The Approach ShotThe Approach ShotAim: To guide you in your mindset when it comes to the approach shot. Master this and your scores will be great, provided you aren't too wild off the tee, also a good approach game relieves the pressure on your putting in a massive way.
This will be a surprisingly short section, because in all truth, the approach game is the sum of many of the other sections, which cover the basic shots you will face in a game, and the more advanced ones. For that reason, I'll just say a few words to guide you in your way, to avoid repeating myself too much from other sections. The approach shot can be classified as one of two main types- the perfect approach shot and the smart approach shot. A perfect approach is when you've found the fairway and have a nice route into the green and the flag is in an accessible position which can be attacked. The smart shot comes into play when you aren't ideally placed off the tee, or when the pin is in what is affectionately known as a "sucker" position. Clearly, in an ideal world we'd have 18 perfect approach shots, but that is not always possible, either because of our own errors /misjudgement or because the course is designed to prevent that.If you imagined hitting perfect tee shots on every hole, you can classify the easier courses in Links by the fact that you should have 18 perfect approaches. The more difficult courses will mean you need to use your smart shots also, and these are the much more challenging and enjoyable courses. Of course there are courses where the tee shot is the hard part ( Phoenix comes to mind ), but generally its the shots to the green and then greens themselves that create the challenge (and, yes, lest we forget Devils Island is just "challenging" from start to finish!). Hopefully you'll have taken on some points regarding course knowledge so you will know which holes are the tough ones where a smart shot is required and which ones you can try for "perfection", but I'll try and point out some of the factors which will help you decide which is which even if you don't know the course.It goes without saying that the introduction of a strong wind and hard/fast greens adds an extra challenge to any course, but I'll talk in general without referring to conditions except in a few examples.
The
Perfect Approach Shot:
Any shot where the green is relatively generous,
fairly flat, at about the same height as the fairway and with the
pin in the middle of the green has to be considered an
opportunity to attack the flag, and if you make the fairway from
the tee, you deserve that chance.Sometimes the conditions will
help you, in that a crosswind might blow in the direction of a
pin in the corner so you know that the shot is being pushed
closer to the pin, while other times the conditions will be
against you, it's for you to think about your best line in and to
play for that line.Not much to say here, if you identify a flag
you can go for, you should learn quickly what the ideal line is,
and if you hit your tee shot the way you plan, then you'll be
left with a pretty safe shot to the pin. You should also consider
the area around the pin..sometimes this will be pretty flat even
if its rough, so the pin might not be as much of a sucker as you
think, but that again is a consequence of course knowledge.
The
Smart Approach Shot
You'll find these more often than not. If your tee shot has gone
astray then you should not be thinking about the flag at all. See
the trouble section. You should be thinking to get out of that
spot, try to give yourself a chance for par and make sure you do
no worse than a bogey. If your tee shot is good, but not ideally
placed then you have to be "smart" about what you can
get from the shot- a lot of this will depend on the length of the
club you have and the lie. If you have a short iron in your hand
and the lie is good, you should still be able to hit a high,soft
shot into the green and near the flag. If you have a longer club
in your hand or you have a bad sidehill or especially downhill
lie, then you are going to have to think again. Since long irons
and shots played from a downhill lie will be coming in on a lower
trajectory that will run on more, you can only attack the flag if
the entrance to the green allows you to go up it and towards the
flag..unless you know for this hole in particular that you have
an easy chip if you are in the rough short or long, then you
should modify your aim with these long irons and downhill lie
shots so the ball stays over a safe area at all time, you may
misread the carry or the effect of the lie, so if you keep your
ball flight over the fairway and running onto the green up the
entrance (which most have) then you should get on the green more
often than not. Playing these kind of shots at pins which are
guarded by hazards, or rough, or banks will only lead to trouble.
