Lessons from the PGA Tour: Northern Trust Open

We can’t all hit the ball like the pros on the PGA Tour, but we can still learn how to get better at golf from the way they play the game.

This week’s edition of lessons from the PGA Tour focuses on the Northern Trust Open played Feb. 16-19 at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Bill Haas won the tournament in extra holes.

Here’s a video explaining the three lessons: take your medicine, be ready for anything and be a good sport.

The first lesson is take your medicine. In other words, when you hit a bad shot, don’t make it worse by attempting a more difficult shot.

In the playoff, Haas and his two competitors, Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley were playing a short par 4. All three went for the green with Mickelson and Bradley going right and short of the putting surface and Haas hitting into the rough long and to the left.

All three had difficult 2nd shots. Haas could have tried a really tough shot over the bunker, but instead hit to the fat of the green, leaving himself with about a 40-foot putt. After the other players missed the green, Haas drained his putt for a birdie, which won him the tournament when neither Mickelson or Bradley could match it.

Here’s video of the putt courtesy of PGATour.com.

The second lesson is to be ready for anything. Haas finished before Mickelson and Bradley and was leading both of them by a shot as they were playing the 18th hole.

Instead of just standing around watching, Haas assumed the other two players were going to make birdie and force a playoff and kept warm by hitting balls on the range.

When Mickelson and then Bradley rolled in birdie putts, Haas was ready to play extra holes.

The third lesson is to be a good sport. After Mickelson rolled in his putt for birdie on the 18th hole, two interesting things happened.

First, even after making an important putt, Mickelson made sure he stepped over the line of Bradley’s putt. Then Bradley reached over and congratulated Mickelson with a fist bump.

Both showed good sportsmanship.

If you take your medicine when you hit a bad shot, make sure you’re ready for anything and show good sportsmanship, you’ll have a great time as you learn how to get better at golf.

As usual, here’s some comic relief with a couple of outtakes from our video about the three lessons. This time, I had plenty to choose from as it took Daniel and me 20 tries to get a usable video.

In this video, Daniel almost takes out the camera with his famous fedora.

And here, Daniel introduces himself as me. You can tell we were getting a little goofy.

Closer to home, Daniel’s first golf match is this week. We’ll let you know how he does.