Opinion & Analysis
Don’t let the dreaded double-bogey ruin your round
Even pro golfers make double-bogeys.
In fact, I can say with great certainty that everyone reading this is among that wide fraternity, which includes pretty much all golfers everywhere, of double-bogeyers.
Why then should we be so upset about something that happens to everyone and happens with some degree of regularity?
Because it hurts, that’s why. It hurts our pride and our egos and even more importantly, it hurts our scorecard. There’s never a good time to make a double-bogey, but there are times that are worse than others.
A first-hole double, I think, is really a bad start to the day. I’ve recovered from them before to shoot good rounds, but maybe just as often — or maybe more often — I’ve let that initial failure and frustration become the theme for the day.
“Where’d you make your last double?” I asked Adam as his clubs were being cleaned after his round at Graethope GC.
“No. 5,” he answered and I figured that meant he played well.
“What happened?”
“Had about 160 in after a decent drive but I pushed it into the sand. Splashed out but the ball got caught in the heavy patch in front of the green, chipped five feet past the flag and missed the putt coming back.”
“Let’s see, how did I make that double on 12?” Carl said to himself when I asked. “Hit it in the water, took a drop, hit it on, three-putted.”
“A par-4?” I asked.
“No, three-par.”
“Then that was a 6, a triple,” I said.
“Ah,” was his only response.
I asked a 20-something golfer who was making the turn at Coyote Trails if he’d had any doubles on the front.
“Just one,” he said. “Fourth hole. My drive was just barely in the rough but it was in deep. Tried to muscle it up near the green but the grass was too thick and I only hit it 40 yards. Hit a 9-iron from there but missed the green, hole-high right, sitting down. Got it out to 12 feet and missed the putt.”
“Sounds like if your tee shot stayed in the fairway you probably wouldn’t have made double,” I consoled him.
“Yeah, it’s the heaviest rough I’ve seen on the front nine, and I was just lucky enough to find it.”
Finding double isn’t that hard if you look on the scorecards of most golfers. And if you’re playing in a tournament that isn’t at the top-handicap levels, you should expect that almost everyone in the field will make at least one. In fact, even Jordan Spieth made a double while winning the Masters this year.
“You can’t let it ruin your round,” Harry told me in the bar at Castlestone. “At least not the first one. But if you have more than one double, your score is in trouble.”
For some players, a double-bogey is a motivator.
“When I have a double early in the round I know I can recover,” Big Dave explained while eating a hot dog at the halfway house. “But the late double, that’s the round-wrecker.”
I asked him if there was such a thing as a good double-bogey and he gave me a real quizzical look like, what are you thinking? Or, it’s a good thing you don’t make your living asking people questions.
“Nah, well, sure,” he considered for a moment. “It’s better than a triple, right? I guess the only really good double would be if you hit your tee shot out-of-bounds. Then you’re at least making par off your second ball.”
What’s the worst double?
“On 18, for sure,” Carmen told me. “Man, if you have a decent round going, finishing with a double just ruins it. And then that might be the last hole you play for a week and you have that to remember.”
Carmen’s friend Tim had a different idea. “When you give yourself a chance for an up-and-down par and then three-putt. That’s the worst double.”
“Especially if it’s on 18,” I said.
“Or if you hit a great drive and then mess up and make a double with a wedge in your hand,” Carmen warmed to the topic. “Or when you take two shots to get out of the sand and still don’t get on the green. Then you have to get up and down just to save your double.”
If it happens early in the round, Big Dave said, that kind of a scrambling double can give a player some positive momentum to go with the two extra strokes.
“Averting a real disaster, a triple or worse, by making a good putt, sure, that fires me up,” he said. “Then you have to focus on the next couple of holes and make smart pars or if you can, a birdie.”
No matter how well you finish though, that double will always be a blemish on your scorecard.
“Not always,” Karen told me as she and three friends got ready to hit the newly painted pink tees at a Palm Springs course. “We don’t hit the ball a long ways, or always straight; some long holes, a double is like a par.” It made me remember when I first started keeping score and doubles to a beginner were neither rare nor unexpected.
“It’s part of the price of doing business,” Adrian told me at Granite Springs. “I’m a long hitter and they don’t always go straight. But if I can get a couple of putts for eagle in a round, then I make up for the double,” and I accepted that he was talking about a game I wasn’t personally familiar with.
I am familiar enough with doubles though. They can happen on par-3s, par-4s and par-5s. Sometimes they start instantly from a troubled drive, sometimes they creep up on you as you battle to save a bogey, and sometimes they surprise you, the unexpected three-putt.
A double is the occasional failure that unites us as golfers. As bad as it is though, it still beats a triple.
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How did you make your last double? Let us know in the comments section below. And check out the inspirational story of one golfer trying to shoot the round of his life at 7-ironpress.com. The book is called A Perfect Lie – The Hole Truth and you can get free shipping on the paperback with the code GOLFWRX, or $4 off the e-book when you enter the code GOLFWRX1 at check-out. It’s a great Father’s Day gift.
