Welcome to Lie Detector, a Golf Digest+ series where we use an ultra-slow-motion camera to help you properly identify and execute shots from various lies. Different lies, whether they be in the fairway, rough or bunker, require different techniques, but first, you must get better at identifying the lie that you have.

You hit a great drive down the fairway, but there’s a large clump of mud on your ball. What do you do next? “I pray,” says Best in New Jersey teacher Nick Bova. Though Bova is joking, the unpredictability of how a mudball will fly leaves much of the shot up to chance.

But it’s not entirely a hit-and-hope situation. Based on how much mud and where it's located on the ball, you can make an educated guess about how the ball will fly, where you should aim and what club you should hit.

The key is properly identifying what kind of mudball you have.

MORE LIE DETECTOR: Into-the-grain chip | The flyer lie | Buried in nasty rough

Where it often happens

In the fairway in wet conditions. They occur when the ball lands, makes a pitch mark and accumulates mud on a side of the ball. Sometimes this mud comes off as the ball rolls to its finish position, but other times it stays on. Mudballs are rare—but still possible—in the rough.

How to identify it

Unless the mud is on the bottom of the ball that is touching the ground, you’ll know you’ve got one as soon as you arrive to your ball. The key, though, is figuring out what kind of mudball you have.

“A lot of it is determining where the mud is, how much mud there is and then what do I think the ball is going to do based on that club and the shot that I’m going to hit,” Bova says.

Be sure to look at the density of the mud. If the mud is firmly caked onto the ball, then its effect on the ball flight will likely be more significant. If the mud is loosely hanging on the ball, it’s likely to come off right after impact and the effect on the ball flight could be negligible.

The size of the clump is crucial, too. The more mud, the more the ball will tend to curve through the air (more on that in a moment).

Most importantly, though, is where the mud is located on the ball. Is it on the right, left, front or back of the ball?

What it will do to the club and ball

The general rule is that the mud will cause the ball to curve in the opposite direction from where it’s located on the ball. Mud on the right side? The ball will tend to dive to the left. How much it curves depends on how much mud there is and how firmly it’s caked onto the ball. “If it’s a big clump, I’ll tell my players to aim at the right edge of the green if the mud is on the right side of the ball,” he says.

If the mud is on the side of the ball facing the target, expect the ball to come out fairly straight but with very little spin. “It actually tends to knuckle and come out with less spin, almost falling out of the sky,” Bova says. When the ball hits the ground, it will tend to roll out more than it otherwise would.

If the mud is on the back of the ball, trapped between the clubface and the ball, a similar situation occurs, Bova says, but this time, “the ball is not going to go anywhere because it’s almost muffled. You’re losing all that potential energy that you have from the clubface and ball interaction.”

But that’s not all. When you have a mudball, its important to make a few adjustments to your club selection and swing. Bova shares each of those keys in the 2-minute clinic below.