Playing new courses
Not just fun but a good mental challenge
As anyone who follows my social media feeds will already know I have been playing a lot of venues new to me over the last few weeks, a trend which will continue on through September.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The most pressing is our need to complete all the work for Tim Jones’ and my forthcoming book “Moor to Shore: Perspectives of Devon Golf Courses”. Tim’s photography is nothing short of miraculous at times and I can’t wait to see the finished article with so many amazing images in one place.
Beyond that I’m also playing a couple of courses I’ve never before experienced in inter-county matches.
It’s an interesting experience, making me think about a number of things within my own golf and in terms of how other people go about their play and their planning.
There is the obvious start point that it is just huge fun to play places you’ve never been before, wherever they might be. I started to think it was surprising that some people might get a bit “sniffy” about playing perceived “lesser” venues and courses and then quickly jammed that thought shut – I have to be honest and say that in the past that’s been me too, that I would never have thought of going to particular courses because they weren’t on tournament/match radar or met some slightly bizarre, highly personalised and essentially elitist “quality” criteria.
I’m beginning to learn that I’ve been missing out. I’ve been to some courses over the last few weeks that have surprised me. That might be in terms of the sheer ingenuity of fitting a 9-hole course into a tiny space that appears completely inappropriately shaped or geographically able to take a golf course. Or it might be that discovering that the hole designs are actually really good. Or it might be in going to 27-hole facilities, with a perceived top/lead/”championship” 18 and an “other” 9 only to discover that holes on the other/lesser 9-hole track are every bit the equal if not superior to some of the holes on the big course.
But above all else there has been just the sheer joy of discovering a new golf course.
Then the student of course design in me kicks in. How has the architect come up with this structure to the course? What is he trying to do to confuse the eye or arouse the senses? What issues impacted how its put together? And how easily you can learn to spot when space was an issue, or that the impact of housing/roads/traffic caused a particular hole design. The differences between courses that run through an existing landscape or where they have been “made” on landfill brought in for the purpose which have an artificiality about them impossible to miss – that’s not a criticism, merely an observation that it is impossible to miss the difference. They’re still fun to play.
Whilst I know a little about agronomy (and spending any amount of time in the company of experienced, qualified greenkeepers and course managers quickly reminds me how little I really know) I don’t bring that to bear on the courses that I play. Whilst one might note that there could be a seasonal fusarium problem, or that there is more covering on a green that one might expect it doesn’t impact how I might view a golf course.
How often have you heard someone dissing a course they’ve played because the “greens were too slow” or “the fairways weren’t great” or “the rough was too thick/thin/inconsistent”. Just massively missing the point. The quality of a course isn’t inherent in a snapshot of its agronomic status.
Above all has been the interesting way playing new courses affects my mental approach, actually everyone’s mental approach, and in two ways.
First there is how much more tightly I am focussing on the target on each shot. That is a pretty obvious one, in that you’re trying to identify the line of play you should follow, seeing what it was the designer has done to confuse and misdirect you and are therefore seeking far more dynamically to find that target you should follow. And you have to focus on target so much more specifically because being in a new environment you’re dealing with doubt far more than you are around your own, home course. You just don’t really know what’s over the hill, around the trees, over the back even if you’re using a course book or some form of laser/GPS. Because we’re trained to experience things in person, through sight, sound, perception. Digital or written doesn’t do it for a lot of us. It means your confidence over the line, the club, the shot shape is always under assault. Really good to play with that kind of mental pressure.
The other part is in terms of your game plan. This is a big thing for me, something I was discussing in great depth in a coaching conversation last week. Back in the summer there was something weird about watching the SW Counties Men’s Champs, some of the best not only in the region but in some cases in the country, hitting a long iron tee shot on a 440-yard plus par 4 with a tricky pin accessible with a short iron, and with the tee shot playing in a raging cross wind. Not to mention watching many of them hit it squint into the rough. It cried out for a bash with a driver. I couldn’t work out that strategy then and I can’t now.
When you have a single practice round to come up with a tactical approach to a golf course, or even better have to do it on the hoof for just a once round, it really heightens your concentration. You’re looking so much more closely at what is going on with any given hole, trying to pull in as much information as you can before deciding how you’re going to play it.
In some ways I think we missed out on this a bit at the Kendleshire over the last couple of days. So much rain had fallen over the preceding few days that there was absolutely no run on the fairways whatsoever plus an odd wind from a not normal direction so we were mostly whaling away with drivers with a few exceptions. Even there, however, the importance of having a plan and executing it, sticking to it were evident in the match. A couple of things went wrong just from not understanding a given hole, not picking the right line or right club to give you the best options; getting too close to hazards making a shot harder than it needed to be, wrong club for a given tee shot bringing trouble into play that didn’t need to be challenged; these things happened in the play of good golfers, indicative that course conditions and match positions can drive what you do without having that vital pause for consideration before hitting a given shot, starting a given hole.
We all, wittingly or otherwise, have a plan for how we play our home courses. One of the great things about playing lots of different courses is that challenge to find the plan you need to get around as effectively as you can. And that’s what makes the game the brilliant mental challenge it is.