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Van de Velde nearly achieved an upset victory at the Open Championship at Carnoustie , when he was the clear leader playing the closing holes. He arrived at the 18th tee needing only a double bogey six to become the first Frenchman since to win a major tournament. He had played error-free golf for much of the week and birdied the 18th hole in two prior rounds. Despite a three-shot lead, Van de Velde chose to use his driver off the tee, and proceeded to drive the ball to the right of the burn and was lucky to find land. Rather than laying up and hitting the green with his third, Van de Velde decided to go for the green with his second shot.
His shot drifted right, ricocheted backwards off the railings of the grandstands by the side of the green, landed on top of the stone wall of the Barry Burn and then bounced fifty yards backwards into knee-deep rough. On his third shot, Van de Velde's club got tangled in the rough on his downswing, and his ball flew into the Barry Burn, a water hazard. He removed his shoes and socks and gingerly stepped through shin-deep water as he debated whether to try to hit his ball out of the Barry Burn, which guards the 18th green. Ultimately, he took a drop and proceeded to hit his fifth shot into the greenside bunker.
Van de Velde blasted to within six feet from the hole, and made the putt for a triple-bogey seven, dropping him into a three-way playoff with Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie. Lawrie would eventually triumph in the playoff. Van de Velde made light of his Open collapse in a humorous Never Compromise infomercial in which he replayed Carnoustie's 18th hole in the dead of winter with only the company's brand putter in an attempt to best the seven strokes that cost him the championship.
He succeeded on his third attempt. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article includes a list of references , but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. In addition to the officially printed rules, golfers also abide by a set of guidelines called golf etiquette. Etiquette guidelines cover matters such as safety, fairness, pace of play, and a player's obligation to contribute to the care of the course.
Though there are no penalties for breach of etiquette rules, players generally follow the rules of golf etiquette in an effort to improve everyone's playing experience. Penalties are incurred in certain situations. They are counted towards a player's score as if there were extra swing s at the ball. Strokes are added for rule infractions or for hitting one's ball into an unplayable situation. A lost ball or a ball hit out of bounds result in a penalty of one stroke and distance Rule 27—1. A one-stroke penalty is assessed if a player's equipment causes the ball to move or the removal of a loose impediment causes the ball to move Rule 18—2.
A one-stroke penalty is assessed if a player's ball results into a red or yellow staked hazard Rule If a golfer makes a stroke at the wrong ball Rule 19—2 or hits a fellow golfer's ball with a putt Rule 19—5 , the player incurs a two-stroke penalty. Most rule infractions lead to stroke penalties but also can lead to disqualification. Disqualification could be from cheating, signing for a lower score, or from rule infractions that lead to improper play.
Golf clubs are used to hit the golf ball.
Each club is composed of a shaft with a lance or "grip" on the top end and a club head on the bottom. Long clubs, which have a lower amount of degree loft, are those meant to propel the ball a comparatively longer distance, and short clubs a higher degree of loft and a comparatively shorter distance. The actual physical length of each club is longer or shorter, depending on the distance the club is intended to propel the ball.
Golf clubs have traditionally been arranged into three basic types. Woods are large-headed, long-shafted clubs meant to propel the ball a long distance from relatively "open" lies, such as the tee box and fairway. Traditionally these clubs had heads made of a hardwood, hence the name, but virtually all modern woods are now made of metal such as titanium, or of composite materials. Irons are shorter-shafted clubs with a metal head primarily consisting of a flat, angled striking face. Traditionally the clubhead was forged from iron; modern iron clubheads are investment-cast from a steel alloy.
Irons of varying loft are used for a variety of shots from virtually anywhere on the course, but most often for shorter-distance shots approaching the green, or to get the ball out of tricky lies such as sand traps. The third class is the putter , which evolved from the irons to create a low-lofted, balanced club designed to roll the ball along the green and into the hole. A fourth class, called hybrids , evolved as a cross between woods and irons, and are typically seen replacing the low-lofted irons with a club that provides similar distance, but a higher launch angle and a more forgiving nature.
A maximum of 14 clubs is allowed in a player's bag at one time during a stipulated round. The choice of clubs is at the golfer's discretion, although every club must be constructed in accordance with parameters outlined in the rules. Clubs that meet these parameters are usually called "conforming". Violation of these rules can result in disqualification. The exact shot hit at any given time on a golf course, and which club is used to accomplish the shot, are always completely at the discretion of the golfer; in other words, there is no restriction whatsoever on which club a golfer may or may not use at any time for any shot.
