GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 1: Just How Good Are You?

 

 

 “I want the truth!”

“You can’t handle the truth!”

            Exchange from the movie, A Few Good Men.

 

         

 

          There exists a slight but very real difference between the level of play that is bogie golf and that which is terrible golf.  Here’s how to tell the two apart: If you are not now playing (at least) bogie golf, than your game is probably in the “terrible” class.

          Sorry, but it’s true. 

          Why?  Just about anyone who has played the game for a year or two and is even marginally serious about practice and improvement has the ability to play bogie golf right now, no matter what his present handicap might be. Bogie golf is not some impossible task that requires superior skill and daring.  Instead, it only requires acceptance of the following statement: If you play smart, you can cut a lot of strokes off your game.

          That should be news to no one. But if so, how come terrible golfers continue to play terrible golf?  Why don’t they play bogie golf? 

          I think I have the answer.

          Your game is terrible because you get yourself into trouble too often, and most of the time that’s the result of attempting low percentage shots. Your game is also terrible because you fail to identify and avoid high risk elements, both on the course and in your play.  And you insist on using clubs you can’t hit. You’re not playing smart, you’re playing terrible.

          If that’s you, then you’re not matching your abilities to your approach to the game, and that’s got to change in order to get to bogie.

          I’m no golf pro, and I’ve never even seen you swing a club, but I’ve said (and will continue to say) that you don’t have to get any better to play bogie golf. Instead, you have to come to terms with the skills you presently have and pragmatically recognize them for what they are.  You must understand all the things you can regularly do, and (more importantly) those you cannot. Then, by the application of that understanding, you must learn to play smart. That’s something I call the Bogie Outlook.

There are many definitions of the game of golf.  The one that applies here is that you “use a club to golf the ball around the course and into a hole in as few strokes as possible”.  If a particular club is not doing the job for you, for God’s sake don’t use it. Jim MacDonald, who used to be the pro at Hickory Ridge in Amherst, reminded me of that a few years ago when I complained to him that I was having trouble with my long irons.

 “Don’t use ‘em.” He said. “You don’t need them to play golf.”

           As obvious as that seems in the written word, on the course we are all victimized by a case of mistaken identity.  We know that inside each of us there lurks a better player - one who hits all his shots well and lands the ball pretty much where he aims it.  Sometimes that guy comes to the surface, if only briefly, and we actually make the shot we planned; We carry the water with the two-iron and land the ball on the apron, or we drive the ball off the tee with a clean “click”, and then watch as it lands and bounces on the fairway 250 yards away.  The mistaken identity part is in thinking that that guy - that terrific shot-maker, that consistent hitter of the long and accurate ball - is you!

We allow ourselves to believe it even though we’ve only struck the ball well with a two-iron just a handful of times while actually playing golf.  Memories of the hundreds of times we chunked, sliced, hooked, and skulled the ball are not allowed in the door.  Instead, we tell ourselves, “When I concentrate, the real me can hit the ball well. Anything else was a mistake for one reason or another.” 

That certainly goes down a lot better than the truth, which is, “The real me isn’t skilled enough to hit long irons and the driver consistently, and the few times I do are an aberration that cannot be relied on.”

Oh, we can work and practice to give that imaginary good golfer inside us more playing time.  But for now it’s a mistake to permit ourselves to think “Now, there’s the real me,” whenever we hit an absolutely perfect laser of a shot.  Instead, I’m proposing to redefine “the real me” as the guy who knows what’s possible and what’s only plausible.  He’s the one you need to get in touch with before you can play bogie golf.

Here’s a chart. Fill in the column labeled “estimated “ as honestly as you can.  Do it right now, while you’re a long way from your clubs and a golf course, and write in the numbers that you believe to be accurate for your own game.

 Don’t show it to anyone.  Instead, take it with you to the driving range and prove to yourself that the numbers are true.

 

club	Estimated Percent of good hits	Actual Percent of good hits
Driver
3-wood
5-wood
2-iron
3-iron
4-iron
5-iron
6-iron
7-iron
8-iron
9-iron
Pitching wedge
Sand wedge

 

Here’s how: At the driving range, set aside ten of the best balls in the bucket. Find out what “the real me” can do by taking one of your clubs and seeing how many of those balls you hit well. 

What do we mean by “hit well?”

For the sake of a bogie golf definition, lets say “a good shot” is one that is struck properly and ends up fairly close to where you intended it to go. That many of us swing the club with no clear-cut target in mind is part of another problem, but we’ll visit that later. For now, a good shot is one you’d be happy with if you were on the golf course. 

Start with the driver. Make ten shots with it, and keep track of the number of good hits. What’s that? You only hit 3 of them well? Try again if you think you can do better. Put out ten more balls, or dump the whole bucket out, but count the bad shots as well as the good ones - no Mulligans.

