Hitting a Golf Ball
To hit the ball, the club is swung at the motionless ball on the ground (or wherever it has come to rest) from a side-stance. Many golf shots make the ball travel through the air (carry) and roll out for some more distance (roll).
Every shot is a compromise between length and precision, as long shots are inevitably less precise than short ones. Obviously, a longer shot may result in a better score if it helps reduce the total number of strokes for a given hole, but the benefit may be more than outweighed by additional strokes or penalties if a ball is lost, out of bounds, or comes to rest on difficult ground. Therefore, a skilled golfer must assess the quality of his or her shots in a particular situation in order to judge whether the possible benefits of aggressive play are worth the risks.
There are several possible causes of poor shots, such as poor alignment of the club, wrong direction of swing, and off-center hits where the clubhead rotates around the ball at impact. Many of these troubles are aggravated with the "longer" clubs and higher speed of swing. Furthermore, the absolute effect of a deviation will increase with a longer shot compared with a short one.
Types of shots
- A tee shot is the first shot played from a teeing ground. It can be made with a driver (i.e. a 1-wood) off a tee for long holes, or with an iron on shorter holes. Ideally, tee shots on long holes have a rather shallow flight and long roll of the ball, while tee shots on short holes are flighted higher and are expected to stop quickly.
- A fairway shot is similar to a drive when done with a fairway wood. However, a tee may not be used once the ball has been brought into play, therefore playing from the fairway may be more difficult depending on how the ball lies. If precision is more important than length (typically, when playing on narrow fairways or approaching a green), irons are usually played from the fairway. Irons or wedges are also often used when playing from the rough.
- A pitch is a high approach shot that is played over shorter distances around the green. A pitch makes the ball fly high and roll very little, stopping more or less where it hits the ground. Pitches are usually done with a wedge.
- A flop is an even higher approach shot that stops shortly after it hits the ground. It is used when a player must play over an obstacle to the green. It is usually played with a sand wedge or a lob wedge.
- A bunker shot is played when the ball is in a bunker (sand trap). It resembles a pitch and is done with a wedge.
- A chip is a low approach shot where the ball makes a shallow flight and then rolls out on the green. Chips are done with a wedge or "short" (higher-numbered) iron.
- On the green itself, putts are played along the ground.
The golf swing
Putts and short chips are ideally played without much movement of the body, but most other golf shots are played using variants of the full golf swing that is itself done for tee and fairway shots.
A full swing is a complex rotation of the body aimed at accelerating the club head to a great speed. For a right-handed golfer, it consists of a backswing to the right, a downswing to the left (in which the ball is hit), and a follow through. At address, the player stands with the left shoulder pointing in the intended direction of ball flight, with the ball before the feet. The club is held with both hands (right below left), the clubhead resting on the ground behind the ball, hips and knees somewhat flexed, and the arms hanging from the shoulders. A golfer who plays right handed, but holds the club left-hand-below-right is said to be "cack-handed". It is difficult to obtain the same consistancy and power with this arrangement as is possible with conventional technique. The backswing is a rotation to the right, consisting of a shifting of the player's body weight to the right side, a turning of the pelvis and shoulders, lifting of the arms and flexing of the elbows and wrists. At the end of the backswing the hands are above the right shoulder, with the club pointing more or less in the intended direction of ball flight. The downswing is roughly a backswing reversed. After the ball is hit, the follow-through stage consists of a continued rotation to the left. At the end of the swing, the weight has shifted almost entirely to the left foot, the body is fully turned to the left and the hands are above the left shoulder with the club hanging down over the players' back.
There are few golfers who play left-handed (i.e. swing back to the left and forward to the right), and even many players who are strongly left-handed in their daily life prefer the right-handed golf swing.
The full golf swing is an unnatural, highly complex motion and notoriously difficult to learn. It is not uncommon for beginners to spend several months practising the very basics before playing their first ball on a course. It is usually considered impossible to acquire a stable and successful swing without professional instruction, and even highly skilled golfers may continue to take golf lessons for many years.
Physics of a golf shot
A golf ball acquires spin when it is hit. Backspin is imparted in almost every shot due to the golf club's loft (i.e. angle between the clubface and a vertical plane). A spinning ball deforms the flow of air around it [3] (http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Sports/instructor/golf-01.html) and thereby acts similar to an airplane wing; a backspinning ball therefore experiences an upward force which makes it fly higher and longer than a ball without spin would. The amount of backspin also influences the behavior of a ball when it hits the ground. A ball with little backspin will usually roll out for a considerable distance while a ball with much backspin may not roll at all or in some cases even roll backwards. Sidespin occurs when the clubface is not aligned perpendicularly to the direction of swing. Sidespin makes the ball curve to the left or right; this effect can be made use of to steer it around obstacles or towards the safe side of a difficult fairway. However, it is difficult to control the amount of sidespin, and many poor shots result from uncontrolled or excessive spin that makes the ball curve sharply.
