For a beginner, the golf course can be an intimidating place. Unlike most other sports, golf courses are huge and can traverse varied terrain. While they are often beautiful, it can feel like a tall order to get your ball all the way from the first tee to the eighteenth green.
With that in mind, we’d like to help you navigate the course by explaining everything that you’ll find out there on your journey. It’s still going to be a challenge, but at least now you’ll know exactly what you are in for.
The Key Parts of a Golf Course
To better understand what to expect on a golf course, let’s break down the course into a variety of components. While each course you will play is unique, they all use the same collection of parts that will come together to complete the design.
As you gain experience, you’ll start to see patterns in course design, and understanding how a given course has been created will help you play it more effectively.
Here are the golf course components that you should be looking for:
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Tee box
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Fairway
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Rough
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Fringe
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Green
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Hazards
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Cart Paths
What is a Tee Box?
This is where every golf hole starts. The tee box is supposed to be flat, although not all of them are perfectly level. The grass is also cut close to the ground, and you are allowed to put your ball up on a tee for this initial shot (hence the name).
When you arrive at a tee box, there will be two tee markers that indicate where you should start from. Those markers will coordinate with the color tees you have decided to play for the day. Common colors used include black, blue, white, and red. As a beginner, using the white or red tees will likely be a good choice. To hit your tee shot, place your ball between the chosen tee markers, just slightly behind an imaginary line connecting them.
What is a Fairway?
The fairway is the short grass between the tee and the green on a par four or par five hole (there are no fairways on par threes, generally speaking). This is what you are aiming for when playing your tee shot, as keeping your drive in the fairway will make your next shot easier. Some courses have rather generous fairways that are relatively easy to hit, while other courses make the fairways quite narrow and it’s a major challenge to find them with your drive.
Once your ball leaves the tee box, you are no longer allowed to touch it until it’s on the green (where you can mark it to clean it). So, if you do hit the fairway, you have to “play it as it lies”, meaning you just hit the next shot no matter where the ball is resting. Shots struck from the fairway are usually approach shots, meaning you will be trying to send the ball from the fairway up onto the green to set up a putt.
What is the Rough on a Golf Course?
“Rough” is the general term used to describe the long grass that is usually found on either side of the fairway. If you miss the fairway to the right or left, or sometimes if you come up short of the fairway, you’ll be in the rough. This isn’t desirable, as it’s harder to hit the ball out of longer grass. Playing from the rough is something that happens even to professional golfers, and it’s going to happen to beginners nearly constantly.
One of the keys things to remember when playing from the rough is that you need to lower your expectations for the shot. You can’t hit the ball as high or as far out of the rough as you can from the fairway (in most cases), so keep that in mind.
The best line of thinking with regard to the rough is to make it a priority to get your ball back into the fairway for the next shot. Don’t try to do too much out of the rough, especially as a new golfer.
What is Golf Course Fringe?
The fringe is a ring of fairway-length grass that wraps around the green. Basically, if you are on the fringe, you have gotten very close to the green, but didn’t quite make it on. Most of the time, you will want to go ahead and use your putter once you are on the fringe.
What is the Green in Golf?
This is where you want to be! Once you arrive on the green, which features the shortest grass on the course, pull out your putter and try to roll the ball into the hole. Making your first putt is a great result, but most of the time, if you can finish in two putts.
The speed of a green refers to how fast the ball rolls across the surface. Green speeds vary from course to course, and even from day to day on the same course. So, one of the things you should do before you tee off for a round is visit the practice green and get comfortable with the speed of the greens for the day. Spending even a few minutes hitting practice putts before you start your round will be valuable experience and is something that every experienced player does.
What is a Hazard?
To add challenge to an already challenging game, many courses have hazards in various places. These hazards can be ponds, lakes, creeks, waste areas, and more.
It should go without saying that you will want to keep your ball away from the hazards when possible. If you hit into a hazard, you are usually allowed to hit it out if that’s possible, but often you will have to take a penalty stroke and drop a new ball in a designated area. Your scorecard should have some basic information about the local rules in place for hazards so you know how to proceed when your ball gets into the wrong spot.
Golf Cart Paths
Most golf courses have golf cart paths for the golf carts to travel while people drive around the layout. These paths are often paved, but they can also be gravel, or even just dirt. As a player, know that you always get free relief from the cart path. That means that if your ball is on the cart path, you don’t have to hit it. You are allowed to pick the ball up, drop it at the nearest point that is off the path, and play from there (with no penalty).
It’s also important to take note of where the path is on a given hole before hitting your shot, as if you land a shot on a paved path, the ball is going to take a huge bounce and likely end up in a bad spot.
What Is Proper Golf Course Etiquette?
Etiquette is a big thing in golf, and there are some etiquette points to keep in mind with regard to how you treat the course.
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Always replace or fill your divots. When you hit a shot, you may take a chunk of turf up out of the ground. That’s fine and a normal part of golf, but you need to fix it. So, depending on course policies, you should either retrieve the divot and put it back where it was, or fill the resulting hole with a sand and seed mix provided by the course.
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Fix ball marks. When your ball lands on the green on the fly, it will likely leave a little mark in the putting surface. It’s your job to carefully fix that ball mark with a divot tool or just a tee. Gently bring the turf back up to level with the rest of the green and then tap it with the bottom of your putter to complete the repair.
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Watch for other golfers. You should generally be aware of the location of other golfers on the course and avoid getting in their way or hitting into them. Specifically, always make sure the group in front of you is completely out of the way before hitting your shot, just to avoid a dangerous situation where your ball is coming down where they are still standing.
Measuring Distance Made Easy with Voice Caddie
Throughout each round, you will find yourself constantly measuring distances from your ball to the target. There are a number of ways to get your distances, but the easiest is through the use of a device like a GPS watch or a laser rangefinder. The products we offer here at Voice Caddie will give you reliable numbers and are easy to use even for those just getting started in golf. Explore our site today!