You'll end up with a percentage that may or may not match your initial estimate.  You’ll also end up with a clearer, albeit less savory idea of who “the real me” is.

      Do the same with all the clubs in your bag, and mark down the actual percentages next to those you estimated.  If you’re like most of us who routinely play 3-figure golf, you probably flunk the test with all of your long irons and probably the driver, too.

          How good do you have to be? None of us have any trouble telling the difference between a 25% successful performance and one that is 90%.  That’s not difficult.  But the difference between, say, being able to hit a ball well 65% of the time and 75% of the time might not be quite so obvious.  It might not even make a difference in a single round of golf, or even in two.  Think of baseball: If they didn’t flash the statistics on the scoreboard, would the difference between a .200 hitter and another player who was hitting .300 be obvious in just one game?  Yet that small amount of difference, that ten percent, is really what we’re after.  In golf, it’s the difference between a 90 and a 100, and in the major leagues it’s the difference between a trip to the minors and a trip to Cooperstown. 

Some things seem obvious, but cry out to be stated: You shouldn’t play golf with any club you can’t hit well most of the time.  And “most of the time” means 75% or better. Eventually, if this dream of bogie golf is important to you, you have to come face-to-face with the reality that “the real me” doesn’t hit some of the clubs very well.  That doesn’t make you a bad person, or even a bad golfer.  What it should make you is a smarter golfer - one who is smart enough not to play a club that is going to cost him strokes on a predictable basis. I say it should make you smarter, but not everyone can accept a lesser version of their abilities.  It takes some surrender, and for some of us that doesn’t go down easily.

If you’re finding out things about yourself you didn’t want to know, hold onto your hat because there’s more of the same in the next chapter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 2: How About Accuracy?

 

 

“If I got that good, nobody would want to play with me.”

                                                Ted Everhart, Lexington, NC

 

 

 

Here’s the next reality check: How accurate are your shots?

The pros hit something like 20-to-one accuracy: that is, a 20-yard chip shot lands within one yard of the target, and a 200 yard drive lands within ten yards of where it’s supposed to.  That’s a 20-to-one ratio.  Low-handicap golfers who play near-par golf might perform at a 15-to-one accuracy ratio, and bogie golfers might be expected to regularly hit for a 10-to-one ratio of distance to accuracy.  None of this has been scientifically verified, but it seems to reflect reality. (I’d be the first to admit that such a ratio is not necessarily linear, because some guys are 20-to-one on their short game but considerably worse than that on longer shots, and others are just the opposite.  It’s just a rule of thumb for putting ourselves in touch with realistic expectations.) 

So that 10-to-one ratio means that a bogie golfer has a day-in day-out accuracy that will land a 20-yard chip shot within two yards of the target, a 120-yard wedge to the apron within 12 yards of the place it’s supposed to land, and a 200-yard hit with a short wood will end up within 20 yards of where you aimed it. That may not be a “good shot” for Jack Nicklaus, but for a bogie golfer it’ll do. Knowing that, when a bogie golfer hits a shot that’s exactly dead-on, it’s usually a matter of luck. Admit it. It could just as easily have been short, long, or to one side or the other and still been well-hit and acceptable. That’s what the 10-to-one ratio is all about.

An immediate result of accepting the 10-to-one accuracy ratio is that you begin to realize that, in most instances, you’re playing with too much club: A 240-yard drive, even when well hit, might land 24 yards to either side of the target area.  Most fairways are simply not wide enough to permit that much variation. Further, a 180-yard iron to the green, even when well hit, could go 18 yards either way. How big is the green? Where are the sand traps? What’s the margin for error?

          Can you actually abandon the machismo business of hitting the long drive? It’s part of the surrender it takes to make the dream of bogie golf come true.  It’s hard, and for some of us the John Daley dream trumps the quest for a respectable score.       

          How far do you hit your seven-iron? It would be convenient to spit out a number and leave it there: 150 yards, let’s say. But the truth is that we sometimes hit the seven well but end up considerably short of 150, and at other times it seems an effortless shot goes farther than we thought it would – something more like 165. Knowing the truth about the 10-to-one accuracy rule – it applies to distance as well as side-to-side variation - makes “How far do you hit your seven-iron?” a difficult question to answer.

          That’s pretty much the same story with all the clubs in the bag: Predictability would be nice, but it’s only a sometimes thing. That’s why those range finder devices are not very useful, even when they work. You’re better off culturing the ability to judge distance in terms of “That looks like an seven-iron,” rather than basing your club selections on yardage markers.

          The distance as calculated by golf course architects in creating a 390-yard hole is the shortest direct-line down the fairway to the middle of the green. It is very possible, then, considering the 10-to-1 accuracy ratio, to hit a 220 yard drive and a 170 yard five-iron and still be a long way from the green. We both know the grim reality of that.

