A mulligan is a do-over. You hit a bad shot, and instead of playing it as it lies, you tee it up again and take another go, with no penalty added to your score. It’s one of the most widely known terms in golf, and also one of the most misunderstood, because a mulligan isn’t…
Ready golf is playing your shot when you’re ready, rather than waiting for the strict order dictated by who’s furthest from the hole. It’s the single biggest thing amateur golfers can do to speed up a round, and it’s now written into the Rules of Golf as an accepted way to play, not just a…
In golf, a provisional ball is a second ball you play when your first shot might be lost outside a penalty area or might be out of bounds. It saves you the walk back. Instead of finding your ball gone and trudging back to the tee, you’ve already got a ball in play. The rule…
Golf Rules Explained Golf rules feel intimidating from the outside because the official rulebook runs to hundreds of pages, but almost everything you’ll actually face on a Saturday morning comes down to a handful of situations repeated over and over. This page is the starting point. It covers how golf is scored, the difference between…
A club fitting is where a fitter measures your swing and matches it to the right shaft, head, length and lie angle, rather than you buying whatever’s on the rack in your rough size, or picking from a beginner set built for an average swing rather than yours. Most golfers put it off, assuming it’s…
Backweights in irons are small pieces of dense metal, usually tungsten or steel, fitted into the back of the clubhead. Manufacturers use them to fine-tune how an iron swings, feels, and performs without changing the shape you see at address. If you’ve ever picked up two irons that look identical but swing completely differently, a…
Yes. You can play your ball out of a red penalty zone exactly as it lies, no penalty, no questions asked. Most golfers don’t realise that. They see the red stakes, assume the ball is dead, and reach for a drop before they’ve even looked at the lie. A red penalty zone isn’t a no-go…
A golf bandit is a player who deliberately keeps their handicap higher than their real ability, so they receive more strokes than they should in a handicap competition. It’s considered one of the more frustrating forms of gamesmanship in club golf, since it undermines the whole point of a fair handicap system. How A Player…
LIV is the Roman numeral for 54, and the name refers directly to the 54-hole format the league uses for every event, three rounds instead of the traditional four played on golf’s other major tours. Why LIV Chose A Roman Numeral Using LIV rather than simply writing “54” gave the league a distinctive brand name…
A bogey competition is a scoring format where you play against the course’s par on every hole, rather than against the other players directly. Your final result is measured in how many holes you won, lost, or halved against bogey, not your total stroke count. How A Bogey Competition Is Scored In a bogey competition,…
