On the golf course, situations will arise that you can’t expect yourself to have sufficiently planned for in advance. Putters bend, club heads fly off, grips come loose, you run out of balls, etc. It’s part of the game, and once you get beyond the annoyance, it can actually lead to a fun, memorable round. Nothing gets you out of a rut in golf like something totally unexpected happening in the middle of a round!

Having said that, one situation you should be prepared for is getting stuck between clubs. Every now and then, you’ll face a distance that is exactly between one club and the next. For me, it seems to be the 5- and 6-irons most often. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. Learn two distances for each of your clubs: full-shot and three-quarters. Practice until you have an intuitive knowledge of how far you hit each club with each swing. Everyone is different, so never trust a playing partner’s judgment! The only way to know is to KNOW.

Now, here’s an interesting wrinkle. A lot of players discover that they hit shots with a three-quarters swing straighter than they do with a full swing. It’s actually a good thing to discover about yourself as a player, because it points to one of two problems. Either you’re tensing up on your full swing too much, or your mechanics are breaking down in your zeal to smash the ball. One of the best pieces of advice a club pro ever gave me was to use more club and swing easier. Once you get that macho distance thought out of your head, you’ll swing without tension, which always produces better contact and purer ball flight. Sure, my golf buddies might snicker when I pull out a 7-iron for a 130-yard shot, but that only lasts as long as it takes for them to realize I just stuck it next to the pin. That tends to kill the giggles.