Divot or Landscape Gardener

Do you take a divot when you hit a shot into the green? You should, but it’s one of the most difficult things in golf to master.

You will find that in most ball sports there is always a shot, or a pass, or a manoeuvre that requires you to spin the ball in some way. This is no different whether your ball sport is also an equipment sport like golf, or snooker, or pool, or whether it’s not – like football or rugby for instance.

Taking a Divot without remodelling the Golf Course in the process

If the Ranger is following you in this, perhaps you need to practice a lot (minor observation).

The title of the post is very descriptive of a golfer that is just starting to experiment with taking a divot. It is certainly, without a doubt, very descriptive of when I first attempted start taking a divot – without much success in the beginning, I have to say.

Still today I get myself in a mess at times, and even though I’m a higher handicap now than I was a few years ago, this particular skill is fairly stable in my game, with the odd exception.

Divot taking really is a skill that you can develop yourself, without the need to pay a pro for lessons. This will not always be the case, once you start to grasp the skill you will be well advised to get a lesson, a lesson actually out on the course will be the best.

My motto is always that you should try and teach yourself the basics first, or at least try and acquire the fundamentals of each golf skill before you race off spending money on lessons. For one, you will waste money and time if you haven’t got a grasp on the basic mechanics first. This doesn’t mean that if you are taking a lesson for other reasons that you shouldn’t ask your pro about the basics, that’s just common sense, but don’t have a full lesson on it until later.

Be a divot taking joy-rider for a while

Like joy-riders, you’ll probably get chased by the golf course police in the beginning, and possibly quite a few times, maybe for rattling litter bins with a ’squiffer’ or maybe for holding up play, but don’t worry too much about that. Use your social rounds for practising new skills – always.

As long as you’re not churning up nuggets big enough for a golf cart to fall into, and disappear,  then you’ll keep yourself off the green-keeper’s hit-list too.

Don't be rude, get one and use it

Always make sure you replace a divot and tread it down. I read somewhere once that a divot can re-take and repair in 48 hours if replaced immediately, I haven’t confirmed if that’s true but it sounds logical.

Besides, you should always want to maintain the course as much as you can, it’s part of what golf is about. Like some people that piss me off really annoy me when they don’t repair pitch-marks on the green, it’s probably my biggest pet hate and it’s just so lazy and rude.

Be pragmatic, and consider others

Clearly, you should use your loaf, don’t get throwing 3 balls down on every shot after the tee when the course is busy – you will be guaranteed to put yourself in the firing line of others behind you that are not so patient or understanding.

When you start to try divot taking there are only a couple of things that you should bear in mind – this is for basic skill acquisition, there is a little more to it than the following, but you will learn this from your pro once you have a notion of what is required and can carry out the basic shot.

Absolute basics, …no really

an absurdly basic image

Two basic things to look out for: Always hit the ball first before taking grass; the divot should always point towards your target (normally the green/flag) once you have finished.

When you get more advanced you’ll be taught that the divot should be biased left of target, but when you first start, something that is pointing green-ward is good.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Just wait til you try it out. Don’t go into this skill thinking you are going to crack it in five minutes, because you won’t. If you are a middle to high handicapper, even when you think you’ve cracked it one week, the next week will spit in your eye. But isn’t that the story of golf..

It is a skill that realistically you should only attempt once you have a reasonable overall grasp of the game, you will probably be around an 18 handicap (at least), or better preferably. If you are in your first couple of years of golf, and I’m speaking just generally here, because everyone has a different aptitude or natural skill level (apparently), and some people can play 3 or 4 times a week compared to someone that only plays once a fortnight.

Making: your decision

You’ll also be on a consistent path to reducing your handicap, and importantly it will be stable, meaning that you will always be within a shot or two of your handicap before venturing into this skill. You can exclude the those really ‘dog’ holes that you screw up on – we all have those.

A good indicator that it’s something to try is if your game is stable but you’ve maybe plateaued a bit, and you need something new to move onto that next level. This is exactly what prompted me to try it, and it was a long and protracted love-hate affair for a while. I think from memory I was around a 12-14 handicap at the time, and I needed something to give me that hold when my ball hit the green.

As my ball striking had improved, my power and timing had also improved and I’d got the point where I could literally be all square after nine holes, and then 12 over after 18 holes. Suffice to say, my ego was taking a battering from the constant highs and lows. This was my own prompt to try and get some better second shot control.

Now, I decided to go the self-taught route the whole way, which in hindsight was a mistake. I should have got some tuition and I think this would probably have reduced my adjustment period. Still, I didn’t but that’s why I’m saying now, get the basics and then have a lesson or two as this skill is an important one, if you’re serious about your game it is definitely a skill you will need. If you’re not that serious and you play purely for pleasure, never even attempt this skill unless you really want to.

Look around for some free resources

Because I don’t write too often about specific skills, I need to point you to external sources, because in all honesty I’m not into reinventing wheels. When I started out on this skill, the internet was nothing more than Tim Berners-Lee’s pet garage project. Today there are literally thousands of articles available for free, just Google it and see for yourself, you get something like 132,000 results.

This is just one search term, you could vary it and get more results.

Don’t forget YouTube: (how I wished this was around years ago)

Take better divots 1 of 2 | Take better divots 2 of 2

This is just a tiny, tiny example of what you get when you query YouTube for for the term “Divot Golf Lesson”.

Don’t ignore sources you already use, and probably love

The ideal divot

You can’t beat taking a look around blogs you visit and trust, favourite writers’ articles, and some of the top-pros’ websites.

For me, the best article I found when I was researching this post was this one: Divots in Golf.

I love it for several reasons, firstly it is concise, written in a language that anyone can understand, it’s purely factual without any unnecessary elaboration. It’s a lesson not only in taking a divot, but also in how to write an article. The accompanying images are superb, and convey everything you need to know, very simply.

Andrew Rice, the author of the article above also has another great article, called Divotology. Also well worth a look, and is highly complementary to the first article.

Try it out, then try it out some more

If you are lucky enough to have access to a driving range that has real turf, then this is a major plus. You can do most of the exploratory side just on the range.

If like me you have a regular run-of-the-mill driving range with synthetic turf, then you can still try out getting the ball first then the mat, but it can damage both your club and the mats, not to mention your wrists, so I wouldn’t advise it. At least not with a middle iron anyway, maybe with a high wedge, but you’ll need to be more advanced to ‘feel’ when you are getting it right, best advice is stick to real turf.

When you start out, I almost guarantee you’ll either be an air-guitarist or a landscape gardener, but stick at it, keep practising, keep trying new ways to master it. It’s bound to impact your game for a while because any change does, but in the long term you’ll be glad you put the effort in. Especially when you’re fizzing the ball back a couple of yards and your pals are green with envy…

Divot Image courtesy of: Andrew Rice Golf (thank you Andrew).

Chip in with your thoughts below.

Today’s comment word: Divotastic (if you can weave this word into your comment, I’ll know you’ve read the article and you are a real human, and such a thoroughly nice person to boot!).