Path = Home : Glossary of Golfing Terms - H

Glossary of Golfing Terms - H

This page of our glossary of golfing terms is for golfing terms which begin with the letter 'H'.

• Hacker - A poor golfer who is apparently more successful at removing turf than at striking the ball.
• Half - A drawn hole or match.
• Half set - A half set of clubs is all a beginner golfer requires when starting playing. Consists of either the odd or even irons, two woods and a putter.
• Half shot - A shot where approximately a half swing and half power are used to keep a ball low into the wind, using a club with less loft than usual.
• Ham and egging - A term used in pro-ams to indicate how a handicap player can help his professional partner by making use of his strokes.
• Hand action - The use of the hands in the golf swing. Some theorists, especialIy Henry Cotton, have stressed the importance of strong, lively hands to good golf. Jack Nicklaus feels that leg action is more important.
• Handicap - A system of allotting a player strokes so that, as in handicap horse racing, all should finish level at the end of an event.
• Hanging lie - A lie in which the player has his front foot lower than the rear because of a downslope.
• Haskell - A name once used for the rubber core, wound ball after its inventor, Coburn Haskell. This kind of ball replaced the guttie from the turn of the century in the USA and from 1902 in the UK.
• Hazard - Any bunker, and stream, ditch, lake or pond defined as such by a club's committee.
• Head - A shortened form of clubhead.
• Head cover - A cover to protect woods and, occasionally, putters.
• Head up - A fault in which the head is lifted too quickly, perhaps before the ball has been struck, in order to follow its flight. The cause can also be a bad swing that forces the head up.
• Heavy - To strike the turf a little before the balI, reducing the distance the ball travels.
• Heel - The part of the clubhead nearest the golfer as he prepares to play. Also where the shaft enters.
• Hickory - The wood which, from about the middle of the 19th century. replaced other woods for the making of club shafts. In its turn steel replaced it from the late 1920s.
• Hitting across - The movement of tit« club head from out to in at impact, and one cause of a slice.
• Hitting early - Using hand action too early in the downswing.
• Hitting late - Unleashing hand action late in the downswing, often so that thehands are ahead of the clubhead at impact.
• Hole - This must be four and a quarter inches in diameter and sunk to a depth of four inches. The liner must be let one inch or more below the surface. The word is also applied to the entire area between tee and green.
• Holed - Any shot, usually a putt, that enters the hole.
• Holed out - A completed hole.
• Hole high - Used of a shot which covert the distance to the hole but not on the exact line.
• Hole in one - To strike a tee shot directly into the hole.
• Home course - The course a player it more active on than anywhere else.
• Home green - The last hole which brings golfers home to the clubhouse.
• Home of golf - A title given to St Andrews in Fife.
• Honour - The privilege of playing first from a tee.
• Hood - To set the hands ahead of ihc clubface and therefore to reduce the loft of the club.
• Hook - A poor shot which curves from right to left in an exaggerated way, usually unintentionally.
• Hosel - The part of iron clubhead into which the shaft is fitted.