of opening to the right. In this case, there was a little bit of trees to the right, but it’s very open and sparse trees. It’s all red stakes up the right-hand side.

In my mind, I’m thinking, OK, let’s see if I can just get a drive down there. If I can, I will try to draw it back onto the fairway, I meant to say, but I honestly don’t do great with that on my drives.

But what I did is probably at this point, I was probably fighting a little bit of a slice, if I remember this day correctly. So what I did is I aimed up kind of like the middle left-hand side of the fairway.

And I felt confident with my driver at this point because I saw that up the right-hand side, I had red stakes with very sparse trees. So I thought, OK, worst case scenario, I slice it and there’s enough room on the right-hand side of maybe my 30 or 40-yard slice that if I aim it up the middle left, then if I slice, I’ll maybe just be in the right-hand rough, or if it’s really bad, I’ll be in the trees, but it’s sparse trees and I can play it.

Best case scenario, I hit it straight. And if I hit it too far straight, like a really good hold of it and have a great drive, there is a bunker about 275, but it’s a pretty small pot bunker. And it’s one of those scenarios that like if you get it that far, it’s a pretty playable bunker. It wouldn’t be super detrimental to have that sort of shot.

So that’s what I did. I kind of aimed just about at that far left bunker at 275. That’s kind of hugging the left. Short of it would just be in the kind of left-hand side of the fairway. And I take my shot, and what happens? Well, I hit it dead straight, but I didn’t have the distance on it that I normally do.

So what ended up happening is I landed in the fairway a little bit short of that left bunker, giving me an awesome shot into the green. Now it could have gone another way, I could have sliced it, but since it’s kind of off to the left, if I would have gone to the right, I would have had an even better angle into the green.

So I was really happy with how the strategy paid out off of the tee box.

So now I have about a hundred-yard shot into the green. Hundred yards is roughly my 56 or so, sometimes my 50 depending on the slope and elevation. So I took my 56 and I have a decent shot just off to the right of the green.

Now I did aim a little bit to the right because like I mentioned, this green is a little bit tucked to the left and there’s bunkers on the left and right side. So if I went right at the green, what I’m hitting over is that little bunker in front of me, maybe a little bit of a tree line, and then a bunker on the left. Now I do have a lot of room long for that, but that’s a lot of error margin if I hit it short.

And I only needed to aim like five yards or ten yards to the right to take out of play the tree line and the far left bunker. The little bunker in front of me was only like 25 yards. So with a 56 degree, I kind of thought, OK, this isn’t even a problem, hopefully.

And what I did is I shot up, kind of aimed to the right of the flag. I would say maybe five yards or so. If I could draw it back in the flag, great, I’d be on the green. If not, then it should be a little chip.

And what happened is I ended up just kind of hitting it straight, maybe just a little bit offline to the right. So I just missed the green, but this was a perfect spot to miss. There was just a little bit of fairway in front of the green. I was short of the far bunker. There was just nice fluffy rough for me to hit out of.

So I had a nice 16-yard chip shot up on the green, and I two putted it for a bogey. And in this case, I got a stroke for this hole for my handicap. So I ended up walking away with a net par. So really happy with that core strategy.

So you can start to see how I think about these holes, and I think that you all listening could really benefit from this. And it all starts and really comes down to like, look at the hole you’re about to play. Think about where’s the safest shot that I have?

When you make that sort of decision, you have the ability to put your ball into a position where even if you mess up, you still can play a next shot and have high confidence that you can continue on with the hole.

Sometimes I would say in competition golf, especially maybe near the end of match play or something like that, you may play golf a little bit more aggressively and you might play that shot where it’s a little higher error-prone.

But I will say that my best rounds have always been when I’m locked into the course strategy. And it’s not only just from thinking about the hole and making the correct decisions, while I think that’s important, it can really help.

I think the bigger picture of all this is it gets your mind on something other than your golf swing, which is one of the hardest things that a golfer has to overcome, is just trying not to think of the mechanics of their swing while they’re actually playing.

And thinking about course strategy like this is one tool you can use to really help you get your mind off your swing and start thinking about the strategy of the course. And that’s a lot of fun in my opinion. When you’re really playing well and you’re just thinking about the course strategy, that’s how golf is meant to be played. That’s why we play different golf courses.

So that’s golf strategy, just a couple examples at least. I didn’t really want to jump into theoretical stuff or anything. I just wanted to walk through some practical examples and talk about how I’ve thought about course strategy in the past. So hopefully you enjoyed that.

So that’s it for this episode of the Birdie Board Podcast. Thanks for listening, everyone.

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