Instruction
How to plan your escape when faced with trouble
The average 18-hole score for amateurs continues to stay near 100 for numerous reasons. One thing that shouldn’t be getting in the way? Decision making. Amateur golfers seem to make the incorrect decisions time and time again. I’ve conducted numerous golf schools, clinics and hundreds of playing lessons, and I continue to see the same mistakes.
Let’s use trouble shots for example. Most often I see amateur golfers make poor decisions when trying to get out of trouble. They most often choose the incorrect escape plan by either choosing the wrong club, the wrong route and/or the wrong type of shot.
Let’s go further and use the punch shot from the trees as an example. Most amateurs would select the wrong route, with a club that has too much loft and execute the wrong type of swing.
Look at the picture below. How do you go about choosing the correct escape plan?
The first thing you have to do is choose a route. From the looks of this situation, the shot must be focused around a low trajectory. You have to eliminate any possibility or thought about hitting a lofted shot because there is only trouble in the air.
You can see I have shown three different options. I think it’s imperative to look at three options and choose the best/smartest one.
Option 1: Conservative, but smart. Branches are higher and trees are farther apart, which means there’s less of a chance to “connect with wood.” The only downfall to this option is that you may actually lose yardage rather than move the ball toward the hole.
Option 2: Slightly more risky. This one is more of a gamble than the first option due to the low-hanging trees, but you can pick up some distance. There is also a wider area of fairway available.
Option 3: Both risky and aggressive. There’s a very narrow gap to hit through with the lowest over-hanging branches. You can pick up the most yardage, but this shot could also be the most problematic.
Let’s choose Option 2, as it allows you to gain some yardage, but guarantees a clear view at the hole for your next shot.
Next, you must choose the correct club to hit along with the proper swing to make. Since we know that the goal is to hit a low-trajectory shot, we can eliminate all options between the lob wedge and 6 iron. For most of us that means we are left with a 5 iron and a 4 iron. You can use either. Now, in order to hit a low shot, you must set up correctly and make the appropriate swing.
Here’s how to do it
1. Place your feet closer together with the ball centered to slightly back in stance.
2. Choke down on the club an inch or two for control.
3. Take a half swing with a low follow through.
Now that you know what to do, swing away with some confidence and get the ball back into play!
So let’s review. Next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, follow these steps below to come up with your own escape plan:
- Determine your options and possible trajectories of the ball flight.
- Choose the option that allows you to advance the ball forward, but guarantees a clear view at the hole for your next shot.
- Choose the appropriate club to hit the intended shot. Don’t use a lofted club to hit a low shot. I promise it won’t work.
- Set up correctly to hit the anticipated shot.
- Make the correct swing. Don’t always take a full swing, and control the length of your swing for different types of shots.
The LPGA Tour is kicking off its 2026 season this week at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, and the pros are dealing with something most Florida golfers rarely face: freezing temperatures.
“It’s colder here than in the UK at the minute, which is a first,” said England’s Charley Hull during Wednesday’s media day at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions.
Even Lydia Ko, who lives at Lake Nona, seemed surprised by the cold snap. “We’re pretty much getting to below zero in celsius here, which maybe in other parts of the country they would be thankful, but when you’re in Florida it is a little bit of a surprise,” she said.
If the world’s best players are adjusting their games for cold weather, recreational golfers should, too. Here’s how to play smart when the mercury drops.
Understand What Cold Does to Your Game
Before you change anything, you need to know what you’re fighting against. Cold air is denser than warm air, which means your ball won’t fly as far. Period.
Hull noticed this immediately during practice rounds at Lake Nona. She mentioned hitting a gap wedge into the 18th hole during a previous win but needing a 4-iron during Tuesday’s practice round. That’s a difference of four or five clubs for the same shot.
Action item: Expect to lose 5-10 yards on every club in your bag when temperatures dip below 50 degrees. Plan accordingly and don’t be stubborn about club selection.
Layer Up Without Restricting Your Swing
Hull admitted she wore three pairs of pants during practice. While that might be extreme for most of us, staying warm is critical to playing well in cold conditions.
Your muscles need warmth to function properly. When you’re cold, your body tightens up and your swing gets shorter and faster. Neither of those things help you hit good golf shots.
Action item: Wear multiple thin layers instead of one bulky jacket. Look for golf-specific cold weather gear that stretches with your swing. Keep hand warmers in your pockets between shots. And don’t forget a good hat because you lose significant body heat through your head.
