Uneven lies tend to give average golfers trouble for a couple of reasons. First, average golfers seldom practice them, and second, they try to do too much with them,  attempting to hit the ball close to the hole. The mental approach on these uneven lies should be to take plenty of club, keep your balance and try to hit the ball to the middle of the green.

In the photo, two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen faces a lie where the ball is below his feet. The important thing with this lie is to keep your balance and take one extra club. Balance is crucial to keep the club traveling down the correct path. This lie will encourage your body to be more stable than normal, which restricts turn and weight shift, so make sure you place the ball in the middle of your stance.

As you can see, Retief doesn’t have quite as much turn as normal, and his body will be slightly more tilted and not as level as it usually would be. As a result, the path of the club will tend to go up in front of the body, and not around it. Due to this, the club will tend to come down more in front as well, and not as far from the inside. Because of this, the ball will tend to turn a little more left to right than your normal ball flight. That means you must aim more left to accommodate for this curvature.

I have seen some players who normally draw the ball, hit it fairly straight off of this lie because their lower body is less active through the ball and their hands and arms take on a bigger role. If you get a chance, it is important that you practice these shots. Everyone practices off of flat lies, but apart from tee shots, we don’t get many flat lies on the course.