Gorse, heather and October leaves: six beginner habits that lose golf balls in Britain

Most beginners keep a rough tally of what golf costs them: the half set, the lessons, the green fees, the petrol. Very few count the balls. Yet a newcomer can easily get through half a dozen in a round, and on a windy links with gorse either side of the fairway that number can climb. The surprising part is how few of those balls are lost to a poor swing. Far more go missing because of what happens before and after the swing: the club you choose, the gap you fancy, the shot nobody watched, the second ball you tee up without thinking. Change those habits and you keep more balls in the bag, you speed up, and your score comes down as a side effect. Here are six of them, the Rules that make each one less expensive, and why a British course in October is a particularly good place to learn them.

A lost ball is the most expensive shot in golf

Think about what a single missing ball really costs. There is the ball itself, of course. Then there is the penalty stroke. Then, unless you were prepared, there is the walk back to where you last played from, which costs you the distance as well. One wild drive into a thicket can turn a comfortable bogey into a seven before you have even had a proper go at the hole.

That is why the scorecards of most beginners have the same shape: a run of fives and sixes, then one or two holes that wreck the total. Look closely and those holes nearly always contain a ball that never came back. None of the fixes below asks you to rebuild your swing. You can use every one of them on Saturday with the swing you already have.

Habit one: you stop watching too soon

A ball that nobody saw land is a ball that is probably lost. The usual sequence goes like this: you strike it, you lift your head to follow it, the white speck vanishes against a grey sky, and you set off towards a rough area of long grass with a vague sense of where it might be. The three minutes you are allowed for a search run out remarkably quickly.

Keep your eyes on the ball until it has stopped, not just until it lands. Then tie the spot to something fixed: a single silver birch, the right-hand lip of a fairway bunker, a marker post, a gap in a hawthorn hedge. Say it out loud. “Just short of the second gorse bush on the left” will get you to the ball. “Somewhere over there” will not.

Make it a rule for the whole group. Nobody tees up, and nobody chats, until the previous ball has come to rest and someone has named a landmark. Three or four pairs of eyes find balls that one pair would miss, and the time you save searching more than pays for the ten seconds you spend watching.

Habit two: you reach for the driver because it is a tee

The driver is the longest club in the bag and, for nearly every beginner, the least accurate. On an open hole that hardly matters. On a narrow one, with an out-of-bounds fence down the right and a pond or a stand of gorse on the left, the extra twenty or thirty yards it gives you are rarely worth the ball it puts at risk.

Look at where your usual miss goes. If that is exactly where the trouble sits, tee off with the club you hit straightest, whether that is a hybrid, a fairway wood or a 7-iron. You will be further from the green but you will be on short grass, with the same ball, playing your second shot rather than your third. Our guide to finding more fairways explains how to pick the safe side of a hole, and moving up to the right set of tees shortens many of those carries over water or heather to something more reasonable.

Habit three: you go through the gap instead of out sideways

Your ball is sitting under a pine, and between two trunks there is a window about the width of a garden gate pointing straight at the flag. It is a lovely sight. You might thread it once in ten attempts. The other nine times the ball clips bark, drops deeper into the trees or disappears over the boundary fence into somebody’s garden.

The sensible shot is almost always the boring one: a low punch with a 7- or 8-iron, back to the fairway by the shortest route, even if that route is sideways or slightly backwards. It feels like conceding a shot. In practice it saves shots, because the brave option usually leads to two more swipes from the same spot, and it saves the ball the brave option would have lost.

The same logic applies to the long carry over a lake. If you would not happily bet a tenner on making it from 180 yards, lay up to a distance you like and pitch on from there.

Habit four: you tee up again after the water

It is one of the commonest sights on any par 3 with a pond in front of the green. The first ball splashes in. The player tees up another, makes exactly the same swing, and the second ball follows the first. There is nothing in the Rules that forces you into that.

Ponds, streams and ditches are usually marked as penalty areas, and Rule 17 gives you choices when you know or are virtually certain your ball is in one. For one penalty stroke you can play again from where you last played. You can also drop on a line straight back from the hole through the point where your ball last crossed the edge of the area, going back as far as you like. Where the area is marked with red stakes or lines, you have a third option: a drop within two club lengths of where the ball crossed the edge, no nearer the hole. Yellow stakes give you only the first two. Either way, a fresh go over the same water is only one of your options, and for a beginner it is often the least sensible.

On holes with water, play a scuffed ball. You are free to change balls between holes, and losing one with a few scratches on it hurts a great deal less. Our article on used and lake balls covers which ones are perfectly good for the job.

