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Golf Dictionary what Golf terms really mean

C

Cabbage Deep, thick, inescapable rough. Also called spinach. Green, leafy vegetables are not good for your golf game.

Caddy - Individual who carries bags for golfers and assists them in the playing of the course. Ideally, a caddy should possess the eyes of a big-game hunter, the strength of a linebacker, the patience of a diplomat and the memory of a Mafia witness.

Can The hole. The cup. The place to put your putts. When you sink a putt, you canned it.

Cart golf Term for when two golfers riding in the same golf cart repeatedly hit the ball in the same direction (usually into the rough). An efficient but not necessarily pleasant way to play.

Casual Water - A temporary accumulation of water. The rules of golf provide that a ball may be moved without penalty from any non-permanent wet area, such as a rain puddle. Tears, however, no matter how copious, do not constitute casual water.

Chip Shot - A short, low approach shot that gets a player into position for one or more missed putts. See

Cleek - 1. Old-fashioned chipping iron. 2. Lateral water hazard on the legendary 8th hole ("The Poisoned Lotus") of the Royal Hong Kong golf course in Fanling.

Club Weight - There are three ways to measure the weight of a club: its overall weight, which ranges from about 13 ounces for a driver to just over 16 for a sand wedge; its swing weight, which is arrived at using a complex calculation of the relationship between the distribution of mass among a club's components and the length of its shaft; and its "bring weight," which is an estimate of its apparent heaviness on the 18th fairway on an afternoon in July and ranges between 21 and 46 pounds.

Clubface - The metal or wooden striking surface that is located on the front of a clubhead above the sole and between the toe and the heel. There is a specific point on every clubface called the "sweet spot," which, when it connects with a ball, produces maximum accuracy and power as well as a solid, gratifying feeling of perfect contact. It is difficult to say exactly where the sweet spot is since it varies from club to club, but generally speaking it is in the dead centre of the "bland belt," which is very near the "rotten region," in the middle of the "lousy area" and surrounded by the "loathsome zone.

Clubhead Covers - Wool or leather "mittens" slipped over the heads of woods to keep them dry. Zip-on coverings that encase the entire club in wetsuit material are also available and permit the eventual reuse of a favourite club flung into a water hazard, assuming that blind rage was tempered with foresight.

Clubhouse - Place where the rules are prominently posted.

Committee - The duly authorised drafters of the rules.

Competition - Form of play clearly established in the rules.

Course - Area of play strictly regulated under the rules.

Courtesy - Type of conduct specifically mandated by the rules.

Crapola - The rules.

Cup - The metal or plastic cylinder fitted into the hole in the green. Strictly speaking, it is only the liner of the hole, but in regular golf usage players will often say "cup" when they mean "hole," just as they frequently will say "just in bounds" when they mean "out of bounds," "Oh, here it is" when they mean "I can't find it" and "five" when they mean "seven."

Cut A controlled shot that moves from left to right. Most golfers shout "Cut!" to their ball after they see it heading well to the left of their target, not realising that this is not an "on-demand" feature of a golf ball.

D

Dawn patrol The golfers who are the first to play each day, so named because they start their march around the course at sunrise.

Dead When your ball is in a position from which you have no chance of getting it onto the green with your next shot. These positions include squirrels' nests and car windshields.

Deuce A score of two for any hole. Too many of these on your scorecard means you're probably only counting your tee shots.

Delay - Golfers are expected to play "without undue delay." The question of exactly what constitutes undue delay has been under intensive study since 1971.

Dew sweepers Golfers who habitually play first in the morning; members of the dawn patrol.

Digger A golfer who takes a big divot with his iron shots. A digger's swing takes a very steep approach to the ball. The opposite is a picker, a golfer who sweeps the ball off the ground with a flatter swing path.

Dimples - Tiny circular hollows impressed onto the outer covering of golf balls to regulate their lift. The surface is also usually punctuated with at least one large cut, or "smile," caused by a shanked iron shot. Curiously, golfers who complete these "faces" by adding eyes, ears, hair and a nose to roughly resemble whoever taught them golf find that they can hit their works of art nearly twice the distance of an undecorated ball.

