A new chapter in my golfing journey started on June 21, 2020 while walking my dog. My lower back had been tight, but not much worse than the occasional flare up that I had grown accustomed to. However, when I squatted down and then leaned forward to pick up my dog’s business, I felt/heard a pop in my lower back, and crumpled to the ground in agony. After a couple of minutes I managed to crawl over to a small tree and use it to painfully pull myself up to a standing position. I remember feeling flushed, and the next thing I knew I was waking up from a nap on the ground, wondering why I decided to take a nap there. Apparently I had passed out.
I decided that I had been through enough chiropractic treatment and went to see a spine specialist. Within a few weeks I had my MRI showing that I had indeed ruptured the disk between the L4/L5 vertebrae, and the “jelly from the donut” was putting pressure on the nerves leading to the right side. At first I was looking into surgical options, but after talking to the doctor and doing some more reading on my own, I agreed with him that we should take a more conservative approach. We’d start with physical therapy to work on getting my core as strong as possible, and also work on improving my flexibility / mobility.
I decided that I wanted to take things one step further. I wanted to use this as an excuse to switch to lefty. My thought process was that there were two ways in which this might help. First, I had years and years of putting uneven stress on my back, particularly the right side. In the first ten or so years of playing golf, I almost always walked and carried my bag almost entirely on my right shoulder. I also had countless repetitions of my golf swing, which involved a tilt to the right. Switching to lefty should relieve some of the stress on the right side of my back and transfer it to the left side. Second, and perhaps just as important, I had never been able to stop myself from swinging aggressively. My hope was that by switching to lefty, I’d need to be so focused on just making contact with the ball that I wouldn’t even be able to swing too hard.
I was also hoping that switching to lefty might help me to make a mental adjustment as well. I had peaked as a golfer back in 2008, when as a 38 year old I finished up my “early midlife crisis” year as an Assistant Golf Pro. I was probably close to being a scratch golfer at that point. You can read more about my game from then through 2016 here. By that point I had started having back trouble, and I was constantly changing my swing, trying to find a way to swing the club without pain. I tried convincing myself to swing easy, but I could never get it to stick. I might take it easy for a couple of practice sessions, but as sson as I started feeling better I would start really going after the ball again. The back would tighten up, and I’d go through the process again.
For a relatively long stretch leading up to the rupture, my back was cooperating enough for me to start playing some decent golf, and I started setting some performance oriented goals again. By this time I was about a 9 handicap, and about to turn 50. The kids were old enough for me to start having the time to put some time into my game, and I was looking for a goal. I decided that I wanted to try and pass the PGA Playing Ability Test, which I had failed to do several times during my year as an Assistant Pro. When you turn 50, they let you move up a tee box, so I was thinking this would be a fun thing to do. I setup a mat and net in my driveway and started hitting lots of balls. My back couldn’t handle it though. I went through another bout of the back “slipping out”, followed shortly thereafter by the disk rupture.
This was a pretty low period, both mentally and physically. However, the rehab progressed well, and in relatively short order, the pain became very manageable. So long as I could anticipate my movements, I could do just about anything I wanted. Putting a lot of torque on the back wasn’t really an option though. I lucked into getting a good set of lefty irons at Goodwill, and got to work on switching sides.
I did a lot of work in the mirror, and started hitting some balls into the net. I was soon able to start going to a driving range every couple of weeks, and was pleasantly surprised to be able to make contact lefty. It was certainly inconsistent, and even when I did make good contact, the distance left a lot to be desired. After several practice sessions I went out to my local muni and played a couple of rounds lefty. My scoring was pretty terrible, but I still had a blast.
I then thought it might be a good idea to start bringing a righty club with me to the range. The idea was that by going back and forth between hitting some righty and lefty it would help me to transfer some of the righty feeling over to the left side. After having gotten used to exceptionally inconsistent results lefty, hitting the ball righty again felt easy. I started bringing a few more righty clubs to the range, and would alternate between hitting a few balls from each side.
This got me thinking about whether it made sense to totally switch to lefty, or if it might make more sense to try and split time between righty and lefty. If one of my goals was to try and balance the load on my body, then alternating sides seemed to be the way to go. However, I needed to decide specifically how I was going to go about this.
Handicapping was one issue that I was trying to think through as well. The USGA does not let golfers maintain separate righty and lefty handicaps. With the exception of a year or so from 2019 to 2020 when I kept a handicap through the Grint app, I had not had an official handicap since prior to working as an assistant pro back in 2007. If I could not have separate official handicaps, I wanted my official handicap to represent my ability playing a relatively even split of righty and lefty.
I thought about trying to play alternate shot – i.e. tee off on odd holes right handed and tee off on even hole left handed, alternating between right and left handed on each shot. I decided that the problem with this method is that it would be really hard for me to track my righty/lefty progress. I then came up with the idea of playing alternating holes righty/lefty. This would also allow me to track my progress as a whole, and by tracking right and left scoring, I’d be able to track my separate righty/lefty progress. For courses that I played repeatedly, I’d be able to alternate the odd/even sides and build composite 18-hole right/left rounds. For handicapping purposes I could just post my actual scores from each round, and I could maintain a spreadsheet to keep unofficial separate left/right handicaps.
All of this is subject to change at any time, but for now, that’s my plan. I’m actually typing this after my first round playing this way, but I wanted to get this posted before I procrastinate any further. My next post will talk about my first round, and how it went.
Alternate Golf 