Habit five: you set off without a provisional

Your drive is drifting towards the trees. You think it has probably stayed in, so you walk two hundred yards, search, and come up empty. Now Rule 18.1 sends you back to the tee to play again under stroke and distance. With a four-ball waiting behind, most beginners cannot face the walk, so they drop a ball somewhere convenient and invent a score.

The provisional ball exists for exactly this moment. Under Rule 18.3, when your ball might be lost outside a penalty area or might be out of bounds, you may play another ball from the same place before you go forward to look. You have to say clearly that it is a provisional before you hit it. “I’ll just hit another” does not count, and without the word the second ball becomes your ball in play, with stroke and distance already applied. If you find the first ball within three minutes of starting to search (Rule 18.2a), you play it and pick up the provisional. If you do not, you carry on with the provisional, with the same penalty you would have taken anyway, and nobody has walked back.

You may also see Model Local Rule E-5 on some scorecards. It is an alternative to stroke and distance: for two penalty strokes, you drop near where the ball was lost or went out of bounds instead of going back. It only applies where the club’s committee has adopted it, and it is not meant for formal competitions. If you are playing a round you want to count for your handicap, ask in the clubhouse whether it applies. Our piece on the Rules of Golf you are probably getting wrong covers it alongside other common mix-ups.

Habit six: your ball looks like everyone else’s

You find a ball right where yours should be. It is the same make as yours, with the same number, and so is your partner’s. Rule 7.2 lets you identify your ball by any means, but if you cannot tell which ball is yours, you cannot treat it as yours, and if you cannot identify it within three minutes it is lost. Play your partner’s by mistake and Rule 6.3c costs you two strokes in stroke play.

Rule 6.3a recommends, without insisting, that you put an identification mark on your ball. Do it with a permanent pen before every round: a pair of dots, a short line, your initials, always in the same place. On the first tee, tell the group what make and number you are playing and what your mark looks like. It takes a few seconds and ends arguments before they begin.

Where British courses swallow golf balls

The six habits are the same everywhere, but the places a ball disappears in Britain have a character of their own, and mid-October brings a few extra traps.

• Gorse on links and heathland. Gorse, or whin as many Scots call it, is the great ball thief of British golf. A ball that goes into a thick bush is rarely seen again, and even when you find it there is seldom a shot to play. Hit a provisional the moment a ball heads that way, and do not spend your three minutes pushing your arm into spines.
• Heather. On heathland courses a ball in the heather can often be found, but the wiry stems grab the club and getting it out is hard work. Take a lofted club and aim for the nearest bit of short grass rather than the green.
• Leaves on parkland. October is when the oaks, beeches and chestnuts drop their leaves, and a white ball under a carpet of them is hard to spot from a few yards away. Leaves are loose impediments, so you may move them while searching, and there is no penalty if you accidentally move your ball while trying to find it. If you still cannot find it, it is a lost ball like any other, unless the club has adopted Model Local Rule F-14, which lets the committee treat large piles of leaves as ground under repair for free relief. Ask whether it is in force before you tee off. A yellow or orange ball also helps a lot at this time of year.
• Low sun and early dusk. The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, and an afternoon round soon finishes in half-light. A ball is much harder to follow against a pale sky, so the watching habit matters more than ever.
• Boundaries. Many British courses are hemmed in by roads, gardens, railway lines or farmland, and white stakes or a fence mark out of bounds. On holes like that the club that keeps the ball in play beats the one that goes furthest.
• Adders. On some heathland and moorland courses the adder, Britain’s only venomous snake, lives in the rough. Bites are rare and usually happen when one is trodden on or handled, and the species is protected by law. In warm weather, look where you put your hands and feet when searching, and if you see one, leave it, and the ball, alone.

If you are still deciding where to learn, a nine-hole course or a pitch and putt gives you far fewer chances to lose a ball and far more chances to practise the habits above. Our guide to nine-hole courses in the UK explains what to look for. In England, the Get into Golf programme run by England Golf through its county network puts beginners in touch with clubs and PGA professionals offering taster sessions and beginner courses, which is a good place to learn the etiquette and the Rules alongside the swing.

Your checklist before the next round

• Mark every ball in the bag the same way, and tell the group what you are playing.
• Keep two or three scuffed balls in a separate pocket for water holes.
• Read the local rules on the card: red or yellow stakes, out of bounds, and whether E-5 or F-14 is in force.
• Watch every ball until it stops, and name a landmark out loud.
• On tight holes, take the club you hit straightest, not the one that goes furthest.
• If a ball might be lost or out of bounds, say “provisional” and hit another before you walk.
• From trees or gorse, chip out sideways. From water, take the drop and move on.
• In October, carry a coloured ball and check the sunset time before you book.

Count the balls in your bag on the first tee and again on the eighteenth green. For a beginner it is the most honest measure of progress there is, and unlike your handicap it can improve in a single round.