Take More Club Than You Think You Need
This is where ego gets in the way of good scores. When it’s cold, the ball doesn’t compress as well off the clubface. Combined with denser air, you’re looking at serious distance loss.
The pros at Lake Nona are dealing with a course that measures 6,642 yards but plays much longer this week. If they’re adjusting, you should too.
Action item: Take at least one extra club on every approach shot. In temperatures below 40 degrees, consider taking two extra clubs. It’s better to fly the ball to the back of the green than to come up short in a bunker.
Adjust Your Expectations on the Greens
Cold weather affects putting in ways most golfers don’t consider. The ball is harder and doesn’t roll as smoothly. Your hands are cold, making it harder to feel the putter. And if there’s any moisture on the greens, they’ll be slower than normal.
Ko mentioned that she still sometimes reads the greens wrong at Lake Nona despite being a member for years. Cold weather makes that challenge even tougher.
Action item: Hit putts more firmly than usual. The ball needs extra speed to hold its line on cold greens. Take a few extra practice strokes to get a feel for the speed before you putt.
Embrace the Mental Challenge
Hull said something interesting about cold weather golf: “I like the mental toughness of it.”
That’s the right attitude. Everyone on the course is dealing with the same conditions. The player who stays patient and doesn’t get frustrated by the extra difficulty will come out ahead.
Action item: Lower your expectations by a few strokes. If you normally shoot 85, accept that 90 might be a good score in 40-degree weather. Focus on solid contact and smart decisions rather than perfect shots.
Warm Up Longer and Smarter
This might be the most important tip of all. Cold muscles are tight muscles, and tight muscles get injured easily.
World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul revealed she’s been protecting a wrist injury that bothered her late last season. Cold weather makes those kinds of injuries more likely if you don’t prepare properly.
Action item: Spend at least 20 minutes warming up before your round. Start with stretching, then hit easy wedge shots before working up to your driver. Keep moving between shots on the course to maintain body heat and flexibility.
The pros at Lake Nona this week will adapt and compete at the highest level despite the cold. You can do the same at your local course by following these tips and keeping a positive attitude.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “Playing Through” now on R.org, RG.org’s partner site, each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more tips!
Brooks Koepka is back on the PGA Tour, and whether you love him or hate him, the guy knows how to win when it matters. After his LIV Golf stint, the five-time major champion returns this week at the Farmers Insurance Open.
What makes Koepka fascinating? He doesn’t fit the mold. His swing isn’t textbook. He doesn’t obsess over mechanics. Yet he’s won three PGA Championships and two U.S. Opens, regularly making it look easier than guys with prettier swings.
So, what can average golfers learn from someone who treats the game so differently? Quite a bit.
Stop Overthinking Every Shot
Koepka describes his approach as “reactionary” rather than mechanical. While most tour pros grind over swing thoughts, Brooks sees the target and hits it. No mental checklist.
This might be the most valuable lesson for weekend golfers who’ve watched too many YouTube swing videos.
How to actually do this:
On the range, hit five balls where you stare at the target for three seconds prior to addressing the ball. Don’t think about grip or stance. Just burn that target into your brain. You’ll be shocked at how pure you hit it when your brain focuses on where the ball is going instead of how you’re swinging.
Next time you play, give yourself a rule: Once you pull the club, you’ve got 15 seconds to hit. Koepka is one of the fastest players on tour because he doesn’t give his brain time to sabotage him.
If you feel tension in your hands at address, you’re trying to control too much. Koepka’s grip pressure is famously light. Loosen up until the club almost feels like it might slip, then add just enough pressure to hold on. That’s your swing thought: soft hands, see the target.
This approach works better under pressure. When you’re standing over that shot with water left and OB right, the last thing you need is a mental checklist. See it, feel it, hit it.
Play to Your Strengths (Even If They’re Not Pretty)
Koepka uses a strong grip that wouldn’t pass muster in some teaching circles. But he’s built his game around what works for him, elite driving distance and recovery skills. He doesn’t try to be someone he’s not.
Here’s how to build your game like Brooks:
Look at your last five rounds and figure out where you’re actually gaining strokes. Bombing it off the tee, but can’t hit greens? Lean into it. Play courses where distance matters more than precision. On tight holes, grip down on your 3-wood instead of trying to thread a driver through a keyhole you’ll miss seven times out of ten.