Golf balls are spherical, usually white although other colours are allowed , and minutely pock-marked by dimples that decrease aerodynamic drag by increasing air turbulence around the ball in motion, which delays "boundary layer" separation and reduces the drag-inducing "wake" behind the ball, thereby allowing the ball to fly farther. A tee is allowed only for the first stroke on each hole, unless the player must hit a provisional tee shot or replay his or her first shot from the tee. Many golfers wear golf shoes with metal or plastic spikes designed to increase traction, thus allowing for longer and more accurate shots.
A golf bag is used to transport golf clubs and the player's other or personal equipment. Golf bags have several pockets designed for carrying equipment and supplies such as tees, balls, and gloves. Golf bags can be carried, pulled on a trolley or harnessed to a motorized golf cart during play. Golf bags have both a hand strap and shoulder strap for carrying, and sometimes have retractable legs that allow the bag to stand upright when at rest.
The golf swing is outwardly similar to many other motions involving swinging a tool or playing implement, such as an axe or a baseball bat; however, unlike many of these motions, the result of the swing is highly dependent on several sub-motions being properly aligned and timed, to ensure that the club travels up to the ball in line with the desired path, the clubface is in line with the swing path, and the ball hits the centre or "sweet spot" of the clubface. The ability to do this consistently, across a complete set of clubs with a wide range of shaft lengths and clubface areas, is a key skill for any golfer, and takes a significant effort to achieve.
Golfers start with the non-dominant side of the body facing the target for a right-hander, the target is to their left. At address, the player's body and the centerline of the club face are positioned parallel to the desired line of travel, with the feet either perpendicular to that line or slightly splayed outward.
The feet are commonly shoulder-width apart for middle irons and putters, narrower for short irons and wider for long irons and woods. The ball is typically positioned more to the "front" of the player's stance closer to the leading foot for lower-lofted clubs, with the usual ball position for a drive being just behind the arch of the leading foot. The ball is placed further "back" in the player's stance toward the trailing foot as the loft of the club to be used increases.
Most iron shots and putts are made with the ball roughly centered in the stance, while a few mid- and short-iron shots are made with the ball slightly behind the centre of the stance to ensure consistent contact between the ball and clubface, so the ball is on its way before the club continues down into the turf. Having chosen a club and stroke to produce the desired distance, the player addresses the ball by taking their stance to the side of it and except when the ball lies in a hazard grounding the club behind the ball.
The golfer then takes their backswing, rotating the club, their arms and their upper body away from the ball, and then begins their swing, bringing the clubhead back down and around to hit the ball. A proper golf swing is a complex combination of motions, and slight variations in posture or positioning can make a great deal of difference in how well the ball is hit and how straight it travels. The general goal of a player making a full swing is to propel the clubhead as fast as possible while maintaining a single "plane" of motion of the club and clubhead, to send the clubhead into the ball along the desired path of travel and with the clubhead also pointing that direction.
Accuracy and consistency are typically stressed over pure distance. A golf stroke uses the muscles of the core especially erector spinae muscles and latissimus dorsi muscle when turning , hamstring , shoulder , and wrist. Stronger muscles in the wrist can prevent them from being twisted during swings, whilst stronger shoulders increase the turning force. Weak wrists can also transmit the forced to elbows and even neck and lead to injury. When a muscle contracts, it pulls equally from both ends and, to have movement at only one end of the muscle, other muscles must come into play to stabilize the bone to which the other end of the muscle is attached.
Golf is a unilateral exercise that can break body balances, requiring exercises to keep the balance in muscles. Putting is considered to be the most important component of the game of golf.
As the game of golf has evolved, there have been many different putting techniques and grips that have been devised to give golfers the best chance to make putts. When the game originated, golfers would putt with their dominate hand on the bottom of the grip and their weak hand on top of the grip. This grip and putting style is known as "conventional". There are many variations of conventional including overlap, where the golfer overlaps the off hand index finger onto off the dominant pinky; interlock, where the offhand index finger interlocks with the dominant pinky and ring finger; double or triple overlap and so on.
Cross handed putting is the idea that the dominant hand is on top of the grip where the weak hand is on the bottom. This grip restricts the motion in your dominant hand and eliminates the possibility of wrist breakdowns through the putting stroke. Other notable putting styles include "the claw", a style that has the grip directly in between the thumb and index finger of the dominant hand while the palm faces the target.
Anchored putting, a style that requires a longer putter shaft that can be anchored into the players stomach or below the chin; the idea is to stabilize one end of the putter thus creating a more consistent pendulum stroke. This style will be banned in on the profession circuits. A hole is classified by its par, meaning the number of strokes a skilled golfer should require to complete play of the hole.