Some clubs are easier to hit than others. Oh, I’ve heard that business too about how a good golfer should be able to hit them all, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. This is about bogie golf, and how to get there. I’m addressing the relative ease of hitting the three-wood versus the driver. But maybe you don’t hit the three-wood very well, either. Okay, tee off with the five-wood. Can’t hit that? Use the longest iron you hit well. The idea is to get out of the tee box in good enough shape to make a second shot that means something positive.

I know: You spent good money for your driver and those long irons, but you don’t hit them consistently well, and even when you do, your accuracy cannot be relied upon.  Does that mean you should leave those clubs in the trunk of your car when you go golfing?  Does that mean you should show up in front of your golfing buddies with just five or six numbered irons and a 3 wood?

It’s tough to do, but if you believe in the dream of bogie golf, the answer is “yes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 3: The Method of the Bogie Outlook

 

"The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sing best."

         Thoreau

 

         

          There is a lot made of the statement that golf is 100% mental.

          Don’t believe it.

          That statement wasn’t meant for you and me. Rather, it is aimed at the pros and those few other golfers who have completely conquered the mechanics of the game.  They’ve mastered it: they know how to hit all the shots all the time, so the physical aspects of the goal are no longer a major stumbling point for them. What separates the winners from the pack at the lofty tournament level is the mental aspect of the game.  For them, winning golf really is 100% mental.

          Down here at the hacker level, there is a different sort of mental game that keeps the rest of us from the realization of the dream of bogie golf. The kind of mental game we need to address is one laced with pragmatism. It involves a mind-set that I call “The Bogie Outlook.” We guard against disappointments by keeping our expectations tied to reality: We think “bogie” right from the start of the round, and never loose sight of that as our goal.

          Admittedly, the dream of bogie golf is easier dreamed than accomplished – but here’s how to get there from here.

 

          First off, if you’re not now doing it you should keep score, and do it accurately.  You might read the chapter on “rules, scoring, and protocol” for some ideas, but chances are you’ve got a consistent method in place so that you can measure the quality of your play from round to round.

          So you're scoring - if not wonderfully at least consistently - and your scores are in the low 100s with a few high 90s mixed in.  Here's how to map out a strategy to get you to bogie golf:

Sit down with a blank score card from the course you play regularly. At the far end, in the “total” box, write 90. Now, go back over the scorecard and write in hole-by-hole what you have to shoot to make the 90 in the total box come true. Go over the course in your mind. You've played it enough to realistically identify each hole where bogie is a good possibility. There will be a few par holes – those are usually the short par-fours and the easier par-threes. Too, there will be a few that even on a good day are difficult to bogie. Those are double bogie holes.

          You must recognize that there are certain holes where par is a makeable reality, and others where even the best of golfers are content with a bogie. On those truly difficult holes, a pragmatic approach might dictate that you play for a double bogie right out of the tee box, and your goal on that hole is not to triple. Envision what you must do to bogie each hole and it will soon become evident that a monster drive off the tee is not a prerequisite to any hole on the course.

          Once done, that score card is your marching orders. It says — in your own handwriting — how you’re going to play bogie golf. On bogie par-fours, you're out to put the ball in the cup in five strokes. That usually means teeing off with something other than a driver, and placing your second shot to land on the apron rather than the green. It is often amazing how simple a difficult hole becomes when you surrender just a single stroke from the very beginning. Hey, we’re bogie golfers – we’re going to surrender that stroke sooner or later anyway. Less really can be more.

Approach the first tee box with that in mind, and provide a continuing answer to your own question of, “What do I have to do to bogie this hole.”

Then do it. It’s how to get there from here.

Since you don’t have to become a better golfer to play bogie golf, you will continue to occasionally skull one – Both you and I do now, and following the bogie strategy doesn’t make either of us immune from bad shots. Oh, I hate miss-hits like turkeys hate Thanksgiving, but after such a bad hit you can easily get sidetracked by the idea of the catch-up shot: You’ve screwed-up, and now you must scramble and make a spectacular three-iron to the green in order to catch-up and stay on schedule.

Don’t. That makes as much sense as prescribing an enema as a cure for diarrhea. You can’t do it, and you shouldn’t try. Recovery shots are high risk affairs, and what started as one duffed shot could easily end up as an entire duffed hole. Instead, admit the train is going to be late, then get back on track. Do whatever you must, but make sure you follow a bad shot with an outward demonstration to your own golf-playing ego that you can still do something right, even if it’s just an easy pitching wedge back to the fairway. In the play of the game as a whole, such a positive confirmation can be better for your psyche than getting lucky on a chancy shot ever could be.

          Similarly, if you've doubled on a bogie hole, don't mistakenly try to force par on the next hole to make up for it. Even on the easy par-fours, as soon as the drive isn’t perfect, begin to think bogie, not catch-up. It’s only one of the 18 holes. Don't abandon your goal.

