When you get the ball on the green, you would like the ball to be in a place where you have a fairly simple putt. You can do that if you are in the fairway in a place where that spot on the green is easy to hit to. You can do that if you put the ball in the right place in the fairway, off the tee.
Do you see what we just did? We just played the hole backwards. We figured where we wanted the ball to be to make the next shot as easy as possible, and you do that by going from the green back to the tee.
How do you plan a hole in reverse? The next time you go out to a course you usually play, spend a few moments looking over your shoulder. From the middle of the fairway, pick the place from where you might like to hit into the green, then look back and see which direction that place is from the tee.
Once you get to the green, look back and see where, in the fairway, is the place from where it appears easiest to hit toward the green. Hopefully, this is the same place you picked out for your drive to land, but if it isn't, give preference to the tee shot. It's more difficult to hit a spot with a driver than with an iron, and it's easier to recover from a miss with an iron than with a drive.
On par 5s, figure out from which distance you like to hit into a green and figure out a way to play to there. For most recreational golfers, every par 5 is a three-shot hole. You might have two distances you are especially good at -- 120 yards and 60 yards, say -- so you have a choice if the lay of the hole or your first two shots put you in one place or the other.
Now, this is a lot to figure out while you're playing. A sneaky way to do it is to walk the course backwards. Start with the eighteenth green and walk backwards to the first tee. Then you can see it all at once. You will probably have to know the operators fairly well to get to do this, though.
So what did I tell the guy who asked me how I play that par 5? I said, play 200 yards off the tee in the line of the tallest tree in the distance, from there play another 200 yards to the left-most birch tree beyond the fairway, and you will be looking right at the hole with an 80-yard pitch. Couldn't be easier.
