Easily lower your handicap with this clever tee-box strategy

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

Penalty strokes are the bane of most recreational golfers. With the driver in their hands, the big miss is always looming — and when it comes, it typically results in a lost ball and penalty strokes.

For lots of weekend warriors, eliminating penalty strokes is the quickest way to shave strokes off their handicaps. But despite the obvious low-hanging fruit, they never quite seem to figure out how to keep the ball in play.

Getting a few lessons and hitting the practice tee is a great option to dial in that dispersion, but for those that can’t afford a swing lesson or don’t have the time to get out to the range, there’s hope yet. In fact, you can reduce — and even eliminate — those penalty strokes simply by being smarter about where you tee up on the tee box.

Instructor Stef Shaw explains in the video below.

Eliminate penalty strokes by doing this

When most high handicappers step up to the tee box, they aren’t really thinking about where they are teeing up their ball — and that’s a big mistake. The tee box is the only place on the course where you fully control every variable regarding your lie and position, so it’s best you take advantage of it.

One way to do this is by always teeing up on the side of the tee box where there’s trouble. This might seem counterintuitive, but by doing this, you can give yourself a better angle to aim away from the trouble.

“If I stand on the right side of the tee box, all I’m seeing is [out of bounds on the left],” Shaw says. “And if I stand on the left side of the tee box, all I see is nice pretty fairway.”

By teeing up on the side of the tee box where there’s trouble, you can essentially turn your back to the penalty areas or out of bounds and hit away from it. Whereas if you’re on the opposite side, you are actively hitting toward the trouble.

“This is taking the trouble out of play and giving me a chance to stay in play so I can hit my next shot,” Shaw says.

So next time you find yourself on a tee box with trouble on one side or the other, take a second to stop and think about where you want to peg your ball. If you do so on the same side as the trouble, you will give yourself a better angle to hit away from it and eliminate those pesky penalty strokes.