Why shot planning, safety margins and preparing the next shot can be just as important as technical execution.
A very well-struck golf shot can be the beginning of a very bad story.
That is exactly what happened during one of our lessons this week.
A golfer hit her driver very well from the women’s tee. Considering how demanding the situation looked from the visual information available, it was a fantastic tee shot. The ball flew slightly farther left than planned, hit a stone boundary at the back and bounced back into the semi-rough.
The shot itself was long and within the normal dispersion of a good drive.
Because of the length of the shot, the ball came to rest in the semi-rough on the far side of the fairway.
The real chain of mistakes only began afterwards.
When the alarm bells do not start ringing
The golfer left her golf bag around 20 metres away and initially walked over to the ball just to identify it. Even at this point, the situation was already considerably more complicated than it first appeared.
The ball was lying in the semi-rough, and the lie was not exactly helping her. Not unplayable, but certainly far from ideal.
There was a carob tree on the left and an olive tree on the right. Between them was a possible line of play, a playing window. And a window like that tends to attract almost every golfer’s attention like a black hole swallowing light and matter.
But directly between them were also two fairway bunkers. A red penalty area ran along the entire right side of the hole, while the car park and out-of-bounds were on the left. The fairway also sloped to the right, which meant the ball’s behaviour after landing had to be considered as well. Phew.
Great work by the golf course architect. He created a beautiful natural situation and, as a little bonus, placed a strategic minefield in front of any golfer who hits the tee shot towards the left side of the fairway.
No wonder normal people have one life and golfers sometimes seem to need five during a round.
Trouble everywhere – except in the middle of the fairway.
It was not only her brain that now had to work. Mine did too.
Several questions were running through my head at the same time: What does she look at first? Does she recognise the middle of the fairway as a possible safe area? How much importance does she give that area in her decision-making process? Does she recognise the full complexity of the situation, or only the obstacle that currently attracts the most attention? Is she perhaps already ignoring everything around the middle of the fairway and looking at the situation with a kind of tunnel vision?
The golfer looked at me questioningly. I just smiled and deliberately said nothing because I wanted to see which information she noticed herself and what decision would emerge from it.
She walked back to her bag and took out her 9-wood, the club she normally uses for longer fairway shots. After all, there were still around 175 metres to the front of the green.
This revealed something we see very frequently in golf lessons:
The club is chosen before the task of the shot has been fully clarified.
The club actually comes last
In reality, the order should be the other way around.
First, the situation has to be read in order to determine what the purpose of the next shot actually is. By purpose, I do not mean where the ball should fly. I mean what the shot is supposed to achieve.
Only then can a target area with safety margins in every direction be defined. That target area needs a suitable landing point and a realistic amount of roll. This, in turn, helps determine what ball-flight height makes sense. Only at the very end comes the choice of club: Which club can actually solve this task?
We explain in more detail how closely target selection, risk and error tolerance are connected in our article about chains of mistakes and golf strategy on the course.
Read the situation > define the task of the shot > establish a target area with safety margins > estimate landing point and roll-out > determine the required ball-flight height > choose the club.
Read that paragraph again and try to picture the sequence. Do not just skim over it. This is an important learning moment.
And then there was one small detail that influenced what happened next more than you might initially expect. Dear reader, can you see what the problem was?
The golf bag was too far away to simply go back and get another club or to keep changing clubs. The golfer was visibly torn. Walk back once more and reconsider? Or continue with the 9-wood now? At the same time, the feeling arose that time was running out.
We see situations like this all the time. Time pressure, many pieces of information that have to be processed at once and a decision-making routine that is not yet fully developed can suddenly lead to a quick solution being chosen.
The wider context can then fade into the background: lie, surroundings, hazards, slope, grass height, desired finishing position and the question of what the next shot is actually supposed to achieve.
Some golfers react instinctively and aggressively in these moments and want to gain as much distance as possible. Because par 5. Others become very defensive and simply want to get the ball out of trouble somehow. Because danger everywhere.