Koepka knows he can scramble, so he’s not afraid to miss greens. If you’re deadly from 50 to 75 yards, start leaving yourself those distances on the par 5’s instead of going for them in two every time.
Know when to take your medicine. Koepka in the trees at the PGA? He’s punching out to 100 yards, not trying to bend a 6-iron around three oaks. You’re in the rough with a flyer lie and water short? Hit your 8-iron to the middle and move on. That’s not playing scared, that’s playing smart.
Save Your Best for When It Counts
Here’s a wild stat: Koepka’s putting average in majors is often more than a full stroke better per round than in regular events. He elevates when pressure is highest.
How does an amateur tap into that gear? It’s not about trying harder, it’s about caring differently.
Here’s what actually works:
Decide which rounds matter to you. Club championship? Member-guest? That annual trip with college buddies? Circle those dates and treat them differently. Koepka doesn’t care much about regular tour events, but majors? That’s when he locks in.
Two weeks before your big round, change your practice. Stop beating balls mindlessly. Play nine holes in which every shot has consequences. Miss the fairway? Hit from the rough on the next hole too. Three-putt? Twenty push-ups. Koepka’s practice intensity ramps up before majors because he’s rehearsing pressure, not just swings.
Develop a between-shot routine that resets your brain. Koepka is famous for his blank expression after bad shots. Try this: After any shot, take three deep breaths while walking, then find something specific to notice, a tree, a cloud, someone’s shirt. That’s your reset button. By the time you reach your ball, the last shot is gone.
The Bottom Line
Brooks Koepka’s return reminds us there’s no single path to success in golf. His “substance over style” approach proves that results matter more than looking good.
You don’t need a perfect swing; you need a reliable one that holds up under pressure. You don’t need to hit every shot in the book; you need the shots you can count on. And you don’t need to play great every time; you need to play great when it matters.
Welcome back, Brooks. Thanks for the reminder that golf is ultimately about getting the ball in the hole, not winning style points.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “Playing Through” now on R.org, RG.org’s partner site, each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more tips!
Blades Brown made a big impression last week in the California desert, and not just because he’s only 18. He put up numbers that would catch any weekend golfer’s attention. Most of us won’t hit 317-yard drives or find 86% of our greens in regulation, but there’s a lot to learn from how Brown managed his game at The American Express.
Here are three practical lessons from his performance that you can use on your own course this weekend.
Step 1: Give Priority to Accuracy Over Distance Off The Tee
Brown’s driving stats are impressive. He averaged almost 318 yards off the tee, ranking 12th in the field. More importantly, he hit 76.79% of his fairways, tying for fourth place in the tournament.
Think about that ratio for a second. Brown could have swung harder, chased more distance and tried to overpower the course. Instead, he played smart golf and kept his ball in play.
Your Action Item: Next time you’re on the tee box, ask yourself a simple question before pulling the driver. Do you need maximum distance here, or do you need to be in the fairway? If there’s trouble lurking or the hole doesn’t demand every yard you can muster, take something off your swing. Grip down an inch. Make a three-quarter swing. Do whatever it takes to find the short grass. Brown’s approach illustrates that fairways lead to greens, and greens lead to birdies. He made 22 of them last week, along with an eagle.
The math is simple. When you’re hitting three out of every four fairways like Brown did, you’re giving yourself legitimate looks at the green with your approach shots. That’s when scoring happens.
Step 2: Commit To Hitting More Greens
This is where Brown really separated himself. He hit 62 of 72 greens in regulation, an 86.11% clip that tied for first in the entire field. Read that again. An 18-year-old kid tied for the lead in one of the most important ball-striking statistics in professional golf.
How did he do it? By keeping his ball in the fairway (see Step 1) and giving himself clean looks with mid-irons and wedges.
Your Action Item: Start tracking your greens in regulation. You don’t need a fancy app or a statistics degree. Just mark down whether you hit the green in the regulation number of strokes. Par 3s in one shot. Par 4s in two shots. Par 5s in three shots.
Once you know your baseline, set a goal to improve it by 10%. If you’re currently hitting five greens per round, aim for six. The beauty of this approach is that it forces you to think strategically about club selection and shot shape. Brown’s strokes gained approach number was positive (0.179), meaning he was better than the field average. You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be on the dance floor more often.
When you hit more greens, you eliminate the need for heroic short game shots. Brown only had to scramble 10 times all week, and he got up and down 70% of the time. That’s solid, but the real story is that he rarely put himself in scrambling situations to begin with.