Pars of 4 and 5 strokes are ubiquitous on golf courses; more rarely, a few courses feature par-6 and even par-7 holes. Strokes other than the tee shot and putts are expected to be made from the fairway; for example, a skilled golfer expects to reach the green on a par-4 hole in two strokes—one from the tee the "drive" and another, second, stroke to the green the "approach" —and then roll the ball into the hole in two putts for par. Putting the ball on the green with two strokes remaining for putts is called making "green in regulation" or GIR. The primary factor for classifying the par of a relatively straight, hazard-free hole is the distance from the tee to the green.
A typical par-3 hole is less than yards m in length, with a par-4 hole ranging between and yards — m , and a par-5 hole being longer than yards m. However, other considerations must be taken into account; the key question is "how many strokes would a scratch golfer take to make the green by playing along the fairway? The grade of the land from the tee to the hole might increase or decrease the carry and rolling distance of shots as measured linearly along the ground.
Sharp turns or hazards may require golfers to "lay up" on the fairway in order to change direction or hit over the hazard with their next shot. These design considerations will affect how even a scratch golfer would play the hole, irrespective of total distance from tee to green, and must be included in a determination of par. So, the placement of hazards only affect par when considering how a scratch golfer would avoid them. Eighteen-hole courses typically total to an overall par score of 72 for a complete round; this is based on an average par of 4 for every hole, and so is often arrived at by designing a course with an equal number of par-5 and par-3 holes, the rest being par Many combinations exist that total to par, and other course pars exist from 68 up to 76, and are not less worthy than courses of par Additionally, in some countries including the United States, courses are classified according to their play difficulty, which may be used to calculate a golfer's playing handicap for a given course.
The two primary difficulty ratings in the U. These two numbers are available for any USGA-sanctioned course, and are used in a weighted system to calculate handicaps see below. The overall par score in a tournament is the summation of all the par scores in each round. A typical four-round professional tournament played on a par course has a tournament par of The goal is to play as few strokes per round as possible. A golfer's number of strokes in a hole, course, or tournament is compared to its respective par score, and is then reported either as the number that the golfer was "under-" or "over-par", or if it was "equal to par".
A hole in one or an "ace" occurs when a golfer sinks their ball into the cup with their first stroke from the tee. Common scores for a hole also have specific terms. In a typical professional tournament or among "scratch" amateur players, "birdie-bogey" play is common; a player will "lose" a stroke by bogeying a hole, then "gain" one by scoring a birdie. Eagles are uncommon but not rare; however, only 18 players have scored an albatross in a men's major championship. Two players or two teams play each hole as a separate contest against each other in what is called match play.
The party with the lower score wins that hole, or if the scores of both players or teams are equal the hole is "halved" or tied. The game is won by the party that wins more holes than the other. In the case that one team or player has taken a lead that cannot be overcome in the number of holes remaining to be played, the match is deemed to be won by the party in the lead, and the remainder of the holes are not played. At any given point, if the lead is equal to the number of holes remaining, the party leading the match is said to be "dormie", and the match is continued until the party increases the lead by one hole or ties any of the remaining holes, thereby winning the match, or until the match ends in a tie with the lead player's opponent winning all remaining holes.
When the game is tied after the predetermined number of holes have been played, it may be continued until one side takes a one-hole lead. The score achieved for each and every hole of the round or tournament is added to produce the total score, and the player with the lowest score wins in stroke play. Stroke play is the game most commonly played by professional golfers. If there is a tie after the regulation number of holes in a professional tournament, a playoff takes place between all tied players.
Playoffs either are sudden death or employ a pre-determined number of holes, anywhere from three to a full In sudden death, a player who scores lower on a hole than all of his opponents wins the match. If at least two players remain tied after such a playoff using a pre-determined number of holes, then play continues in sudden death format, where the first player to win a hole wins the tournament. The other forms of play in the game of golf are bogey competition, skins, 9-points, stableford, team play, and unofficial team variations.
A bogey competition is a scoring format sometimes seen in at informal tournaments. Its scoring is similar to match play, except each player compares their hole score to the hole's par rating instead of the score of another player. The player "wins" the hole if they score a birdie or better, they "lose" the hole if they score a bogey or worse, and they "halve" the hole by scoring par. By recording only this simple win-loss-halve score on the sheet, a player can shrug off a very poorly-played hole with a simple "-" mark and move on.