Some pins are tucked in the corner, so if you dont have the line
where you can run up to the flag over the green then you'll find
that a longer club wont have the stopping power to carry onto the
green and then not roll off it again, by the way, thats the whole
point of pin positions and greenside hazards ! Again, from the
rough, you dont want to be hiking over a hazard or firing at a
flag,either aim away to a safe region or consider going long. A
perfect example of this is the 10th at Castle Pines. If you dont
stay on the fairway ( easy to do as it slopes viciously from left
to right ) then you'll have to carry a pond to hit the green and
the pin is often at the front....this is no time to be cute and
play for the flag, you have to go long, make sure you carry the
water and take it from there, go in the water and you have the
same shot all over again! The conditions can come into play, for
example hard/fast greens, especially downhill will mean that you
just cant get close to the pin ( par3's commonly), it is
sometimes possible to land on the fringe to help, but usually
that option is guarded by trouble, so if you are a few feet short
you'll be sorry, so again, it's worth considering playing for the
longest/widest part of the green and playing for that.You may
have perfect snap but you will always miss one or two, so look
out for the pins close to the front/back/sides of greens with
trouble nearby. As I have said somewhere else, use your aiming
pin to feel around the pin and off the green and use the profile
information to decide if the trouble is too severe to risk going
for the pin (ie very deep bunker), remember for most courses you
wont be shooting for birdie every hole, especially in tough
conditions so you will have to learn that "great"
scores are usually the result of going gung-ho for the pins that
are asking for it and playing smart on the others, sometimes you
will make a long putt or chip and that will make things even
better, but on a tough course in hard conditions, birdies will be
at a premium, so you can improve your score by eliminating bogeys
on the hard holes by playing smart and playing for par (with
chance of "lucky" birdie). If you stop making bogey you
wont need so many birdies before you get a great score. I once
shot 69 at the Belfry in windy/hard/fast at championship level,
because I played smart, attacked a few pins,made one big putt and
only one bogey, and that with a horror
snap twitch. I have also had scores in the seventies in the same
conditions with 8,9 and 10 birdies.....but a bunch of bogeys by
being too aggressive.On a real golf course, the usual setup is to
have the pins setup so 6 are "hard", 6 are
"tricky" and 6 are "easy".....this seems to
be true in Links, so if you chase the easier holes and play smart
on the other you'll have the chance for a 66. Of course you might
get some birdies on the 6 tricky holes too, but as long as you
dont make bogeys on the hard holes, you're not
"leaking" shots.If you are reading this guide, the
chances are you are not reaching amazing heights with your game,
so try playing a few practice rounds, jot down whether you think
each hole is setup to attack or whether it should be played
safely and then try and follow your advice. Hopefully your bogey
count will come down and then your scores will start to become
the sum of your birdies to full effect.Try playing it again and
aim to get close to every single pin, from wherever you end up,
and I'm sure you'll have trouble stopping those snotty bogeys.
Increase
your Perfect Approaches: The Jack Nicklaus way
Although Links is not real golf, and is much
easier, if a method works for the greatest golfer in history,
it's worth considering. As I may have mentioned elsewhere,Jack
used to picture holes in reverse. That
is, he knew the green and the pin position, and he worked out in
an ideal world where he would have the best chance to get close
for that hole. Once he'd identified that ( and assessed the
positions which would prevent him from having any reasonable shot
to the green) he would play his tee shot with the sole aim of
reaching that area. (For a par5, he would picture the ideal spot
for shot 1 and 2, unless he could go for the green in 2). This is
an excellent tip, and I was surprised when I played a few rounds
that there were some holes that I wasnt giving myself the best
shot in, even though I am one of the players who makes most use
of shorter tee shots and careful setups. You really shouldnt just
hit your driver without thinking, plan where you want to come in
from...if the pin is over to the left of the green, then in all
likelihood a shot from the right of the fairway is going to be
easier to play as you'll be coming at the flag over the green, if
you come from the left , you are almost certainly going to have
to carry a bunker or some rough, maybe worse.You also have to be
aware that some parts of the fairway have a bad lie associated
with them, or have trees or obstacles which will block your
approach ( for examples, see Castle Pines 10th and Valderrama's
2nd holes), so you really should get into the habit of not
thinking forward from the tee, but backwards from the green! This
method wont help you with the pin positions talked about above,
but this kind of course management should improve your game
significantly.
Final
Words:
Obviously, I dont want to discourage you from
shooting low, the fact that scores in the 50's (and sometimes
40's) are regular on this tour shows that you can chase all the
flags sometimes. You'll find that this is invariably in easy
conditions on the simpler courses, so you have to be realistic,
the harder the course and conditions, the more you'll gain by
following the advice on this page, if theres no wind and its an
easy course, you probably wont get much benefit. I guess another
skill is knowing when to play smart and when to let it rip, but
I'm all for that because that's more for you to learn yourself by
experience and playing !
Top Tips:
Use th Nicklaus method to picture holes in reverse
Dont chase pins that are asking for trouble unless you really need to
Focus on the pins which are there for taking
Dont be afraid to go for the heart of the green at any time.
Weight up the percentages of each shot on its own merit