Step 3: Minimize Mistakes And Stay Patient
Here’s the stat that jumps off the page: Brown made only three bogeys all week. Three. In four rounds of professional golf against the best players in the world.
He also made just one double bogey. That kind of clean card doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when you play within yourself, avoid the big miss and trust that pars are never bad scores.
Your Action Item: Before your next round, decide that you’re going to play boring golf. No hero shots over water. No driver on tight holes just because you can. No aggressive pins when there’s a safe side of the green.
Brown’s performance shows us that consistency beats flash every single time. He didn’t lead the field in any single strokes gained category, but he was solid across the board. That’s how you post numbers and cash checks.
Give these three steps a try. Your scorecard will thank you.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “The Starter” now on R.org, RG.org’s partner site, each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more tips!
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Robert
Nov 19, 2015 at 2:26 am
Option 4 draw the ball around the tree to right of action 3 – reward for semi risky shot is ball on green
Tim
Nov 20, 2015 at 12:56 pm
Lol. A low cut through #3 is much less risky than a draw right of the tree that’s right of #3. There is more room to pull it off, and if you don’t and hit the tree or end up too far right, the ball is in a more playable spot. If you try the draw route, you have to be perfect. If you pull it, you hit the first tree. If you push it or don’t get enough curve on it (most likely scenario out of the rough) you hit the second one. Either way, your next shot is in an even worse spot than this one. Hello, snowman.
Paperboy
Nov 18, 2015 at 1:11 pm
what about a choked up driver – short back swing and “force it” forward…usually enough loft to escape grass and low enough to avoid branches. Has worked for me
Myron miller
Nov 18, 2015 at 9:12 am
Overall basically good ideas, but one factor is overlooked. How much area from the edge of the rough to the other side of the fairway rough (and what is in that rough over there). Hitting a full half swing 4 iron could easily run thru the fairway and into trouble on the other side. And the whole idea here is to whatever else, get the ball into the fairway without going into the rough on the other side.
As KK mentioned one other major option here is the little pitch punch (7-pw) that one uses about 10-30 yards from the green. A little bump and run shot but just a little harder to carry the ball a little further will work also as well as a 4 iron. The issues on which is the distance to the fairway and the distance across the fairway to the rough/trouble on the other side.
I’ve used both very successfully over the years. I grew up in the Seattle area and learned about hitting the ball out of the trees very well since i was in them constantly. I developed a little punch 3-iron shot that now i use a 4-iron for (no longer carry 3-iron) that i could hit anywhere from 30 yards to about 150.
Nowadays lots of times I’ll use anything from 6 iron to pw to punch out if i need low shot and only have a short distance to get out. 4 iron is used for longer shots. I’ve learned to be careful with the 4 iron as i’ve run thru the fairway too many times and put myself in bad position on the other side. Super hard fairways that roll well are real problems for low 4 irons.
Chris Ardolina
Dec 14, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Myron- good point about the space between the edge of the trees and the opposite side of the fairway, where the bunker lies. Just because you take a half length swing doesn’t mean you have to go full force or maximum effort. This is a controlled trouble shot.
To your point about the pitch shot with a a 7-pw, the idea is good for a better player, but from my experience higher handicaps aren’t able to keep the ball low enough with a club that has that much loft. Therefore, they wind up hitting the branches and remain in trouble.
Thanks for reading and sharing. Stay tune for more to come.
-chris
FC
Nov 16, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Good basic instructions for the high handicapper. I often see them hitting full swings which propels the ball straight into the trees when faced with such situations and they have no idea how to hit a low punch shot to get out of the trouble. I deliberately hit the ball thin if the branches are exceptionally low hanging and chase the ball up the fairway.
Chris Ardolina
Dec 14, 2015 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for reading and sharing with us!
KK
Nov 15, 2015 at 1:39 pm
Good article but I have to disagree with the club choice. #2 looks like maybe 30-40 yds to the right edge of the fairway. I can easily hit a low chip with a slightly delofted 7 or 8 iron and get under those branches. Trying to do the same with a 5 or 4 iron would have me shaking in my cleats because of the decreased control with the longer shafts and longer runout.
Chris Ardolina
Dec 14, 2015 at 3:26 pm
Kk- for a more skilled player to de-lofting the club is much easier, but for a high handicap it is difficult. Most high handicappers add loft at Impact, so it is improtant for them to use something with less loft to keep the ball lower.
Thanks for reading!