Contents

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Fit to a Tee

Five Lessons: Modern Fundamentals of Golf

Pocket Caddy

Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game

Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

Hit the course with confidence.

Interested in taking up golf as a serious hobby? Or just want to get through an upcoming business meeting on the golf course? Whatever your goals, get your game up to par with fundamentals on:

Golf clubs, gear, rules of play, etiquette, and the layout of the golf course
All the essentials of a good golf swing, from the grip to the follow-through
Proper technique for putting, chipping, driving, sand shots, and more

Golf Basics

The origins of golf are disputed. Some historians believe that it originated with a Roman game called paganica, while others attribute its beginnings to the French games of jeu de mail and chole. Still others link it to a Dutch game called kolven. The general consensus, though, is that golf originated in Scotland and that it was well-established there by the mid-15th century; in fact, in 1457, King James II outlawed it, as he preferred that his subjects practice archery. But the king’s wishes were to no avail. The first official rules of golf were set down in 1744 by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers in Edinburgh, Scotland, and today golf is one of the most popular sports in the world.

The Object of Golf

Golf is a sport in which a player tries to move a small ball through a golf course by striking it with a club (a rod with a mallet-like head). The golfer’s goal is to get the ball through the entire course using as few strokes (strikes with the club) as possible.

The Golf Course

The golf course is the terrain on which golf is played. A full course consists of 18 holes. The holes are numbered and played in order, from 1 through 18.

Golf Holes

Each hole on a golf course is a strip of land that has been carefully landscaped and designed for golf. Every golf hole has a starting place, called a teeing ground, and an ending place, called a cup. The cup is a hole cut into the ground that measures 4 1/4" in diameter and is at least 4" deep. To complete a hole of golf, you must hit the golf ball with your club until you get the ball from the teeing ground into the cup. In addition to the tee and the cup, golf holes have a number of features designed to aid or impede your effort to get the ball into the cup.

Features of a Golf Hole

Fairway: Closely cut turf that serves as a kind of pathway between the teeing ground and the green.
Green: Extremely closely cut turf surrounding the cup.
Flag: A lightweight flag on a pole that fits in the cup so that you can see the cup’s location from far away. The flag is removed from the cup once you get the ball onto the green. The flag is also called the pin.
Rough: Long, deep grass bordering the fairway, which may also include trees and bushes.
Bunker: A depression that usually contains sand. Also called a sand trap.
Water hazard: A permanent water feature, such as a stream or pond. Water hazards are to be distinguished from impermanent casual water, such as puddles, which are not a part of the designed course.
Fringe: A ribbon of turf around the green that’s slightly less closely cut than the green. Also called the collar.

Golfers aim to hit the golf ball from tee to fairway to green, since it’s easier to hit the ball on the closely cut turf of the fairway and green. Players try to avoid hitting the ball into the rough, bunkers, or water hazards, because those features make it more difficult to hit the ball. Hitting the ball into any of these obstacles generally requires a golfer to use more strokes to finish a hole. But even the top players in the world sometimes hit balls into the rough, a bunker, a water hazard, or a collar during an 18-hole round of golf.

Golf Hole Layout

Though golf holes share the same core features, no two golf holes on a course are the same—in fact, no two holes anywhere in the world are the same. Golf holes vary by:

Length: Most holes range from 100–600 yards, though some are even shorter or longer.
Layout: Though holes share the same features, these features can be laid out in different ways. For instance, the fairway may curve, the bunkers may be in different locations, the hole may or may not include water hazards, or the green may be different shapes.

Tee Locations

Most teeing grounds have three sets of color-coded tee markers, which designate three different areas in the ground from which you can tee off. The tees are set at different yardages from the cup, affecting the length of the hole. The colors generally correlate to the following system: