How to Recover From a Bad Hole in Golf

A bad hole is finished the moment you write the number down. What happens after it is a decision problem, and the shot tracking data is colder than the usual talk about momentum. For golfers at a 15 handicap and above, more than 30 percent of the holes played right after a par or better still end in double bogey or worse.

A good hole is no guarantee. Below: what the numbers say about the hole after, and the three decisions that keep one bad number from becoming three.

Quick answer

What the data says about the hole after

Start with the first row. Golf Digest asked Lou Stagner to pull the Arccos numbers on the holes that follow a par or better, and for golfers at a 15 handicap and above, more than 30 percent of those holes end in double bogey or worse.

Nearly a third of the time, then, the hole after a good one blows up anyway. Whether that rate is higher or lower than the same golfer’s rate anywhere else on the card is a question the published numbers can’t settle, because the Arccos figure and the Shot Scope benchmarks come from different datasets. What it does settle is that a par is no guarantee about the hole in front of you.

So the recovery problem has two halves. One is the tee shot after a triple, taken by a golfer who wants the stroke back. The other is the tee shot after a par, taken by a golfer who thinks the round has turned.

The stroke is gone, and chasing it costs more

Golf has no mechanism for returning a stroke. The next hole has its own par, and a birdie there was available whether the previous hole went 4 or 9. What changes after a big number is the shot you’re willing to attempt, and the shot a golfer reaches for in that state carries a wider spread of outcomes.

Mark Broadie’s strokes gained work, built on more than eight million PGA Tour shots, puts the average expected strokes to finish a hole at 2.85 from 120 yards in the fairway and 3.08 from the rough at the same distance. That gap is 0.23 strokes for a professional, at an identical yardage. Position moves the number even when the distance holds still.

Recovery positions cost far more. Broadie defines a recovery shot as one where trees or another obstacle block the line to the hole, and in the 150 to 300 yard band where most of them happen, a recovery position runs 0.6 strokes worse than the fairway and 0.4 worse than the rough.

Two limits sit on that figure. It describes tour players at those distances only, and it measures the cost of standing in a recovery position rather than comparing a punch out against an attempt at the green. Broadie’s data tells you what the position costs. The choice between two shots from that position sits outside what he measured.

Decision 1: take the punch out unless you would play the shot from a clean lie

If the shot through the gap wouldn’t be your choice from a flat fairway lie at the same distance, it isn’t your choice here either. That test settles the argument you’d otherwise have with yourself on the walk in. Trees narrow the window and the lie takes away control, so a shot you’d rate as marginal in the open is worse than marginal in the pines.

Failed recoveries compound. A missed hero shot often finishes in a second recovery position with a stroke already spent, which is how a double turns into a triple. Broadie prices a single recovery position at 0.6 strokes against the fairway. Needing two of them on one hole is the shape of a big number.

Punching out to a full wedge yardage costs one stroke and leaves you somewhere you know. Broadie’s tour table has 2.85 expected strokes from 120 in the fairway. The research cited here doesn’t compare the punch out against the attempt for amateurs, so treat this as a practical guideline rather than a proven one: trading a stroke for a distribution you can predict is usually the better deal at a mid handicap.

Decision 2: aim the next tee shot at the widest part of the hole

On the tee after a bad hole, the club and the target drift toward the aggressive option. Our read is that the drift is what carries damage from one hole into the next, while the number you already wrote down sits there doing nothing. Golf Digest’s reading of Arccos data has around 30 percent of drives finishing either in a penalty area or in a position that needs a recovery shot, measured across golfers between a 15 and a 25 handicap. Across the 14 or so holes where you hit a driver, that’s about four already starting from trouble.

Shot Scope’s benchmark tables put golfers who shoot in the 100s at 6.5 troublesome tee shots per round against 4.9 for those shooting in the 90s. The gap between those bands is 1.6 tee shots per round. Some of that is swing quality and some of it is club and target selection. The second half is the half you can change on the walk to the tee.

Set the rule before the round, then apply it hole by hole. The rule: aim at the widest part of the hole instead of the ideal angle into the green, and whenever trouble sits on the side you miss, take the club whose miss stays on the property.

Decision 3: budget bogey for the next three holes

Give the recovery stretch a number, and make the number bogey. Shot Scope’s tracked-golfer data, summarised by Golf Monthly, has doubles or worse per round running 0.27 at scratch, 2.88 at a 10 handicap, 4.68 at a 15, 6.66 at a 20 and 9.18 at a 25. A 15 handicap posts roughly five of these in a normal round.

For anyone in the 15 to 25 band, bogey on the three holes after a blow-up hole is a fine result, and setting it in advance takes the pressure off the shot selection. A golfer playing for par from the trees hits a different shot than one playing for bogey from the trees, and the bogey version is the one with a real chance of coming off.

The arithmetic backs it up. Nine bogeys and nine doubles shoots 99 on a par 72, which is the whole scoring model behind breaking 100 without changing your swing. Doubles and worse are what separate the scoring bands in the Shot Scope table above, and bogeys sit inside the plan.

Where the head undoes the plan

All three decisions are obvious in the parking lot and difficult on the tee, and the pull that makes them difficult shows up in tour professionals too. Pope and Schweitzer’s analysis of more than 2.5 million PGA Tour putts, published in the American Economic Review, found that tour players made par putts at a higher rate than comparable birdie putts from the same distance, a gap the paper puts at roughly 2 to 4 percentage points depending on the specification. The best players in the world putted differently on comparable putts depending on the number it would write on the card.

The short-run version is documented too. Evans and Crosby, writing in Economic Modelling, analysed professional tournament scoring and found the negative emotion attached to a poor hole carried more weight on the next hole than the positive emotion attached to a good one. The authors add that better players may be more exposed to the dip. Extending a tour-level finding to a Saturday fourball is our inference rather than the paper’s claim, and it’s the one worth checking against your own card.

What the research does not supply is a stroke count for any particular fix. The honest read: a routine gives the walk between holes a job, so the club selection on the next tee gets made deliberately rather than on the way past the ball washer. We cover the mechanism and the 30-second version in the golf mental game guide.

The mistakes that cost the most strokes

• Playing the next hole for birdie. Arccos comparisons put a 15 handicap at roughly 0.5 birdies a round. Aiming at one to cancel a double asks for a shot you make about once every two rounds.
• Trying the shot through the trees. Broadie’s tour numbers put a recovery position 0.6 strokes behind the fairway between 150 and 300 yards, and a missed attempt often buys you a second one.
• Pressing after a par. More than 30 percent of the holes played right after a par or better end in double or worse at a 15 handicap and up. Our read of the mechanism: a good hole tempts you into a better target, and the miss off that target costs more.
• Firing at the flag to make it back. Aim at the middle. Short-siding yourself is how the straightforward bogey turns into another double.
• Skipping the provisional. Rule 18.3 lets you play a provisional when the ball might be lost outside a penalty area or out of bounds, as long as you announce it clearly before you hit it, and saying the word provisional is the safest way to do that. It saves the walk, not the penalty: Rule 18.2 still makes a lost ball stroke and distance. That walk back is how the second bad hole starts.
• Grinding on the range instead. If the swing itself is coming apart, that’s a practice problem, and a structured golf practice plan is the right tool. PracticeCaddie is ours as well.

The next step

Go back through your last five cards and find every double or worse, then look at the two holes on either side of it. Five rounds is a small sample and it diagnoses nothing on its own, but it gives you somewhere to look. Damage clustered after your good holes points at target selection. Damage clustered after your bad ones points at the walk to the next tee.

ZenCaddie is our app, so read this knowing that: it runs a 2-minute pre-round routine, a 30-second Mid-Round Rescue for the walk after a blow-up hole, and handicap-matched Reality Checks that tell a 20 handicap what a normal hole looks like at that level, on web, iPhone and Apple Watch for $9.99 a year after a free 3-day trial. Start your free 3-day trial and bring the reset to the tee instead of the couch.

For deeper dives

• Golf mental game: stop one bad hole from costing you four: the pillar, and the research behind the 30-second reset
• What is course management in golf?: the three decisions, and the hole where the plan breaks
• How to break 100 in golf without changing your swing: the scoring model that makes bogey an acceptable number
• How many golfers break 100?: what each handicap band posts on a normal day
• How to stay calm on the golf course: the five moments that break golfers, and the attention switch

Key takeaways

• More than 30 percent of the holes played right after a par or better still end in double or worse at a 15 handicap and up, per Arccos data pulled for Golf Digest, so a par is no guarantee about the next hole.
• A recovery position costs about 0.6 strokes against the fairway on the PGA Tour between 150 and 300 yards, which prices the position you’re in even though it doesn’t settle the punch out against the attempt.
• Around 30 percent of drives by 15 to 25 handicaps finish in a penalty area or in a recovery position, which makes the tee shot after a bad hole one of the most expensive club choices on the card.
• Shot Scope benchmarks have a 15 handicap making 4.68 doubles or worse per round, so bogey on the three holes after a blow-up is a normal result rather than a concession.
• Tour players make par putts roughly 2 to 4 percentage points more often than comparable birdie putts (Pope and Schweitzer, American Economic Review), evidence that the number on the card changes the shot.
• Evans and Crosby found the effect of a poor hole on the next hole outweighed the effect of a good one, and note that better players may be more exposed to the dip.