Hey, there will be other times when your chip shot from the apron lands close enough to the pin so that you can one-putt, and you’ve got a par when you played for and expected a bogie. It won’t happen as often as it should, but congratulate yourself on being lucky, then get back to work. At the end of the round you’ve perhaps made your goal on 15 of the 18 holes. You can tell yourself that you’re just three strokes away from bogie.

You didn’t expect to have everything come true the first time out, did you? The Bogie Outlook works, but there are no guarantees.

No matter, don’t loose sight of the dream, because bogie golf lies just ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 4: The Four Components of the Game.

 

 

“That shot is a lot like an elephant’s ass hole: It’s high, and it stinks.”  Gordie Forbes, Chicopee MA

 

 

 

Among the myriad variations on the game that golfers have thought up is a four-player scramble with each golfer playing with just one club. One guy might use a driver, another a mid-iron, a third guy might play with just a wedge, and the fourth guy has a putter. The guy with the putter doesn’t stand much chance of having his ball used out of the box or on the fairway, but on the green the other guys have to putt with their long clubs. It’s all for fun, but it’s a fairly graphic example of the four components of the game of golf:

1.       Getting out of the box,

2.     The iron game,

3.     The short game, and

4.     Putting.

Of the four, which is the most important?  There is no doubt about the correct answer:

In baseball, the most important pitch in the count is always “strike one”. Similarly, the most important out in any inning is the first one. That reasoning, of course, is rooted in the idea that starting out well has a positive effect on all that comes after, and the possible ways to screw-up are greatly narrowed once the first obstacle is overcome. 

By the same reasoning, the most important component in playing bogie golf is the ability to consistently hit a good shot out of the tee box.  By “a good shot,” I mean one that puts the ball onto the fairway and makes an advancing second shot a real possibility.

In the equation that answers the question “What do I have to do to bogie this hole?” the first factor to fall out is “monster drive”. To make a 5 on a typical par 4 hole you don’t need a 280- yard drive. (Save those for the “What must I do to birdie this hole” equation, which you’ll find in someone else’s book.) What you do need is to get out of the tee box well and fairly, and that doesn’t mean anything with an exclamation point after it.

Getting out of the box in bogie golf is about consistency, not distance. It’s not about making spectacular shots, but rather, staying out of trouble. With the ball on the fairway, your next shot can meaningfully advance your score rather than make up for a previous mistake. You can do that.

 

The number two component is the iron game. That’s your second shot, the one that advances the ball to a place where you can chip onto the green. So in our equation that answers the “What-do-I-have-to-do-to-bogie-this-hole?” question, the second factor that we don’t need to consider is “accurate iron shot to the green”. In the equation, replace that with “easy iron shot to the apron”. 

          Again, on a typical par-four, the green is protected by bunkers and elevations. Rather than attempt a long iron shot to the green, use less club and shoot for the much larger and less risky target of the apron. You’ve gotten out of the box well on your tee shot, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that you’re now hitting from the fairway rather the rough. Even if your safe iron shot is miss-hit, it won’t get you into anywhere near as much trouble as a longer chance would.

          If you fall into the “bogie golfer” category, then you probably hit your short irons well. That is, the seven-eight-nine. The mid-irons - the four-five-six - might give you some trouble now and then, but you can usually hit them, if not as advertised then at least acceptably well. That’s as good as your iron game needs to be to play bogie golf. I hesitate to even mention the long irons because you don’t need them to play bogie golf even if you could hit them as well as your should. But very few golfers are consistent with long irons, and if that’s you then you should leave them in your garage when you play.

          The iron game is about possibilities. It can be complex and exacting – the clubs all have different numbers on them, after all. But in bogie golf you don’t need to know accurate distances, only safe distances. When the target becomes the apron rather than the green the iron game becomes simplicity itself.  Nothing difficult here - You can do that.

 

The third component in the what-do-I-have-to-do-to-bogie-this-hole equation is the short game, and that’s mostly about just one club: the pitching wedge. Oh, I know you carry a sand wedge and maybe a 60-degree lob wedge. So do I. But those are mostly “get-out-of-trouble” clubs. To play bogie golf, you have to be pretty good with a pitching wedge, and I’ll bet you probably are. I’m not saying “expert” or “near-perfect” here, but rather, you’ve got to be able to hit the wedge consistently, and have a feel for the difference between a ¾-swing and a half-swing.  And if there’s any one place in your game when improving on the ten-to-one accuracy ratio can save you strokes, here it is. 

In the play of the typical par-four hole your third shot is your short game, and it’s made with a pitching wedge. Even if you’ve missed the apron with your iron shot and are in the rough, it’s seldom more than 100 yards to the middle of the green. Sometimes, it’s even the little 25-yard chip shot that you practice in your back yard.

