Blow-up holes are not caused by bad shots alone. They’re caused more by bad decisions. One is to flirt with trouble when you don’t have to. The other is getting out of trouble the wrong way.

In general, play safely off the tee, play safely into the green. Balance the reward for the shot you are about to hit against the risk of failure. If the shot doesn’t come off well and it will take an extra stroke to get the ball to where you intended, that’s OK. But if it will cost you two or three strokes if this shot doesn’t work out, the risk is too great. Hit the ball somewhere else.

But still, you’re going to get into trouble no matter how much you try to avoid it. That’s golf, regardless of how skilled you are. It’s what you do next that counts.

Getting out of trouble is a two-step process. First, assess your situation honestly and accept the fact that you’ll probably lose a stroke. When there’s no clear shot ahead, or you have an obstructed swing, or your lie is ghastly, it will get ugly if you try to accomplish too much. Just get out.

Play a recovery shot you’re absolutely confident with, one that will get the ball back in play with a clear path to the green. Getting greedy for yards at the same time will cost you. If it means hitting sideways or even backwards, by all means do so.

The second step involves the shot after the recovery. Resist the urge to play a heroic shot to make up for the recovery shot. You got your ball out of trouble, but don’t leave your mind in trouble. Play on normally, as if nothing had happened. When you’re in the fairway and the green is too far away, lay up. If you’re around the green but the pin is not accessible, just get the ball on the green so you can start putting.

Any time you take three or more strokes over par on one hole, you can look back and find that you made only one or two really bad shots and wonder what happened. Look more carefully and you will find that you compounded those bad shots by making one or two really bad decisions.

When your improvement begins to kick in, you may find that you are commonly as much over par on your three worst holes as on the remaining fifteen. This is a sign that better thinking, not better shot-making, is your key to a lower score.

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