How to play

How to play golf

The aim of golf is to hit a golf ball  into a hole by swinging a golf club past your shoulders and down again, in as few shots as possible.

Key Golf Basics  

To become competant at golf a few key basics need to be achieved.These are all to do with 'addressing the ball' and can be divided into:

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• Golf Stance
• Club Grip
• Golf swing

Golf Stance

• Feet shoulder width apart
• Knees slightly bent
• Ball roughly midway between feet
• Head down eyes looking at the ball 
• loose relaxed grip,arms relatively straight
  

Club Grip

How you grip the golf club has an influence on how 'square' the club will hit the golf ball and ultimately how straight.As a beginner depending on the grip it often feels stange to start with.

Golf Swing 

A golf swing is made up of three sections, takeaway,backswing and downswing/impact. 

• Takeaway - draw club away from the ball on the tee -slow,low movement in one piece wrists held firm.
• Backswing - when club approx 45 degrees from starting position -turn upper body (twist at hips) the way of the club - head stays still ,wrists may cock
  
• Downswing - uncoil shoulder and upper body swinging the club down in reverse action to backswing,looking at ball spot all the time.Club moves smoothly up round the body.

Game Variations 

Golf has many variations with the main ones being:-

• Stroke play
• Match Play
• Stableford

A hole is counted as the distance from the tee or teeing area  to a neatly cut area of short grass,the green where a hole is,  indicated by a flag.A tee is plastic ,approximately 5cm high,and is used to place the ball on.You use these on 18 hole and some 9 hole golf courses.You place them in the ground inbetween two markers about 5m apart that mark the teeing area.

Between the tee and the hole there is slightly thicker grass called the fairway. On longer holes your ball will land on this(hopefully!) but on shorter ones people aim for the green.

The Green:

Once near  the Green the game of golf becomes one with much shorter shots comprised of chipping and putting.Greens have different slopes and require quite differnet types of shots to those used to get down the fairway. Don,t be fooled though ,this part of the game is just as challenging and practice will hoppefully improve your game.

Rough,Hazards and Sand Bunkers 

To make golf more challenging golf courses also feature  rough,water hazards and sand bunkers.

• Rough- Thick weeds and thick grass(you use a golf club called a pitching wedge to get the club underneath the ball and launch it out)
• Water hazards- Ponds,lakes or rivers :if your ball lands in this you have to take a drop shot
  

• Sand bunkers- large dips in the ground with sand in.(use a sand wedge;golf club that is quite similar to a pitching wedge.)

When you finish a hole you write on a scorecard the amount of shots taken for that hole.One shot is called one stroke.

On a golf course you would take a few golf balls round with you, they cost about 50p each, so if you have to take a drop shot you get a ball out of your golf bag and take an outstretched arm and drop the ball down.You then play your shot from there adding an extra stroke for the drop.

On the scorecard you write your name,the date and your score for each hole.

There will also be a par for the hole;9 hole courses mostly have par 3's and 4's which means you should try and do the hole in in par.On 18 holes courses there are par 5's with the par 4s' generally  a lot longer than on 9 hole golf courses. Because of this just doubling a nine hole score will not be an indication of your first scores on an 18 hole.

Golf Shots within the game 

On the course there are different types of shots that require different skills.

• Tee-shot
• Fairway shot
• Bunker shot.
• Chip Shot (When you are quite close to the green,but not on it you may want to chip it ,which is normally a short slightly high shot.
• Puttng