What happens in the end depends heavily on where the golfer places the focus of attention at that moment.
Do they mainly see the length of the hole? The danger? The visible playing window? Or the safe target area?
The way these different elements are weighted often influences the decision more strongly than the golfer realises.
Why I sometimes deliberately say nothing
With beginners, I guide their attention much more strongly. But wherever possible, I do not simply tell them what to do. Instead, I try to use questions to direct their focus towards the important information and then let the golfer make the decision within that framework.
For example, I might ask: “Could you lose a ball here if something goes wrong?”
If the answer is yes, the next question follows:
“What would be the safest area you could play towards?”
This way, the decision does not come from me as an instruction. The golfer makes it themselves, while my questions guide their attention towards the relevant information.
With more advanced golfers, I often do exactly the opposite. I first let them observe, plan and decide for themselves. Only afterwards do we analyse together how that decision-making process unfolded, which information they recognised and what may have been overlooked or weighted incorrectly.
Keep this in mind: we use the golf course as a teacher.
There are many moments during a lesson when I actively help and guide. But there are equally important moments, especially in shot planning and situation recognition, when I deliberately say nothing. Sometimes a golfer learns more by making a decision themselves and experiencing its consequences than by having me reveal the correct solution beforehand.
For an attentive golf coach, moments like these are incredibly valuable. They show where coaching, alongside the actual striking of the ball, which of course remains important, needs to move more strongly towards shot planning, perception and decision-making.
If the alarm bells do not start ringing while the golfer is already walking towards the ball, and they do not begin gathering information and preparing possible solutions at that stage, a decision suddenly has to be pulled out of a hat under time pressure once they reach the ball.
I am extremely grateful for situations like these during lessons. They help us continually adjust the quality of our coaching and make visible those parts of the game that can later have a major impact on the scorecard.
If you want to become a better golfer, you do not only have to hit better shots. You also have to learn to perceive, plan and decide better.
Otherwise, the entire burden of lowering the handicap is placed on shot quality, even though some of the lost shots may actually be created somewhere else.
And with that, back to the situation.
It gets even more interesting.
A difficult situation becomes even more difficult
After the good drive, the ball was still in play, but the situation already required considerably more attention.
With the 9-wood, it was not only necessary to establish whether the ball could get past the obstacles. It was equally important to consider how far it was allowed to fly, how much roll could be expected from this lie with this club and which finishing area would still be acceptable with a normal margin for error.
The ball flew too far and, naturally, rolled too far as well. It finished in the penalty area on the right.
A situation that would still have been controllable with an iron after a very good drive had now turned into a considerably more difficult next task.
Now one problem becomes a chain of mistakes
After the penalty stroke, the ball was dropped. Using a 7-iron, the golfer wanted to bring the ball back into play. Because of a tree, the line had to be aimed towards the clubhouse terrace.
Another typical planning problem appeared here. The point where the ball was supposed to finish was effectively planned as if it were the landing point. But with the relatively low flight of a 7-iron, there was still considerable roll after landing. The ball ran all the way to the wall of the clubhouse terrace. The original problem had not been solved. It had merely changed its form.
Almost like chess
From the new position, another decision had to be made.
Back to the fairway on the right, with the risk of the penalty area on the other side of the fairway? Left of the tree, with a little more room for a shot that might travel too far? Which line leaves enough space for a possible error? And what position will remain for the next shot?
The golfer chose the option on the left, over or past the reeds.
The strike from the difficult semi-rough lie was not good enough. The ball came up short and finished directly beside the reeds.
The margin for error had now almost completely disappeared.
Checkmate
The ball was now lying directly beside the reeds. The swing was severely restricted, the situation was awkward and the margin for error had practically disappeared.
Trying to finally get the ball back into a playable position, she caught it with the toe of the club and the ball disappeared into the reeds.
Checkmate.
