# Lie (Golf) > Canonical: https://pinflag.io/glossary/lie ## Lie (Golf) URL: https://pinflag.io/glossary/lie > A lie is the surface and condition a golf ball is resting on before a shot — fairway, rough, sand, and so on — and, together with distance, it sets a shot's expected strokes. The same distance to the hole plays very differently depending on lie. A ball in the fairway, the first cut of rough, a fairway bunker, or deep rough each carries a different [expected strokes](https://pinflag.io/glossary/expected-strokes) value from an identical yardage, because each surface changes how predictably the next shot can be struck. Lie is distinct from [dispersion](https://pinflag.io/glossary/dispersion): dispersion describes how a golfer's shots spread from a given lie, while the lie itself sets which baseline that spread is measured against. A poor lie doesn't just look harder — it genuinely raises the expected-strokes number the next shot starts from. Because lie has such a direct effect on strokes gained, any system scoring shots needs a reliable way to know what lie a ball is actually in. A shot logged against the wrong lie is scored against the wrong baseline. See [measured vs. estimated](https://pinflag.io/glossary/measured-vs-estimated) for how that distinction gets disclosed. See also: [How to Track Your Golf Stats](https://pinflag.io/guides/how-to-track-golf-stats)