Are You A FOODIE?

This time of the year, as well as early in the morning during the summer irrigating season, we are faced with many occasions where there is water standing on the ground.

According to the rules of golf, we are allowed relief (without a penalty) from situations where your golf ball is in standing water. However, when you are playing any competition and the ground is wet due to rain, there my not be any place to take that relief.

In this case you need to do your best to have a few tricks up your sleeve, if you want to have any chance of hitting the shot decently.

The first thing I like to do in these situations is to open the face of my club just a bit. This will do a couple of things for you. Firstly, it will give a small amount of “bounce” to the sole of the clubhead. In other words, it will give the bottom of the clubhead a slight effect of having a pair of skis on the bottom of your club.

When we play a ball out of a wet lie, the moisture tends to drag the clubhead downward into the turf and muddy soil. Bounce on the clubhead will help the clubhead to skip or slide a little more easily when it meets the turf, so maybe you will not dig a trough right in front of your ball.

The open club face will create a bit of fade or slice on your shot, so you need to be certain to allow for that in your aiming process.

One other thing takes place when we open the club face besides slicing the ball. Every degree we open the club face adds one more degree of loft to your shot. Keep in mind, there are only 4 degrees between clubs, for the most part.

Therefore, if you are attempting to hit a 7-iron from a wet, muddy lie, if you open the club face 8 degrees, which is not very much at all, you have turned your 7-iron into a 9-iron.

As a result, when ever you open your club face for one of these shots, you should take at least one extra club, but I would recommend you taking two extra clubs.

I hope this will give you some new thought which will help you this spring. Have fun. If you will take a bit of time to sit and think about it, using plain old common sense, you will have to agree, golf’s an easy game.