The guys who are trying to “get on in regulation” see the short pitch as an indication that they haven’t. But for the bogie golfer it’s the shot that takes your game out of the pressure cooker: You’ve deliberately placed yourself in a situation where the key shot on each hole – the chip to the green - doesn’t necessarily have to be good, it just mustn’t be bad. On the road to bogie golf, that’s another component you can handle.

 

          The fourth component is putting.  On each green you’re looking to two-putt, and in that regard the what-do-I-have-to-do-to-bogie-this-hole way of thinking is no different than the go-for-par game. Certainly, if a low handicap golfer gets a birdie on a par four, he has - almost always - one-putted. For the same low-handicap golfer, bogies are often the result of ineffective putting, although there are many other ways to score a five on a par-four.

You should be as good with your putter as you are with your other clubs on a distance-to-accuracy ratio. Is ten-to-one within the realm of pragmatic expectations? That would mean that on a 25-footer you routinely stop the ball within two-and-a-half feet of the hole. Closer is better, of course, but a ten-to-one seems realistic: A ten-footer should be reduced to a one-footer, a 15 to an 18-incher, a 20 to a two-foot putt, and so on.

          Pace is more important than accuracy in long-distance putting, but you need to discover at what range you can sink a putt with regularity. Let’s say it’s 30 inches. If you can always make a two-and-a-half foot putt, then there is an imaginary circle around the hole five feet across. Your objective, then, when you make your initial putt on any green is not to put the ball into the 4-1/2 inch hole, but to put it within the two-and-a-half-foot radius that is your own “magic circle.” And be sure it’s in the back half of that circle: The “never-up, never-in” rule is irrefutable, but with some of us it’s a long time being learned.

          In the pro ranks, three-foot putts are 99% success shots.  But four-foot putts are only 75%, and five-footers are less than 50%.  And that’s the pros, the guys who play golf for a living. You’re trying to play bogie golf.  Make your short putts, and admit that you’re going to three-putt on anything longer than you can put into your magic circle on the first try. Oh, I play with guys who make the words “three-putt” sound like something you wouldn't want to step in while wearing new shoes, but a three-putt not going to break your game. It sometimes works out that a handful of unlucky three-putts is offset by an equal handful of lucky one-putts. But don’t count on it. We’re back to the mental game again: Don’t permit a missed putt to upset your dream of bogie golf.

Unless you’re a Ben Crenshaw, the key to success in putting is not to putt better, but to chip better. Consider that the middle of the green is rarely more that 25 feet from the cup.  Knowing you can reduce most 25-footers to a two-and-a-half-footer means that a chip shot strategy that makes the middle of the green your target will align the percentages in your favor. Two putting: It’s another thing you can do.

 

     Sounds easy?  None of the four components by themselves are particularly challenging. Bogie golf should be easy.

But not many do it.

Not because they can’t apply the Bogie Outlook to the four components of the game, but because golf requires long-term concentration. When things stop going well (and they do) golfers have a tendency to abandon their good intentions and say “What the hell, lets see if I can ______ from here.”

Among the various things that we use to fill in the blank - blast out of the woods, go over the trees, land the ball on the green with a 2 iron – all are inevitably high-risk/low-percentage endeavors.  With such shots we need to be lucky, and most of us are only rarely lucky.  So we end up with a triple on a hole we should have pared, and any hope we had of a good round goes down the toilet.

          The components of the game don’t change: we have to get out of the box, play a safe iron shot, chip on and then putt the ball close enough so that we can sink the next putt.  Playing the high risk game adds a fifth component: scrambling.  That doesn’t figure into the Bogie Outlook. High risk elements need to be avoided, not cultured. And that’s the subject of the next chapter. 

         

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 5: Avoiding the Game’s Difficult Elements

 

 

 

"Things that upset a terrier may pass virtually unnoticed by a Great Dane."

-- Smiley Blanton

 

 

          It’s been humorously said that golf represents the victory of hope over experience: Golfers keep coming back, hoping that this will be the round they put it all together in spite of what they’ve done every other time out. Hope wins out over experience because we keep trying to clear the trees, then we keep trying to get out of the woods. And we keep trying to play the angle just right and make it past the corner, then we keep trying to find our ball in the rough. And we keep trying to carry the sand traps and land the ball on the green, then we keep wishing we had taken more practice time with our sand wedge.

          We keep trying, but we can’t seem to get it right.

          It may be true that hope wins out over experience, but one definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

          Don’t act crazy on the golf course. Hope alone isn’t going to get you to bogie - not in this lifetime, at least. In order to change the results, you’ve either got to become a much better golfer than you presently are or you’ve got to re-think the way you play. And just in case you haven’t been paying attention so far, I will restate the idea that you don’t have to be a better golfer to play bogie golf – You only need the Bogie Outlook.

