Ernie Els Par Quotations

Check the card before you play. If you have a couple of long par 3s, put an extra hybrid in your bag. You'll be glad you did.

If you can hit your 3- and 5-woods with confidence from the fairway, par 5s become birdie opportunities, and 420-yard par 4s are a lot less scary.

I feel that to bogey a par five is a huge sin. But after making mistakes I came back well and that kind of sums up the whole day.

I think most amateurs dread playing a 180-plus-yard par 3 even more than a hard par 4. Part of it is psychological: You think you should be getting a breather, distance-wise, and instead, you get hit with a long iron or hybrid shot over trouble.

Today was a tough day and I got off to an iffy start and was two over par after five holes. I battled hard to get it back to level. But I have to work on my putting. I looked at my putting stats and I'm down in the bottom half of the field, so I guess that is where my problem is this week.

Where it used to be kind of the most fun of all the majors, it's becoming the hardest one now. Over four days of competition, it's going to narrow the field dramatically. You will be doing good to break par on the back nine.

When you get to the tee on a really long par 5, I know what you're feeling. You want to let the shaft out on the driver and try to bomb it down there. I get the same feeling. But a big tee shot is not always the best strategy, especially on a long hole.

I had a bit of a rough start there and made some good par putts on the first two holes,

I plot the par 5s back from the green and make my plan. If I can reach the green in two shots, I'm going to be aggressive off the tee. But if 's a three-shot hole, the goal changes. You want to put yourself in position to hit your favorite shot to the green.