Today I’m going to give you another great way to ruin your scorecard. It’s very simple : all you need to do is be a model student.

Does that sound baffling ? Let me explain with a little anecdote :

When I started playing golf over 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to join a really friendly group on a green card course. It’s worth noting that back then at Seyssins Golf Club, the green card was a mandatory requirement to be allowed onto the course. Unfortunately, I have noticed in recent years at many golf clubs that the blue card is extremely effective for gaining direct access to the course without ever having touched a club.

In short, I started in a group of about ten people where I made some good friends, and we learnt to play golf at a leisurely pace for two hours every Saturday over a term.

After sessions spent exclusively on the driving range, our pro, Stéphane Métais – whom I cannot thank enough for making me appreciate golf so much – began taking us out onto the course, not to play the whole round, but to put us in specific situations on a single hole.

I remember that on one of those first occasions out on the course, after having us practise approach shots between 50 and 70 metres from the hole on the driving range with clubs suited to our level, he took us to the first hole, a par three with a steep uphill slope.

He positioned the whole group about thirty metres below the green and asked us how we were going to play it.

Everyone gave their opinion on which club to use and the type of shot to play. It just so happened that we were all lined up and I was the last in the line, opposite Stéphane.

So I spoke last and, as always, playing the class clown, instead of giving an answer about a type of shot, I asked a question :
“Well, it depends ! From where we are, we can’t see the green. What’s the green like ? What’s behind it ?”

This answer earned me Stéphane’s praise, whilst he didn’t hold back in calling the other members of the group every name under the sun.

When I say every name under the sun, I’m not using a figure of speech. In my opinion, Stéphane was a brilliant pro, but some people didn’t like him very much because he wasn’t one to mince his words and tended to take a few verbal liberties with his pupils.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to refer to the women in the group as ‘the sluts’.

And he’d christened our whole little group ‘the rags’. Several years later, when he bumped into a group of us, he still called us that.

I said at the start of this piece that to really ruin your scorecard, all you need to do is be a good student. In this case, the good pupils had tried to respond based on what they’d just learnt : a certain type of shot.

When it comes to approach shots to the green, we often read and watch videos explaining that it’s better not to play short of the flag, but rather to aim for the back of the green.

Several pros explain this with a sound argument :

If, for example, you use a rangefinder and find that the flag is 80 metres away, by choosing a sand wedge with which, on a perfectly executed full swing, you cover 80 metres, you run a high risk of coming up very short ; all it takes is for the shot to be slightly off and you won’t cover the distance, and perhaps you won’t even reach the green ?

So the idea of taking one club further to aim for the back of the green is usually a sound principle.

The diligent students who have studied the video carefully will always choose this option. It is the ‘always’ that poses a problem.

And yes : it depends !

For example, at the Royal Golf Club in Hua Hin (Thailand), my usual course, there are two elevated greens on par-4 holes, the back of which is entirely bordered by rather tricky bunkers with sand that isn’t of the best quality.

And in front ?

Nothing in front.

In such cases, aiming for the back of the green is extremely risky unless you’re a bunker pro, whereas a ball that falls slightly short will come to rest on a fairly gentle slope, below the flag – a spot from which you can execute a chip or even a putter stroke, and if that approach shot is good, you’ll finish with a single putt.

All this to say (speaking from experience) that sometimes, by trying to follow the extremely sound advice of pros too literally, we can forget to carefully assess the specific situation of where we are on the course, and that can cost us quite a few strokes.

It is the former schoolteacher who offers you this conclusion : At school, generally speaking, those with the best marks have learnt ‘the right answer’ by heart, the one given by the teacher. But those who fare best in life are often those who have sometimes stopped cramming, taken the time to look out of the window. They may have forgotten the ideal formula for solving a maths problem, but they arrive at the correct answer via a slightly roundabout route that leaves the teacher speechless and in awe.

In golf, as in everything else, be curious and imaginative. Your scorecard will thank you for it.