If you're a beginner golfer, you might wonder why they put sand in your golf cart cooler.  See the photograph to the left, it shows how you can use the scoop provided to take some out.

This sand is used for filling holes made on the golf course when you take turf (a divot) with your shot and leave it stripped to the dirt.

One of the reasons that you fill the hole with sand is it is very hard to play golf on a surface that is not level. The most important place to fill your divots is on the tee.

In the fairway, replacing divots with sand is also important. If you're sitting and waiting for your turn to play and see a huge hole in the fairway, feel welcome to fill it. You're performing a community service for all the golfers when you do.

There is often a box where you can grab sand to fill divots sitting on or near the tees. They come in a variety of shapes and styles.

Sand is also provided with a shake bottle which you use to pour sand on the grass where you've left a divot. This handy bar at the Walkabout Golf Course is used to swap empty shake bottles with full bottles.

Sometimes sand also contains grass and fertilizer. This occurs most often in Spring and Fall when grass is able to get a better start. When sand is wet, sometimes it is easier to grab and handful than it is to take a scoop or pour.

Country Meadows Golf Club in Moncton, NB was a little worn out when we played it in late August, but still provided enough challenge to make a good game for a reasonable cost. They are quite unique in using carved birds as their tee markers and birdhouses for their yardage posts and some excellent flowers. When we played, a tournament for children was about to leave so we rushed out onto the course before we were trapped behind them all. Luckily, everyone is pretty friendly around here so we partnered with a walking single who was kind enough to make sure we didn't get lost.

The clubhouse, shown in the golf photograph above provides clean bathrooms and a simple golf club style lunch.

Most of the holes on this course are pretty flat, with challenges coming from the rivers, brooks, swamps etc. that line the fairways and cross the fairways. Once or twice we got into trouble with the woods. Watch out for holes that run along the woods like this one.

If you go, feel welcome to bring your children along, their likely to have a grand time.

When I first started golfing, I found I lost count of my strokes because I was concentrating on so many other things. 

This little gadget, sold in many stores and probably pretty easy to make was the answer to my dilemma. LiveStrong.com has the answer to how to make them.


If you are a beginning golfer, or just have poor memory, here's some other options:

• Golf Accessories has a device that fits on the back of your golf glove.
  
• Amazon sells an app for Android phones for counting your strokes
• ShopWiki has several options for digital counters

The reason for paying attention to your exact number of strokes when you golf is that when you begin to play golf for money or with friends, your reputation requires that you are absolutely honest. 

When you're a beginning golfer, you can give yourself a break on whiffs, or replays, or mulligans, but its best you begin counting them all as soon as possible. The good news is most clubs limit the total number of strokes you should take per hole, ten max at most, sometimes 2xpar, sometimes eight max, just so the course play keeps moving.

Player Assistants, Golf Course Marshalls and the Golf Course Starters play an important role on the golf course. Often these positions are filled by volunteers, some may even receive discounts on their golf but some are paid positions depending on the golf club or even the golf pro.

The role of the player assistants is to make sure that the golf course play moves. When courses get busy, it's not unusual for a golf course to let a new foursome go out on the golf course every seven minutes. This is because a typical four hour golf game will take approximately 20 minutes per hole maximum, and many times two foursomes can be on a given hole at any time. With golf carts, the play should precede faster because there is less delay getting to your ball.

Golf Course Starters have the list of tee times. They take receipts from players and help regulate the first tee by ensuring that golfers are paired up into foursomes, informed about rules and regulations on the course, providing directions to how to know where the next hole is, where the pin is, and that everyone is ready to go, where the bathrooms can be found, where to find water, and that everyone feels welcome.

Golf Course Assistants in my experience play a big role, often rescuing golfers on the golf course and thereby making sure the game proceeds in a timely fashion. The most important job they do is reassuring golfers they are welcome and chatting with them while they wait. Other duties include:

• rescuing golfers when golf carts won't go
• providing medical aid for a variety of conditions including snake and alligator bites, heat exhaustion, heart attacks, fainting spells etc.
• providing water and ensuring the water containers are full (sometimes cold and flavored with lemon)
• retrieving lost clubs from previous holes
• delivering golfers to the bathroom or clubhouse
• warning about storms
• providing rakes, flags and other essentials forgotten by golf course staff hurrying to finish their work before the customers show up

Golf Course Marshalls are a different name for Golf Course Assistants and provide many of the same duties, but they also ensure the game proceeds in a timely fashion by asking players to:

• pick up their ball after a given number of strokes
• limit their search for golf balls to a given time
• play best ball when beginners lose too many balls or are too slow
• asking golfers to allow other golfers to step aside and let the players waiting continue their game
• asking players to limit drinks when they are damaging the course or equipment

Golf Course Marshalls, Golf Course Assistants, and Golf Course Starters are their to help everyone have an enjoyable game. If you have a question, they're the right person to ask.