Divot - Colourful Scottish word for the piece of turf scooped from the ground in front of the ball in the course of an iron shot. In Scotland, depending on its size, a divot is referred to as a "wee tuftie" (2 " x 4 "), "peg o' sward" (4 " x 6 "), "snatch of haugh" (6" x 8"), "fine tussock" (8" x 10"), "glen" (1' x 2'), "firth" (11/z' x 3'), "loch" (2' x 4') and "damned English divot" (anything larger than 8 square feet).

Dogleg - A hole with a 90° angle between the tee and the green. One with a pockmarked tee area, unkempt fairways or a patchy green is a "dogear." One on which large amounts of casual water regularly accumulate is a "dog paddle." One with an elevated tee and green and a sunken, treacherous approach is a "dog dish." And a course on which holes like these predominate is, simply, a "dog."

Dog track - Derogatory term for a golf course that is not well maintained.

Double Bogey - Two strokes over par, or, for a golfer who happened to score a 7 on a long par-5, a birdie and an eagle that occurred on the same hole.

Double Chen Hitting the ball twice on the same shot. The term derives from the 1985 U.S. Open when tournament leader T. C. Chen suffered a disastrous two-stroke penalty for hitting his ball twice while attempting a shot from greenside rough. Rattled by his mistake, Chen was caught and passed by eventual champion Andy North.

Double Eagle - Three strokes less than par for a given hole. This unusual achievement might be accomplished by, say, taking advantage of a tailwind on a straight par-5 hole to get down in two strokes, scoring a hole-in-one on a short par-4 or just skipping entirely a difficult par-3 hole.

Double sandy A score of par or better on a hole where two shots are played from bunkers, most often recorded on a par four or par five where one sand shot is played from a fairway bunker and one shot from a greenside bunker. Amateurs rarely record a double sandy, but if they do they can collect because it's usually included as junk bet

Dress - Although clothes in a variety of styles are acceptable on a golf course, a few general pointers are worth keeping in mind when selecting an outfit:

· It should be visible to an individual with normal eyesight looking out the window of a spacecraft in orbit.

· It should be made out of a fabric derived from a substance that was mined or refined rather than grown or raised.

· It should jam radar.

· It should be composed of no fewer than eight separate colours or shades and should bear a minimum of four distinct emblems.

· When scuffed, the shoes should require repainting or restuccoing rather than shining.

· Any hat should be identifiable as such only by its position on the wearer's head.

Draino Exclamation that follows the sinking of a putt, particularly a long putt.

Dribbler A shot that travels only a few feet, usually without getting airborne.

Drive - The initial shot on each hole, made with a special wood, the driver, on par-4 and par-5 holes, and with shorter woods or irons on par-3 holes. Because the drive is so critical to the play of the hole, total concentration is essential, and thus, if the shot is spoiled because of some audible disturbance inadvertently caused by another player on the tee, such as a pair of shoelace tips clicking together or the wind whistling through an onlooker's eyelashes, it is customary to take the shot over.

Drive for show and putt for dough "He who putts the best wins the most." This timeless golf cliché supports the contention of some PGA Tour critics who say the professional game amounts to little more than a weekly putting contest.

Driving Iron - The #1 iron, sometimes used for tee shots. Its chief virtue is that, unlike a wooden-headed driver, it puts a deep cut in the ball while driving it into the rough or out of bounds, thus ensuring that if the golfer who hit the ball cannot find it, no other player will get any use out of it.

Driving Range - A place where golfers go to get all the good their systems.

Dropping a Ball - A recent rule change does away with the old requirement that players introducing a ball to replace one that is lost do so by dropping it over their shoulder and behind their back. Players may now drop it at arm's length in any direction they choose. Of course, as before, a penalty stroke is assessed. This rule change does not affect clandestine ball drops, which are still made from the bottom edge of the pants pocket with the thumb and first two fingers of one hand while idly swinging a club with the other. And, it goes without saying; there is still no penalty for such drops.

Duck hook A shot that ducks to the left as soon as it is hit. More hazardous than a slice because it carries topspin and tends to roll farther after reaching the ground. As Lee Trevino once said, "You can talk to a fade, but a hook won't listen."

Duffer - A golfer whose actual score on any given hole is ordinarily more than twice his or her reported score.

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