Basic Golf Jargon
- In This Quick Guide:
- Your Golf Course Road Map
- Eagles, Birdies, Pars, and Bogies
- Calling All the Shots
Dogleg, bogie, collar, draw—golf has a language all its own. But don’t be intimidated. After this quick lesson in golf terminology you’ll be talking like a pro.
Your Golf Course Road Map
Before you even take a swing on the golf course, it helps to know a little bit about the playing field.
The Tee
The tee, which is sometimes called the tee-box (it’s usually shaped like a square or rectangle), is where you begin playing each hole. (A tee is also the peg you use to hit the ball from the tee-box.)
The Rough
To the sides of the fairway is the rough—the unkempt grass designed to be more difficult to play from, as a penalty for missing the fairway. Usually, the farther you are from the fairway, the deeper and thicker the rough becomes. Primary rough is intermediate-depth grass just off the edge of the fairway. Secondary rough is unkempt, long grass outside of the primary rough. Secondary rough is bad news.
The Fairway
Looking out from the tee, the goal is to hit the ball to the closely cut area called the fairway. Think of the fairway as an expressway toward your ultimate goal, the green. Like any expressway, the fairway has curves, which are called doglegs. A dogleg is just like it sounds—a hole that curves to the right or left, like the shape of a dog’s leg.
The Green
The green is a small patch of grass that should be even more manicured than the fairway. Surrounding the green is a ring of grass cut just a little bit higher, called the fringe or collar.
The Flag
As you play toward the green, a flag sits in the hole as an aiming guide. At some courses, the flag is color-coordinated. For example, a red flag might mean the hole is on the front part of the green (closest to the tee), a white flag might mean the hole is in the middle, and a blue flag might mean the hole is toward the back. When you make it to the green and can see the hole, you remove the flag and try to hit your ball into the hole.
Bunkers and Other Hazards
Of course, avoiding the rough isn’t the only difficult part about this game. You also need to avoid bunkers, hazards, and out-of-bounds. Bunkers are pits of sand situated throughout the course, usually in spots close to where you meant to hit the ball. You don’t have to add a stroke to your score for hitting into a bunker—you just have to worry about blasting your ball out.
If you hit into a hazard, which could be a pond, stream, lake, swamp, or even an ocean if you live on the coast, you’re automatically penalized one shot. The same is true if you hit the ball out of bounds—past the edge of the field of play, and usually into somebody’s backyard. Out-of-bounds is marked with rows of white stakes. Hazards are marked with red stakes.
Eagles, Birdies, Pars, and Bogies
Now that you can find your way around, let’s move on to some other basic terms that have to do with the score you make on a given hole. Every time you swing the club with the intent of hitting the ball, it’s called a stroke or shot—even if you swing and miss.
Par is the score an expert golfer would expect to make on the hole if he or she played it properly. So, starting with your shot from the tee, if you finish a hole in the same number of strokes as par, that’s what you’ve made, a par. Most golf courses have three different kinds of holes: par-threes, par-fours, and par-fives.
If you take fewer or more strokes than par to finish a hole, the score has a different name:
- Birdie is one stroke less than par.
- Eagle is two strokes less than par.
- Bogey is one more stroke than par.
- Double Bogey is two shots over par.
- Triple Bogey is three shots over par.
Calling All the Shots
Now, let’s run through the names of the shots you need to get to the green:
- Drive or Tee-shot—Any shot from the tee-box is called a tee-shot; however, a tee-shot shot on a par-four or par-five is called a drive.
- Approach shot—When you’re getting ready to hit onto the green from at least 100 yards away, you’re hitting an approach shot.
- Pitch shot—An intermediate-length shot from, say, 40 to 90 yards. That’s where the name “pitching wedge” comes from.
- Chip shots—Little bump-and-run shots around the green.
- Putt—Any shot taken when you’re on the green, which is of course done with a putter.
Golf’s most colorful language probably comes in the few seconds after a person finishes his or her swing. Let’s run through a list of descriptions along with some quick definitions. (Note: all of the descriptions here are based on a right-handed player; for a left-handed player, just reverse the directions.)
- Slice is a severe left-to-right curving shot is a slice. Instead of hitting the ball square with the face of the club, the club hits with a glancing blow. Usually, this glancing blow is “outside in,” which means the club approaches the ball from the ball’s right to its left. This makes the ball spin the opposite way, from left to right.
- Fade is a gentle left-to-right curving shot that tails away from the golfer, and is generally intentional, to follow the contour of a hole that curves from left to right.
- Hook is the opposite of a slice. If the club hits the ball on a sharp “inside out” path, it puts the opposite, right-to-left spin on. These shots curve sharply left. Shots with hook spin tend to roll quite a bit more than shots hit with slice spin.
- Draw is generally the most desirable ball flight in golf. A slight right-to-left spin, a draw shot is more under control than a hook and still rolls more than a shot with no slice spin or hook spin.
- Push is a shot that flies on a straight path, but goes to the right of the target.
- Pull is, of course the opposite of a push. When your shot flies on a straight path, but left of the target, you’ve pulled it.
- Fat means you’ve hit more of the ground and less of the ball. The club hits the grass and dirt too soon, slows down, and then doesn’t have enough steam to get the ball where you want it to go. This kind of shot usually pops up in the air and then falls to the ground quickly, or, worse yet, just dribbles out in front of you. Some people call it hitting a shot “chunky” or “thick.”
- Top is just like it sounds—topping a ball means hitting it on its top half. This shot turns into a “worm-burner,” which means it never gets airborne and skitters along the ground.
- Shank is a shot hit off the side of the club instead of the face. This one is the most physically dangerous miss-hits of them all, because a shank goes screaming off almost at a right angle to the person who hits it. If you’re standing off to the side, you might not be ready.
- Chili-dip is a fat shot hit around the green. It usually happens when somebody is trying to bump the ball onto the green and hits the ground too far in front of the ball.
- Stiff is golf’s nirvana! To knock it stiff means to hit a pure, perfect shot. One of these a round will always keep you coming back.
Now that you know the lingo, it’s time to get out and play! For more golf info, be sure to check out our Quick Guides Golf 101: Chipping and Putting and Golf 101: Rules of the Game, as well as our video, How to Calculate Your Golf Handicap. Good luck, and have a great game!
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Golf, Second Edition, by Michelle McGann, LPGA tour member, and Matthew Rudy, Golf Digest