I'd say that the Black Bear Golf Club in Eustis, Florida is seriously underrated by the  golfers in Florida based on the traffic I saw at the course in April 2013. The course had plenty of customers and it moved well but wasn't overcrowded or in high demand. The restaurant though was well appreciated. Both for me were a delight and I can recommend both highly, especially the steak sandwich.

As you can see in this photo taken on the second hole, the course at Black Bear Golf Club is quite sculpted with many curves, hills, moguls and the like. There are three keys to playing a golf course like this:
1. Hitting the golf ball straight
2. Adjusting your stance for the golf ball lie
3. Adjusting your shot for the golf course contour
I'll skip talking about how to hit the golf ball straight--that can be an endless discussion. But understanding the latter two, will help keep the ball heading toward the flag instead of an unexpected direction.

How to Adjust Stance for the Golf Ball Lie

Beginner golfers often learn to position their ball at the driving range where they are standing level. When they go out on the course and they are standing on the side of the hill, they will position themselves the same way and the ball will go off in an odd direction.

When you are standing on the side of the hill, try standing on one or the other of your feet. You will soon see, that standing on one foot, will help to level you on a curved surface like these hills on the fourth hole at Black Bear Golf Club. You want to stand on the foot where the golf club will reach the ball, either forward or backward foot. You do this during your practice swing. When you follow through on your practice swing, check where your golf club is pointing--this is the direction your ball will travel. If it's not the direction you want to go, move the direction your forward shoulder points, so that the golf club points where you want to go when you practice. Now that you are sure that you can reach the ball, and that the direction is set to where you want to go, you can adjust your shot for the contour.

How to Adjust Your Shot for the Golf Course Contour

If you happen to be in one of these little scooped out areas shown on this photo of the fourteenth hole at Black Bear Golf Club, chances are you'll have to adjust your stance and then adjust your shot for the contour. By this I mean, how the golf club head sits on the turf. At the driving range, beginner's should learn to place their golf club as it sits naturally flat on the ground. On a golf course, where the turf is not level, the golf club head needs to be rotated in the hand until it fits level on the surface where the golf ball lies. If you don't do this, chances are when you swing, the golf club will slam into the turf and the golf ball will not go anywhere. Alternatively, the golf club will top the ball and the golf ball will smack down into the turf or bounce off.  

By doing these two steps as part of your practice swing, chances are you will connect directly with the back of the golf ball, follow through in the direction you plan and hit a clean ball. There are general rules of thumb you can memorize for playing downhill and uphill lies, but its best to always test your stroke and the rules of thumb every time with a practice shot. You may see people out windmilling their golf club then missing the ball, that's because they are practicing with no plan for what they will accomplish. Doing these two steps should help you play the tough lies. Good luck.

It may seem a silly discussion to talk about how to strap in your golf clubs, but you wouldn't believe the number of times I've seen golf carts go and CRASH! Beginner golfer's may be like me, take one look and say, what is this?

Yes, it's true, your golf clubs will not stay put if you don't strap them in. They are like children, always causing trouble.

Turn the bag so that you have access to all the pockets. The pockets of a golf club bag can hold such useful items as:

• tees
• golf balls
• raincoat
• gloves (I have three pair--one for wet weather, one for dry, one for playing in with a group)
• ball retriever
• sunscreen
• mosquito repellant

Be sure to grab the strap, wrap it around the golf club bag (avoiding locking in your putter if you have a side pouch) and through the lock. The golf clubs also won't stay on the golf cart for long if you don't lock down the tab. It pays to check this strap if you go over a lot of hills and lumps and rocks because sometimes they can shake lose. 

One of the things a beginner golfer needs to know is where they ought to take their drop on a golf course. A drop is used whenever your golf ball is deemed unplayable because of an artificial immovable object like a golf cart path that might damage your golf club. Alternatively, the ball might lie in a hazard.  In this particular case, most players will allow the golfer to move the golf ball to either side of the golf cart path ( the rule usually states, no closer to the flag) and also within a golf club length.

During winter golf, when the fairway may be flooded or too mucky to hit, the ball also can be moved, dropping it at the nearest location.

In this case, my husband is holding the golf ball about one arm's length from the golf cart path. He's holding it straight out so the ball will drop. A golfer can redrop the ball if the golf ball rolls after it hits and ends up on the golf cart path or in the hazard again.

