Have you ever failed to see the correct shot?

[Michael Moore]

I was very fortunate to play Shelter Harbor last week. The fourth hole is a deconstructed Biarritz - instead of a mound in front and in back, there is a mound front left, one middle right, and one back left.
 
I pulled a seven iron onto the top of the left front mound and of course the pin was down in a valley. The choices appeared to be putt directly over the mound to thirty feet, or putt onto and back down the back left mound and see if you got it right (twenty feet) or wrong (forty feet).
 
I chose the latter and got it wrong, bogey. Then I took a practice putt on the same line and got it right. As I was walking to five tee my companion and the caddie at the same time said hey what if you pitched it directly onto the top of that mound? I walked back, tried it, and got it to six feet.
 
I have been all over the UK and I have never seen a hole like this. There were so many steep contours that I was unable to see the correct play. Has this ever happened to you?

[Matt_Cohn]

So often on TV, the announcers will say comment on a player's "imagination" when they play 20 feet of break on a putt that clearly breaks 20 feet, or when they play a flop shot when there was clearly no other choice. It's nice to hear about shots that require actual imagination. The hard part is finding out that you failed to imagine something, unless someone else points it out to you!

[cary lichtenstein]

The one I will always remember was my putt from the left side of the 17th green at Augusta, I hit it a bit too hard and it went off the green and 40 yards away

[Ken Moum]

I see it all the time. And it happens to me sometimes.


Most common is what you're talking about,  not seeing what ground contour and gravity are going to do to the ball.


Simplest version? Blowing a putt way past the hole and saying,  "I couldn't have hit that easier."


But the real failure was not seeing that playing more break,  or some would have taken speed off.


I remember Tom Watson saying decades ago that if you have a slick downhill putt you can tap it sideways instead of toward the hole.


Might not work but the conventional plan is doomed.

[MCirba]

Sounds like a fun hole, Michael Moore.

[Pat Burke]

I love doing playing lessons.


At my old club, we had some pretty sever greens on one course.  Taking players out and showing them how to use the slopes sometimes instead of (a lot of times) a tunnel vision look made a lot of pitches, chips and difficult putts a lot safer.


Good, young golfers are also developing a two dimensional look at approach shots.  Look in laser, get a number, hit it towards the flag. 
Teaching them to look  around at the surrounding area of the hole location is always eye opening for the players who have started to get the straight-line look ingrained