Early tomorrow morning I’ll be hitting to road on my annual 4-day golf trip. We will play four rounds of golf on some pretty decent courses, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been going on a Fall trip with this group of guys for about 10 years now. I missed the trip two years ago because it was just a couple of months after having herniated the disc in my lower back. Last year was a bit of a disaster as I hurt my left hand somehow before the trip, and was unable to hold the club right handed at all. I was able to hold the club lefty, so long as I did a double-overlap, leaving only three fingers on my left hand on the club. This cost me quite a bit of distance, but I was able to scrape the ball around, albeit for some pretty high scores. I also picked up some sort of intestinal bug, and ended up missing one of the rounds.
This year I’m feeling good physically going into the trip, and I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to play all four rounds. In terms of the golf itself, I’m really interested in seeing how my game transfers from my regular muni to a “real” course. My local course is a par 71 of just 5362 yards from the white tees, and has no bunkers. Water only comes into play on two holes, and is generally pretty easy to avoid. The course certainly has a lot of trees, but it is self contained, meaning that hit you hit a really wayward tee shot, more often than not you’re still going to be on the property.
We don’t typically play from very long tees on this trip – usually in the 6,000 – 6,200 yard range, but that’s still several hundred yards longer than my home course. When I was just playing right handed, those yardages were very short for me – I was comfortable up to the 6500 yard range. However, while I still have decent righty distance, I’m about 1-2 clubs shorter lefty. Given that the holes will average about 30 yards longer than I’m used to, I expect that my average approach shots will be about 3-4 clubs longer than at home.
Hazards are another thing that will be an adjustment, as I generally don’t need to worry about them at my home course. I’m confident enough in my directional control right-handed that I’m not too worried about water hazards off the tee. However, on lefty shots where water comes in to play, my dispersion is wide enough that I will not be able to take the water out of play on some shots.
Approach shots where bunkers or water come into play will be another real challenge. I don’t normally get too aggressive with my approach shots, but I’ll need to be even more conservative than when I was just playing right handed. I’ve had very few opportunities to practice lefty bunker shots, so getting out in one shot is by no means guaranteed. Last year, when I was just playing left handed with reduced distance, my strategy was to lay up on lefty approach shots unless I was inside of 100 yards or so. I certainly won’t need to be as conservative this year, but I fully expect to be playing more bunker shots than I typically did when I was just playing right handed.
Finally, the fact that the courses that we’ll be playing generally wander through neighborhoods will introduce some challenges. Because my home course is self contained, on many holes you can miss on either side and not have to worry about losing a ball. Even on holes that don’t have water hazards, there will be more OB, as well as more densely wooded areas that don’t lend themselves as well to easy pitch outs.
All in all, I expect that I will lose several balls on the trip, which is something that I rarely do at my home course. Based on course ratings alone, my scores should be five to six strokes higher than at my home course. I expect that to be some combination of losing one or two balls a round, hitting fewer greens, and perhaps taking an extra shot to get out of bunkers.
Perhaps what I’m most interested in seeing is how well I do mentally. I’m doing my best ahead of time to prepare myself for shooting bigger numbers than I’m used to. The last thing that I want to do is to get down on myself while on the trip. I’ll be doing everything in my power to stay positive and to remind myself of just how lucky I am to even be able to play at all.
Alternate Golf 