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The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.
TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.
Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.
However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.
Past Winners at TPC Louisiana
- 2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
- 2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
- 2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
- 2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
- 2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
- 2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)
2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks
Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)
Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.
This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.
McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.
Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)
Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.
Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.
Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)
Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.
NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.
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After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.
For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.
The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.
The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.
*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*
Past Winners at LIV Adelaide
- 2023: Talor Gooch (-19)
Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami
Green in Regulation
- Richard Bland
- Jon Rahm
- Paul Casey
Fairways Hit
- Abraham Ancer
- Graeme McDowell
- Henrik Stenson
Driving Distance
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Joaquin Niemann
- Dean Burmester
Putting
- Cameron Smith
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Matt Jones
2024 LIV Adelaide Picks
Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)
When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.
At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.
The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.
Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)
Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.
In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.
For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.
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Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.
Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.
But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.
To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.
Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.
If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.
In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.
Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.
While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.
So, what about grooves and face texture?
Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.
Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.
But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?
The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.
So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.
And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.
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erick
May 30, 2015 at 12:44 am
Was on the brink of shooting 67 for the round coming onto hole 17 223 yard par 3 over water (this hole always gets backed up… so we had to wait a good while before teeing offas you can imagine.. rhythm is now broken and thinking about things i shouldnt be.) grabbed my 4 iron to land about 7 paces on and release to the green… shank the first all day… right into the water hazard. took my drop 125 out hit it fat (chunk n run unintentionally) left 30 feet for bogey. missed the bogey put and in for double… sheesh.. THANKS PUBLIC COURSE BACKUP!
Jamie
May 28, 2015 at 10:10 am
Back the double up with at least a Par and it doesn’t hurt as much. Great feeling to play a round with no doubles though.
Happyday_J
May 28, 2015 at 2:07 am
I think there is such thing as a good double. When you double a difficult par 4 after a lost ball on your tee-shot (we dont have the luxury the pros have with marshals up ahead spotting balls). In actuality, a double after a lost ball is a par with one bad swing. Are you happy about the double, not really, but you can take something from playing the hole well, save for one bad swing the turned out unlucky. EVERYONE makes bad swings, you were just unfortunate to not be able to find it.
Bobtrumpet
May 27, 2015 at 6:34 pm
A double on a par 5 is the worst for me. I just can’t stand looking at a “7” on the card.
Billy Dirtbike
May 27, 2015 at 2:55 pm
Pointless article
Brian
May 28, 2015 at 9:19 am
Pointless comment.
aaron
May 27, 2015 at 2:50 pm
was 1 over going into the 15th hole. 15 at riverdale dunes is basically the 18th at tpc sawgrass (water up the holes left side all the way from tee to green. railties let the water get close). Pushed the drive right, found an awkward downhill/left leaning lie in the rough. got the ball to 20yards short of the green from there. had to go over a mound to the green but my flop shot just got too far under the ball and I hung up in the rough short of the green. chip came up 4 feet short, pulled the easy putt….managed to par in from there, so at least I didn’t let it totally ruin the round!
Double Mocha Man
May 27, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Sounds familiar. Couple weeks ago I was 2 under (rare territory) going into the 15th hole at my favorite course. Thinking I had a shot at a 69 (It’s been years) with one birdie in the last 4 holes. Short par 4. Managed a triple without even losing a ball! Parred in for a disappointing 73. Almost any other day I’d be smiling with that score.
Brian
May 28, 2015 at 1:07 am
Funny, I made par on 15 last weekend and just felt like I’d gotten away with murder. That’s a tough hole, ESPECIALLY if you’re playing from the back tees.
other paul
May 27, 2015 at 2:27 pm
My last round I played 9 holes. Two bogeys, two birdies, and one double bogey that hit the water in the middle of the fairway. Damn blind tee shot. Could have made par for the first time ever on 9 if it wasn’t for that.
brian d
May 27, 2015 at 12:40 pm
a pro double is like a triple for me haha
Leslie Chow
May 27, 2015 at 12:24 pm
Golf is a collection of 18 individual holes. I try and put together a scorecard much in the same way and forget labels while I’m playing like birdie, bogey, pars, and eagles. Just saying the different names associated with a score has a different feeling attached and I don’t want to take those feelings to the next hole even if it’s a positive feeling from a birdie because those can be just as dangerous as negative feelings. Typically for me a score like a double in a tournament will cause me to focus more on course management and I’ll usually play more conservative but birdies can cause me to feel better about my game than it really is and may be the cause of an bad decision off the tee leading to a double. Either way golf, even when playing a score should be approached like match play, write down a number and move on to the next hole and start the process over.
Cliff
May 27, 2015 at 11:46 am
i’m OK with a double as long as I have a birdie to cover it!