          The most logical application of the Bogie Outlook is in the avoidance of the game’s difficult elements. Understanding what constitutes such a difficult element involves more common sense than most ordinary golfers are willing to display on the golf course. Certainly, the course itself throws a few at us that we need to steer around. No mystery there. But the most misunderstood difficult elements are the situations we force upon ourselves - situations where we’re expected to “go for broke.” A shot that stretches the limits of our abilities in order to clear a hazard is in the “difficult element” class. So is any shot where the margin for error is less than ten percent of the distance involved. We’ve already established the truth of the 10-to-one accuracy ratio, and why that sort of thing gets us into trouble.

          Long distance accuracy is in itself a difficult element: Not necessarily a longish shot across some water to a fairway, but rather, a longish shot to a bunkered green. In the first case, in order to carry the water you have only to hit well. In the later, hitting well isn’t enough – you’ve also got to hit accurately. Tiger Woods can hit a green with a four-iron at 190 yards. For him, the four-iron is the right club. But it’s a low percentage shot unless you can successfully do it most of the time.  I can't, and don’t imagine you can, either.

          That goes for fairway wood shots as well - Don’t do it. Unless you are playing a par-six hole (and there’s not a lot of them around), you’ll use a fairway wood to either attempt to get on the green in regulation or to make up for a poor shot, and we’ve already condemned both of those strategies. You don’t need fairway woods to play bogie golf.

          Risk without reward: It’s a method of non-thinking that regularly gets us into trouble on the golf course. We routinely hit the longest club we can without considering what (if anything) stands to be gained through the risk we’re accepting. Think ahead. I’ve heard the process referred to as “course management”. You must constantly ask yourself, “Where is the best place for my ball to be? What’s to be gained by the risk I’m taking? What’s to be lost if I fail?” Professional caddies make a living providing answers to questions such as those, but you’re your own caddy, and that certainly entails a lot more than just lugging around your own clubs.

          Risk-without-reward decisions: On a par-five, we attempt a five-wood down the fairway as a second shot and then a pitching wedge to the green. Is there any real difference between that risky combination and one that sees a five-iron from the same lie and then a short-iron to the green? Since we’re all playing to a ten-to-one accuracy ratio, our chances of hitting the green are pretty much the same in each case, and the only reward in hitting the fairway wood is that it feels good when (and if) you do it right. That won’t hold any water in our pursuit of bogie golf: If you’re going to try a shot that’s more difficult than another, there had better be a very good chance of saving a stroke.

          Pros make a lot of money conquering difficult elements, but you and I know what’s possible and what’s only plausible. For us, difficult elements are low percentage chances that are not only un-makeable, but lead us into more trouble when we fail, which is most of the time. That’s as much fun as being buried at sea. Why fool with low percentage shots?  You're trying to score bogie, not break the course record.

          Sand traps and fairway bunkers are difficult elements the course itself throws our way. So is the rough. So are side-hill lies, lies behind trees, and lies deep in the woods. Nobody hits there on purpose, of course. Instead, they’re often the end result of attempting a difficult element in your game and then failing. The physical difficult elements on the course are your standard punishment for that failure.

          Sometimes, though, we end up in a difficult situation because of a miss-hit. Certainly, we all duff enough shots to know the truth of that statement, and since I continue to say that you can play bogie golf without getting any better, you’re going to continue to miss-hit a few.  I’m a bogie golfer, and it’s a rare round when I don’t get a close look at the inside of a sand trap, and I still spend enough time in the woods so that long pants are a good idea. When you’re facing one of the course’s difficult elements, apply that part of the Bogie Outlook that says do whatever you must, but make sure that after hitting a bad shot you next hit a good shot. Any good shot will do. You’re scrambling, but not in the traditional golf sense: You’re not trying to make par. Rather, you’re out to keep the dream of bogie golf on track.

          Exiting traps is like screwing in a canoe: it can be done, but very carefully. There is a crying need to keep it simple: When you’re in, take the easiest way out. Don’t try to be cute and land the ball three feet from the pin unless you have the skill to do it most of the time. Most of us don’t. In the case of fairway bunkers, don’t automatically try to advance the ball. If you’re “on the beach”, you’ve made a bad shot. Hit as well as you can, but the good shot you need here is the one that will get you out, and that good shot in this case is a safe shot. Don’t loose sight of that.

          Sometimes the rough isn’t so bad. I play at a course where the back nine’s fairways are so soft that golfers routinely try to maximize their roll by hitting into the rough alongside the fairway. Of course, the rough is mowed short and is hardly difficult.  Other places have rough that is appropriately named, and hitting any shot out can be a challenge. A piece of advice that seems to sum up the Bogie Outlook when you’re in trouble is "Play the shot that will make the next shot easiest."