The hole was picked up.
This is exactly how chains of mistakes develop
We see situations like this again and again in golf lessons. And that is exactly why it is too simplistic to describe such a sequence as nothing more than several bad golf shots.
The chain can begin much earlier:
Situation not fully recognised > unsuitable solution > more difficult next position > smaller margin for error > next mistake > even more difficult position.
With every step, the space available for a normal mistake becomes smaller.
Many golfers only realise very late that a situation has already become critical. In the Strategy Lab, we therefore try to develop exactly these alarm bells earlier. We show another real lesson example in the article Golf strategy in golf lessons: how we make chains of mistakes visible on the course.
The first mistake was not the golf shot
The driver was struck very well. Later on, not all of the problems were purely technical either.
Important factors included recognising the situation, defining the task, club selection, target area, expected flight height, landing point, roll, safety margin, quality of lie and preparation of the next position.
This is exactly why the classic advice “just play safe” is often not enough. The golfer has to learn how a safe solution is actually created. One particularly visible example in this case was the relationship between landing point and finishing point. If the ball is still going to roll significantly after landing, the desired finishing point cannot also be the planned landing point.
The golfer has to work backwards from the desired result:
- Where should the ball finish?
- How much roll is likely with this club, this ball flight and this lie?
- Where does the ball therefore need to land first?
- How low or high should the ball fly in order to produce the required landing point and roll-out?
This distinction sounds simple. On the golf course, however, it can determine whether a recovery shot solves the problem or immediately creates the next one.
And this is exactly where the connection to our Golf Learning System becomes clear: we do not explain an outcome only through the technical movement. We look at the entire process that led to that outcome.
After the round, the real learning process began
After the round, we spent around 30 minutes taking this one hole apart together.
The aim was not simply to tell the golfer afterwards what she should have done differently.
We wanted to understand where the chain of mistakes had developed and which information needs to be recognised earlier next time. Another aspect was the use of modern technology to support the planning process. Of course, there will always be golfers who do not want to hold a mobile phone in their hand during a round. In that case, the better approach is to plan in advance and prepare between the green and the next tee, and between the tee shot and the walk to the ball.
This included, among other things, a preferred target area from the tee that takes dispersion into account, alternative options from the semi-rough, relevant roll distances and areas where a normal error would still remain acceptable.
Situations like these show exactly why shot planning has to be learned on the golf course and cannot simply be explained in theory.
It is similar with real on-course situations and specialty shots: knowing that a possible solution exists is only the beginning. The golfer has to recognise it, choose it, try it, evaluate the outcome and learn from it for the next situation.
The golf course becomes the teacher
Teaching situations like these are particularly valuable to us because theory suddenly becomes visible.
A golfer may understand that they should consider risk, prepare the next shot and plan with safety margins. But whether this knowledge is actually available within their own game only becomes clear in a real situation.
That is why, during the learning process, the golf course sometimes has to lose part of its competitive character for a moment.
The golfer has to be allowed to experiment. Make mistakes. Talk about them with the golf coach. Understand what happened. Plan a different solution. Try again.
It is within this cycle that knowledge begins to develop into a usable skill.
Monnard Widmer Coaching Insight
A chain of mistakes can begin at any time. It often starts when a difficult situation does not bring the ball back into stability, but sends it directly into the next problem.
You strike the ball well – but still lose too many shots on the golf course?
Then the next step in your development may not simply be another technical change.
In our golf lessons in Mallorca, we therefore work not only on the swing and strike, but also on shot planning, situation recognition, target selection, safety margins and the decisions that can actually cost or save shots on the golf course.
Especially for golfers who can already play the ball more or less reliably, it often becomes particularly interesting when we work together to find out where the next avoidable shots are really being lost.
If you would like to improve your golf game not only technically, but also understand it better and use your skills more effectively on the course, contact us through our enquiry form and let us explore the possibilities for golf lessons and golf courses with us in Mallorca.
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