Graham Averill turned 50 this year and he’s going crazy. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap trying to get to scratch in a year. Now it’s an 8.2. Welcome to your mid-life crisis.
I’m a middle-aged man so I thrive on routine. I walk the same loop with my dog every morning, eat the same turkey sandwich for lunch and hit the gym at the same time every day. Cue SportsCenter at 6 pm while you cook dinner. The familiarity of routine is comforting. Joining a club and having a golf course at home allowed me to lean into my routine lover ways even more. I played my home course a lot.
But I also like to play different courses. Teeing it up on a new track in some strange land (Alabama! Idaho!) is one of the best reasons to play golf. Golf gave me a new reason to travel, and if you’re like me, you get dizzy a few days before playing a new course. Check out the drone footage on the course website. Read some reviews online. You want to play well. We’re not talking about setting a course record or anything; you just want to do the course justice. Hit fairways. Without three putti. You want a golf game that travels. Is that too much to ask?
Usually, yes. That’s too much to ask. Amateurs usually play their best golf on their home course and this has definitely been the case with me since taking up the game again a few years ago. I developed a theory over those years that when you travel, you can expect to add at least five strokes to your typical score on your home course.
Playing good golf when you travel is difficult because you don’t know the secrets of the new course. You do not have intimate knowledge of their greens. You don’t always know where to go. Playing well on the road is difficult. But it gets less difficult the better you get at golf.
There are many things that I like to improve in golf. My worst scores are better than my old best scores and I don’t miss as many balls these days, but being able to play well while traveling is at the top of the list. I’ve always wanted a golf game that works and I feel like I’ve finally made some progress towards that goal.
While I’ve played most of my rounds at my home course over the past six months, I’ve also had the chance to play a few travel rounds: a friends trip to Florida, a handful of rounds at other courses here in the mountains of North Carolina, an occasional round at random courses while on business trips…
For example, earlier this spring just after I started my lessons with Sam Hahn, I had the opportunity to play at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, the site of the new stage of the Biltmore Championship PGA Tour in my hometown of Asheville, NC It is a Jack Nicklaus design with many bunkers and a beautiful road that shows a mountain background. I was excited to play, hit the ball well on the range and then proceed to find patches of rough woods and woods that no player has ever set foot on before. I was also playing with an assistant pro who told me exactly where to hit the ball on each hole. It didn’t help. My game doesn’t work.
It’s gotten better and better since that outing and I had a chance to put my game to the test on a work trip to Montana last week. I got to play twice at Rising Sun, an 18-hole gem designed by Johnny Miller. The course is part of a high-end dude ranch, Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, so it gets little traffic during its short summer season. Most people come to the ranch to ride the horses, so Rising Sun will see half a dozen tee times a day at most, which is a shame because it’s one hell of a course.
The 18 holes are routed through Paradise Valley in the hills that rise from the Yellowstone River with views of Emigrant Peak and the Absorka Mountains throughout. The fairways are immaculate and the greens are pure lightning. The superintendent told me they were running at 13 on the Stimpmeter. It also has deep, imposing pot bunkers with thick, gray sand scattered throughout, and punishing rough that eats balls. It’s nothing but Wild West vibes beyond the fairways, so miss the short grass and you’re toast.
My golf course body is limited, but Rising Sun is without a doubt the nicest and best maintained course I have played.
I was in Montana to experience all that Mountain Sky Guest Ranch had to offer and wasn’t sure how much golf I could play. I knew I would squeeze in nine holes at some point, but beyond that my schedule was up in the air. So I didn’t bother bringing my clubs. I used the Rising Sun rentals and played so fast that I was able to fit two rounds of 18 holes into my commute.
And I played pretty decent. I didn’t have the advantage of playing with a local, so there was a lot of guesswork involved, especially during the first round, but I chose to play it safe and aim for what I thought were the friendliest grass spots. It wasn’t a perfect round (I gave some balls to the rough) but I hit a lot of fairways and really putt surprisingly well on those lightning fast greens. I wish I had my own clubs, but I don’t blame any bad shots on the Titleists on loan. I hit the fairways pretty well and managed to card a few birdies in the process.
The eagle putt I missed on the 18th will haunt me for a while, though. I actually missed the birdie putt later missing the eagle putt is the one that will haunt me the longest. But for the most part, I’m happy with how my game held up while traveling and playing a new course. My fundamentals are healthier, so I’m hitting the ball where I want to hit it more often. And I make better decisions when the course presents unknown situations. Those two aspects combined translate into lower scores regardless of where you play.
I shot 83 and 81 at Rising Sun. The rounds didn’t help my handicap – I went from an 8.1 index to an 8.2 – but that’s ok. I played well enough to do the course justice. And that’s what I always wanted. A game of golf that travels. It’s getting there.
Next week, I will put my game to another test when I play a two-day tournament. Check back next Friday to see how it goes.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to improve golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham finds out if using a cart helps his score.
The place Scratch By 50: Is My Golf Game Working? appeared first MyGolfSpy.