 

          You can’t always avoid the difficult elements on the course, but the method for dodging most of them amounts to eliminating the difficult elements from your game. We’re chasing bogie golf. We don’t need to clear the trees or cut the corner or carry the traps.  No. To get to bogie golf, what you really do need is to be able to assess your own abilities and then use that truthful assessment to avoid the difficult elements that can be avoided. Other things compound the difficulty, especially when your partner is hitting a three-iron to the green and you decide to lay up, and he makes remarks that contain questioning references to your masculinity. If that’s your partner, then he’s a difficult element and needs to be avoided.

          Play smart. It’s amazing how much trouble a golfer can stay out of by adhering to the Bogie Outlook. You don’t need to convert difficult chances to write down a score of 90. Don’t take them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 6: Golfing with the Bogie Outlook

 

 

“That’s a tough hole, and since I own the course I decided to make it a par-seven.  When I played this morning, I birdied that sucker.” 

            Willie Nelson, in a TV  interview with Barbara Walters

 

 

 

At the course where you play, there is a typical par four hole: Let’s say it’s a fairly straight 390-yarder without serious lost-ball hazards. It has a green protected by a couple of sand traps. Every course has a few holes that pretty much meet that criteria – they’re not easy, but they’re not the toughest hole on the course, either.  In the past you’ve done well on that hole, but there have been days when it’s eaten your breakfast, too.

You know how you play that hole, but for now here’s how two representative golfers might approach that same par-four at your course. See which one you recognize.

Joe Typical tees off with the driver and, if he hits it well, he’s more than half-way down the fairway. From there it’s a mid-iron shot to the green. Mid-irons aren’t terribly difficult, but even a perfect hit doesn’t produce the sort of trajectory that drops a ball onto the green and has it stay put. Knowing that, even Joe’s well-hit shot won’t hold the green unless he’s lucky. Joe isn’t, and his good shot ends up skidding off the back of the green. He has to chip up and then one-putt for par, or, more likely, two-putt for a bogie.

And that’s assuming Joe’s mid-iron could hit the green and not the sand traps. And even that is further assuming he hit the driver and the mid-iron well. Oh, I know there’s a chance Joe might have made a par, but before we examine percentages and possibilities, let’s have Joe’s alter-ego, Bill Bogie, play the same hole.

Bill is an adherent to the Bogie Outlook, so he tees off with the three-wood. A good hit wouldn’t take him as far as a driver, but he’s still about half-way down the fairway, leaving him with long-iron to the green. Certainly, if Joe Typical had a tough time with a mid-iron to a well-protected green, Bill Bogie doesn’t want to hit something longer still. Instead, Bill selects the eight-iron and lands his ball somewhere on the apron, avoiding the traps and leaving him with a makeable 50 or 60-yard pitch to the green for a 2-putt and a bogie.    

          Ah-ha, you say, the results are the same: Both Bill and Joe recorded bogies. So what’s the big deal? 

          The big deal is this: If you and I had to put our money on which of the two bogies was the safer bet, you’d put your money where mine is - on Mr. Bill and his Bogie Outlook. To appreciate that pragmatic approach, we have to now consider the alternate ending in each scenario. Here’s what usually goes wrong: 

          Joe Typical doesn’t hit the driver well most of the time.  He’s typical, after all.  Even when he strikes the ball well, he’s no stranger to the slice. The unfortunate truth of every sliced shot is that even if you could straighten it out, the ball doesn’t travel nearly as far as a similarly hit but non-slicing shot. Suppose this is one of those times. The ball leaves the fairway and even though there are no “lost ball” hazards on this hole, it’s in the rough along with all those trees, bushes, and lousy lies. A bad lie would mean one stroke just to get back to the fairway without appreciably advancing the ball.

          Maybe Joe’s lie wasn’t so bad, and he didn’t have to sacrifice a shot to get back to the fairway, but his improperly hit drive has insured that he’s hitting out of the rough, and much farther back than he planned on being. The driver gets the typical golfer into trouble much more often than it serves him well.

          Next, Joe uses his four or five-iron in an attempt to hit the green.  We’ve addressed the risk involved in long range accuracy for the typical golfer, so unless Joe is lucky, his well-hit shot could just as easily end up in the sand or the rough as on the green.

          Oh, I know that on the plus side it’s possible for Joe Typical to par the hole. When you play to the high-risk elements of the game, sometimes you do win. But most of the time you don’t. And I also know that unless he one-putts, it’s just about impossible for Bill Bogie to make par. As in baseball, when you play for only one run that’s all you usually get.