As used in competitions, the player or pair with the best win-loss "differential" wins the competition. What's known as the skins game is a variation on the match play where each hole has an amount of money called "skin" attached to it. The lump sum may be prize money at the professional level the most famous event to use these rules was the " LG Skins Game ", played at Indian Wells Golf Resort in California until , or an amount wagered for each hole among amateur players.
The player with the lowest score on the hole wins the skin for that hole; if two or more players tie for the lowest score, the skin carries over to the next hole. The game continues until a player wins a hole outright, which may and evidently often does result in a player receiving money for a previous hole that they had not tied for. If players tie the 18th hole, either all players or only the tying players repeat the 18th hole until an outright winner is decided for that hole—and all undecided skins.
A nine-point game is another variant of match play typically played among threesomes, where each hole is worth a total of nine points. The player with the lowest score on a hole receives five points, the next-lowest score 3 and the next-lowest score 1. Ties are generally resolved by summing the points contested and dividing them among the tying players; a two-way tie for first is worth four points to both players, a two-way tie for second is worth two points to both players, and a three-way tie is worth three points to each player. The player with the highest score after 18 holes in which there are points to be awarded wins the game.
This format can be used to wager on the game systematically; players each contribute the same amount of money to the pot, and a dollar value is assigned to each point scored or each point after 18 based on the amount of money in the pot, with any overage going to the overall winner. The Stableford system is a simplification of stroke play that awards players points based on their score relative to the hole's par; the score for a hole is calculated by taking the par score, adding 2, then subtracting the player's hole score, making the result zero if negative.
Alternately stated, a double bogey or worse is zero points, a bogey is worth one point, par is two, a birdie three, an eagle four, and so on. The advantages of this system over stroke play are a more natural "higher is better" scoring, the ability to compare Stableford scores between plays on courses with different total par scores scoring an "even" in stroke play will always give a Stableford score of 36 , discouraging the tendency to abandon the entire game after playing a particularly bad hole a novice playing by strict rules may score as high as an 8 or 10 on a single difficult hole; their Stableford score for the hole would be zero, which puts them only two points behind par no matter how badly they played , and the ability to simply pick up one's ball once it is impossible to score any points for the hole, which speeds play.
As with the original system, the highest score wins the game, and terrible scores on one or two holes won't wreck an entire game, but this system rewards "bogey-birdie" play more than the original, encouraging golfers to try to make the riskier birdie putt or eagle chipshot instead of simply parring each hole. Shotgun starts are mainly used for amateur tournament play. In this variant, each of the groups playing starts their game on a different hole, allowing for all players to start and end their round at roughly the same time. All 18 holes are still played, but a player or foursome may, for instance, start on hole 5, play through to the 18th hole, then continue with hole 1 and end on hole 4.
This speeds the completion of the entire event as players are not kept waiting for progressive tee times at the first hole. This form of play, as a minor variation to stroke or match play, is neither defined nor disallowed by strict rules and so is used according to local rules for an event. A handicap is a numerical measure of an amateur golfer's ability to play golf over the course of 18 holes. A player's handicap generally represents the number of strokes above par that the player will make over the course of an above-average round of golf.
The better the player the lower their handicap is. Someone with a handicap of 0 or less is often called a scratch golfer , and would typically score or beat the course par on a round of play depending on course difficulty. Calculating a handicap is often complicated, the general reason being that golf courses are not uniformly challenging from course to course or between skill levels.
A player scoring even par on Course A might average four over par on course B, while a player averaging 20 over par on course A might average only 16 over on course B. So, to the "scratch golfer", Course B is more difficult, but to the "bogey golfer", Course A is more difficult. The reasons for this are inherent in the types of challenges presented by the same course to both golfers.
Distance is often a problem for amateur "bogey" golfers with slower swing speeds, who get less distance with each club, and so typically require more shots to get to the green, raising their score compared to a scratch golfer with a stronger swing. However, courses are often designed with hazard placement to mitigate this advantage, forcing the scratch player to "lay up" to avoid bunkers or water, while the bogey golfer is more or less unaffected as the hazard lies out of their range. Finally, terrain features and fairway maintenance can affect golfers of all skill levels; narrowing the fairway by adding obstacles or widening the rough on each side will typically increase the percentage of shots made from disadvantageous lies, increasing the challenge for all players.
By USGA rules, handicap calculation first requires calculating a "Handicap Differential" for each round of play the player has completed by strict rules.
Gaining membership of an elite tour is highly competitive, and most professional golfers never achieve it. The majority of professional golfers work as club or teaching professionals "pros" , and only compete in local competitions. Retrieved 29 July Routing the Golf Course: He has twice finished in the top twenty of the Order of Merit. Irons are shorter-shafted clubs with a metal head primarily consisting of a flat, angled striking face.
