Most golfers have a stock shot.
They know roughly what happens when they make their normal swing from a decent lie. But golf rarely gives you a perfect lie and a straightforward shot.
The ball settles down in the rough.
The pin gets tucked behind a bunker.
A tree takes away your normal ball flight.
The wind starts pushing everything right.
That's when knowing how to hit the ball isn't enough. You need to know which shot to play.
Here's a simple way to think about it the next time you're in trouble:
Before reaching for a club, ask yourself three questions.
1. What does the lie allow?
A buried ball and a fluffy lie may be 10 feet apart, but they can require completely different shots.
2. Where is the safest place to miss?
The flag isn't always the target. Sometimes the smartest shot finishes 20 feet away and takes double bogey almost completely out of play.
3. What ball flight gives you the biggest margin for error?
High, low, draw, fade, run it, carry it — choosing the right trajectory can make a difficult shot surprisingly manageable.
This is where golf gets really interesting.
Instead of trying to force the same swing into every situation, you begin matching the shot to what the course is giving you.
And you don't need 30 different shots to do it.
There are 9 core golf shots that can handle nearly everything you'll encounter on the course.
Once you understand those shots — and when to use them — a difficult lie stops being a guessing game.
Deep rough. Fairway bunkers. Uneven lies. Draws. Fades. Specialty shots around the green.
You'll have an answer.
The goal isn't to make golf more complicated.
It's to finally know what to do when golf gets complicated.
P.S. The next time you find yourself staring at the ball thinking, "How the heck do I hit this?" — you'll be glad you learned more than one way to play it.
The Movement Coach Behind the World's Best Golfer
The Kinetic Method comes from Scottie Scheffler's movement coach — who was also part of Tiger Woods' team during his remarkable comeback.
Now he's applying the same understanding of how the body moves to help everyday golfers over 50.
If you've lost distance, flexibility or consistency, the answer may not be swinging harder. It's learning how to move your body more efficiently so you can create speed and power without putting unnecessary stress on your swing.
Until next time,
Your friends at GoingLow.com