          The choice that resulted in Joe Typical teeing off with his driver is symptomatic of the erroneous risk-without-reward non-thinking that plagues the typical golfer. Even if he hits a good drive, what has he gained? A chance to hit a low-percentage shot to the green? I’m arguing here for the pragmatism that is the Bogie Outlook. Breaking down the odds, par for Joe Typical would mean that he’d have to hit the driver well and then make a very good mid-iron shot that would hold the green. Since he’s a typical golfer, I’d give him only a ten percent chance of stringing those two semi-difficult shots together. Even with a good drive, a less than perfect mid-iron shot would result in a bogie, and I’d give him at least a 40 percent chance of screwing-up that way. Anything other than a good drive would mean double bogie or worse, and I’d give Mr. Typical a fifty percent chance of not hitting a good drive. Of course, there are a lot of other ways to screw up, but lets confine our example to the three most likely outcomes: Par (or better); 10-percent odds. Bogie; 40-percent odds. Double bogie (or worse); 50-percent odds.

          Similarly, in order for the pragmatic Bill Bogie to par the hole, he’d have to hit his third shot close enough to the pin to one-putt. Not as unlikely as Alec Trabec wearing the same tie two shows in a row, but not likely, either - Maybe a five percent probability. But to bogie the hole he’d need to hit an easy three-wood, a good short iron, a good chip, then make a two-putt. None of those require long range accuracy or anything difficult. Bill Bogie’s chances of stringing three easy shots together are in the 60 percent range. Oh, he could screw-up and slice his three-wood or chunk his short iron and end up with a double, but I think his chances for success read something like; Par, 5-percent odds;  Bogie, 60-percent odds; Double bogie (or worse), 35-percent odds. 

          In reality, then, Joe Typical tries for par and usually double bogies. Not “once in a blue moon.” Not “every once in a while.” Not even “sometimes.” No. Joe Typical screws-up at a rate that can only be classified as “usually.” He is frustrated with his game because he so rarely makes his plans come true.

          Bill Bogie knows what he can and cannot do and plays smart golf. His game consists of a series of low-risk bogies and, once in a while, an easy par. He still screws up and makes bad shots, but mostly he’s happy with his game because things usually come out the way he planned.

Here’s some truth: the Bogie Outlook is not about making a bogie on each hole or playing respectable golf in the high 80s – that’s only the by-product of it. What it’s really about is making yourself happy. It involves assessing possibilities honestly: that is, finding out what you can do and what you can’t, and then putting that information into practice. It’s a small success, but it is satisfying. I’ve probably overused the word “pragmatism” in this book, but a pragmatic view of your own game is at the root of the Bogie Outlook.

Some days you just can’t hit the ball. It happens to all of us. Fortunately, those occasions seem to be offset by other days when everything seems to come together, and you play well. But on the days when you’re stinking-up the course, understand that it happens. Don’t do something stupid, like swearing off the game or changing your style. Or abandoning the Bogie Outlook.

          In the end you've got to play. You can dream the dream of bogie golf all you want, but you've got to get on the course and look down the fairway. There are forces at work and things that happen on the course that cannot be reproduced, no matter how much we play at "lets pretend..." My friend Peter Piemonte constantly compares it to reading a book on life: Decisions without the emotion aren't real. You’ve got to play.

          Just don’t forget the Bogie Outlook when you do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING TO BOGIE GOLF

 

Chapter 7: Rules, Scorekeeping, and Protocol

 

 

Golf terminology: Tee-totaler - Term for the guy who is trying to make up his club dues by picking up used tees, saving throw-away pencils, and fishing balls out of the river.

 

Golf terminology: “A keeper” – Any divot taken that is larger than your foot.

 

Golf terminology: Wallet Whistle - Any accessory, gadget, or gimmick whose main intent is to fool golfers into buying it rather than to actually serve some useful purpose. (See "Slice Corrector", "Inflatable Range Finder", "Ball Warmer", etc.)

 

Golf terminology: Ballistic parabola and impact scrutinization device – Any club with a loose head.

 

Golf terminology: Zapata wedge  – Use of the foot to kick the ball to a better lie.

 

 

 

 

          I’m sorry about including this chapter. I know that discussions about the rules of golf are usually about as much fun as having a tooth pulled without Novocain.

          As I’ve said in the preface, scoring is nice. Realistically, though, it’s just a method to measure your progress or lack of same. Or it’s a yardstick by which we can assess the quality of your game. Or it’s a means to compare any one round of golf to another. That said, it follows that in order for any of those definitions to have validity, your method of keeping score must be consistent.

I’ve read that, for the typical golfer, an average score is not the well-publicized 103, but more like 133. Golfers take Mulligans and gimmes, and don’t assess themselves the proper penalties for out-of-bounds and lost balls and the like. Oh, I’m not saying that a recreational golfer should adhere to every fussy rule of golf, but you can’t make a departure unless you first make an arrival, and in this case you can’t depart from the rules of golf unless you first know what they are. 

          We like to joke about that sort of thing as if it were akin to cheating on your ta