That in itself is a function of the player's "gross adjusted score" adjustments can be made to mitigate various deviations either from strict rules or from a player's normal capabilities, for handicap purposes only and two course-specific difficulty ratings: The most recent Differentials are logged, up to 20 of them, and then the best of these the number used depends on the number available are selected, averaged, multiplied by.
Additional calculations can be used to place higher significance on a player's recent tournament scores. A player's Handicap Index is then multiplied by the Slope Rating of the course to be played, divided by the average Slope Rating of , then rounded to the nearest integer to produce the player's Course Handicap. Once calculated, the Course Handicap is applied in stroke play by simply reducing the player's gross score by the handicap, to produce a net score.
So, a gross score of 96 with a handicap of 22 would produce a net score of In match play, the lower handicap is subtracted from the higher handicap, and the resulting handicap strokes are awarded to the higher handicapper by distributing them among the holes according to each hole's difficulty; holes are ranked on the scorecard from 1 to 18 or however many holes are available , and one stroke is applied to each hole from the most difficult to the least difficult.
So, if one player has a 9 handicap and another has a 25 handicap, the handicap player receives one handicap stroke on each of the most difficult 16 holes If the handicapper were playing against a "scratch golfer" zero handicap , all 25 strokes would be distributed, first by applying one stroke to each hole, then applying the remaining strokes, one each, to the most difficult 7 holes; so, the handicap player would subtract 2 strokes from each of the most difficult 7 holes, and 1 each from the remaining Handicap systems have potential for abuse by players who may intentionally play badly to increase their handicap "throwing their 'cap" before playing to their potential at an important event with a valuable prize.
For this reason, professional golf associations do not use them, but they can be calculated and used along with other criteria to determine the relative strengths of various professional players. Touring professionals, being the best of the best, often have negative handicaps; they can be expected, on average, to score lower than the Course Rating on any course.
In Golf Digest calculated that the countries with most golf courses per capita, in order, were: The number of courses in other territories has increased, an example of this being the expansion of golf in China. The first golf course in China opened in , but by the end of there were roughly in the country. For much of the 21st century, development of new golf courses in China has been officially banned with the exception of the island province of Hainan , but the number of courses had nonetheless tripled from to ; the "ban" has been evaded with the government's tacit approval simply by not mentioning golf in any development plans.
In the United States, the number of people who play golf twenty-five times or more per year decreased from 6. The NGF reported that the number who played golf at all decreased from 30 to 26 million over the same period. In February , astronaut Alan Shepard became the first person to golf anywhere other than Earth. He smuggled a golf club and two golf balls on board Apollo 14 with the intent to golf on the Moon. He attempted two drives. He shanked the first attempt, but it is estimated his second went more than yards.
Number of golf courses by country in Below are the top 18 countries that have the most golf courses. The majority of professional golfers work as club or teaching professionals "pros" , and only compete in local competitions. A small elite of professional golfers are "tournament pros" who compete full-time on international "tours". Many club and teaching professionals working in the golf industry start as caddies or with a general interest in the game, finding employment at golf courses and eventually moving on to certifications in their chosen profession.
These programs include independent institutions and universities, and those that eventually lead to a Class A golf professional certification. Jack Nicklaus , for example, gained widespread notice by finishing second in the U. Open to champion Arnold Palmer , with a hole score of the best score to date in that tournament by an amateur. He played one more amateur year in , winning that year's U. Amateur Championship , before turning pro in Golf instruction involves the teaching and learning of the game of golf.
Proficiency in teaching golf instruction requires not only technical and physical ability but also knowledge of the rules and etiquette of the game. In some countries, golf instruction is best performed by teachers certified by the Professional Golfers Association. Some top instructors who work with professional golfers have become quite well known in their own right. Professional golf instructors can use physical conditioning, mental visualization, classroom sessions, club fitting, driving range instruction, on-course play under real conditions, and review of videotaped swings in slow motion to teach golf to prepare the golfer for the course.
There are at least twenty professional golf tours, each run by a PGA or an independent tour organization, which is responsible for arranging events, finding sponsors, and regulating the tour. Typically a tour has "members" who are entitled to compete in most of its events, and also invites non-members to compete in some of them. Gaining membership of an elite tour is highly competitive, and most professional golfers never achieve it.
Perhaps the most widely known tour is the PGA Tour , which tends to attract the strongest fields, outside the four Majors and the four World Golf Championships events. Since , both tours' money titles have been claimed by the same individual three times, with Luke Donald doing so in and Rory McIlroy in and