More likely, the golf ball would be dropped on the opposite side if the ball were more to that side of the path or if there was a puddle on the other side, etc. Beginner golfer's usually don't play for money or professionally, so the rules can slip a bit--the thing for beginning golfers is to make sure they get a clean hit and if that means moving your golf ball a bit, do so. Just remember, when you play for money or with friends, the proper placement will make everyone happier.

Other tips for beginner golfers can be found in my article for beginner golfers.

If you are a beginner golfer, try learning two clubs to start. For drives, begin with your seven wood. A seven wood will give you the most loft from the start. It is meant to be a fairway wood and because of its small head size, it will handle dips in the fairway much better than any other club. The seven wood for women will net you about 120 yards, +- 30 yards. When you're hitting from the tee, place your tee nearly level with the ground.

The reason for choosing one club is to help build your rhythm of hitting the ball. Each of the clubs vary as to where you place the ball in your stance. And the bigger the head on the club, the heavier it is to swing. The biggest problem most beginning golfers have is having strong enough wrists.

Do women's push ups in bed to help build your wrist strength, or alternatively against the wall. And swing the club fifty to one hundred times if you have the spot to do it. You don't need to have a ball or worry about where it will go to just take the swings.

The other club to start with is a seven iron, because it two is one of the easier, longer distance irons to hit due to loft. Many prefer to start with the eight iron. A seven iron will net you about 90-100 yards +-20 if you're a woman. 

Many men have a really easy time hitting golf balls long distance when they start. Men are more likely to use their wrist muscles in other tasks--carrying loads, hammering, using a screw driver, raking, shoveling, etc. Gardening is an alternate way to build wrist strength.

Why not start with all the clubs? Consistency is swing, timing, placement. 

This video from Peak Performance Golf on how to stop topping your fairway wood may be very helpful.

Well, I had my first ever golf lesson at Twin River's Golf Course in Orlando, Florida with Golf Pro Mitch. My husband and I have played for fifteen years, just learning by doing. One of our biggest frustrations is our short game. So we asked Mitch for a joint 1/2 lesson. The cost was $30 for a half hour, then half price for the second person, me.

So what does one do in a chipping lesson?

Well, we took our clubs in a cart over to the driving range and practice green area. Mitch brought his own pitching wedge, a bucket of golf balls and set up a flag on the green.

His first question was what did you want to learn?

My husband answered that he wanted to be able to chip over a trap, land on the green and stop. There are many varieties of chips and pitches that one does during the game of golf, but Twin River's Golf Club has many holes in which there is a sand trap right in front of the green or surrounding the front of the green with only a narrow neck on which to bounce up. The photograph here shows a chip used to get under low hanging growth, not one we wanted to explore at the moment.

So Mitch said, "Show me what you do."

With a pile of golf balls in front of us, my husband and I each chipped onto the green near the flag.

After we did so, Mitch focused on what my husband was doing and explaining what parts of the chip were not quite right. He explained how the stroke should be continuous from reaching back all the way through connecting with the ball on toward the flag. He explained that distance was subject to how far back you reached, not slowing the down stroke and not shortening up the follow through.

So what did we learn?

The number one thing we learned in our chipping lesson is that every person has their own unique weaknesses.

The second thing we learned was that being told how to do things better, is not the same thing as doing them better. I started chipping up pretty close to the flag, but as I worked to modify what I was doing, I started committing the number one mistake in chipping: I didn't look at the ball!

The photograph here shows the way turf can hide a ball--balls deeper in the turf are likely to slow down your shot. My yellow golf ball I use often is easier to spot in the bright sunny weather in Florida.

How did our lesson differ:

My husband found he wasn't rotating his hips through his chipping stroke.  And that he was trying to use his wrists rather than the club angle to create the loft.

I found that I wasn't standing near enough to the ball and that I was rolling my wrists back rather than lifting them up, to do Phil Mickelson's hinge and hold technique he talks about in his book that I discussed in my review of the Secrets of the Short Game. Unlike my husband that was accelerating through his shot, I tended to also slow down through the shot as the ball connected.

Was the lesson worth it? You bet. Both my husband and I learned what to pay attention to in our stroke, something we couldn't necessarily diagnose for ourselves.

After I went golfing with my in-laws on a wet morning and managed to do a 360 degree turn on the hillside, almost falling over, I had some guidelines about golf cart use.  One that I have to remember is to go up and down a hill at an angle. Sometimes its better to just walk. Guide to Golf Cart Use for Beginners can provide some useful rules of thumb to keep you out of the predicament I got into. 

Using a pull cart allows walkers to go into areas that golf cart's go but the roped off areas especially around the green and in wet areas still mean don't go here.

Ten Reasons to Obey the 90 Degree Rule provides a few reasons for that rule that makes you walk halfway across the course after your ball, usually after a rainstorm has turned the golf course muddy.