Day 2 at TPC Sawgrass: The 17th Hole

Our first day in Ponte Vedra was chilly and rainy. But when we woke up the next morning, this was the view from our room at the Marriott.
The sun was out. It looked like a good day to play the Stadium Course.

The pool looked inviting, but temps were in the 60s. Plus, we had a 10:40am tee time.

After a stop at the Sawgrass Marriott spa to do a 30-minute golf stretch using a stretching pole,
we drove over to the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse to check in.

I went to the ladies locker room to change my shoes, since this golf course didn't seem like the kind of place where you could change shoes in the parking lot. Plus, they had free granola bars in a bowl there. Perfect for a golf snack.

We hit balls at the range till our forecaddie called us. They had just done a grounds treatment on the front nine, so we started at Hole 10.

It's cartpath only here. The grounds are so pristine, I even felt guilty walking on them in my rubber cleats. The forecaddie is the guy in the white jumpsuit, running ahead to locate someone's ball. He gave advice about where to aim to avoid trouble. Having him point out where the balls landed saved a lot of time.

The landscaping is gorgeous. Here's a huge tree dripping with Spanish moss (it's a parasite, I know, but it still looks pretty). There are no wooden posts to signify yardages. So, you either look for a sprinkler head or ask the forecaddie. I kinda wish I had bought a yardage book at the pro shop, though. They are only $5 and have drawings and distances for each hole.

In one hole, the forecaddie pointed out an alligator resting along the hill behind hubby. Or was it a crocodile? I can never remember which is which.

The back tees had a lot of forced carries.

The famous 17th Hole has forced carries for everyone.
And what a cute little bunker! Like a bellybutton!

Here's that par 3 from the other side.

The 17th hole green looks pretty far from the blue tees.
It's only 128 yards. I think I could make that with a 9-wood.

The 17th hole green looks closer from the white tees.
It's 115 yards from here. I would use a 6-iron, but I'd have to really kill it.

Hubby tees off from the whites.

He shoots. Does he score?

Yes! He made it! I knew he would.

My turn from the green tees. It's 92 yards from here. I use an 8-iron. I aim with a technique that Seri taught me. I put the club shaft across my chest and point it at the flag, then line up my feet parallel to the shaft. Seri told me she learned this on YouTube.

My backswing. Looks like my left arm isn't straight.
Also looks like I had too much sushi for dinner the night before.

The follow-through. Did I make it? Someone tell me I made it!

Yeah, I made it!!!
That's my pink ball in the front there.
The forecaddie is repairing all of our ball marks.

It took me three putts to hole out. I was afraid of hitting the ball too hard or it would roll off the other side of the green. So I bogeyed. Hubby made par.

We left that hole pretty happy. TPC Stadium Course is awesome!
From the championship tees, it's 137 yards to the green. I could make that with a 7-wood. I had so much fun playing the course, I didn't even worry about my driving distances. I just tried to play my best. I ended up with a 105 on my score card. Not bad at all (for me, anyway)!

Day 1 at TPC Sawgrass: Shaking Hands

The day after Valentine's Day, hubby and I flew down to Ponte Vedra, Florida, to spend a few days at TPC Sawgrass. In case you don't know, TPC Sawgrass is home to two championship courses, the Players Stadium and Dye's Valley Course. The 17th hole par 3 at the Players Stadium course is one of the most famous golf holes in the world. Each May, during The Players Championship, you'll see the world's top golfers take aim at this heart-shaped island green and either miss completely or land the shot only to have the ball dribble off into the water. If they make it on, then it's a nerve-wracking putt or two or even three. The green has some diabolically tricky breaks that make it a challenge for the pros. But that doesn't stop regular golfers coming to try their luck here. Last year, about 120,000 golf balls were fished out of the water here. That's a lot of lost balls.

We arrived in the early afternoon and checked into the Sawgrass Marriott. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to stay at the Marriott to play TPC Sawgrass, but if you do, you'll be closer to the course than anywhere else. Our room had this view of the 13th hole of the Stadium course across the water: 

To be honest, this Marriott could use a renovation. It's a busy resort, but we had stains on the curtains and the armchair looked so worn and dirty I had to put a towel over it before I sat on it. The bedsheets were clean, but I wouldn't go barefoot on the carpet. Enough complaining about the hotel, though. It is what it is.

To get into the Sawgrass frame of mind (by the way, sawgrass is a kind of grass and it is sharp like a saw), we headed over to the Clubhouse, which is about a minute away by car from the hotel. Even in low season, this place is bustling. As you can see, however, the weather was not the greatest. It was cloudy and drizzly. Temps were only in the mid-60s.

 

The Clubhouse is open to the public, and there are two restaurants for public dining, one casual and one more formal. We opted for the casual restaurant, Nineteen, and got seated outside on the covered verandah. There were several other couples and foursomes around, mostly older white people who looked rich and retired. Our waiter was super-friendly, though, and made us feel comfortable and welcome, as if weren't just another couple of golf tourists from up north.

I ordered the appetizer of kobe beef sliders, which was a big enough portion for me to consider it lunch.

My husband ordered a barbecue chicken sandwich that had avocado slices on it and came with fries.

Our waiter told us he gets to play TPC Sawgrass for free. I asked if he was some kind of golf pro, and he said no, he "only" shoots in the 80s.

After lunch, we went back to our hotel room for a nap. Then we returned to the Clubhouse to hit balls at the practice range. We brought our golf bags to the cart drop and staff members loaded them onto a cart. The practice balls come in green drawstring sacks that you get at the pro shop. We got three sacks apiece. We drove over to the practice area and then another guy in a golf cart suddenly drove along after us.

"Sir, sir," the guy said to my husband. "You can't wear jeans at the practice facility."

I looked at my husband. He was indeed wearing jeans. The only other pants he'd brought were golf shorts and it was too chilly to wear them. Rather than run back to the hotel to change, he decided to go buy a pair of golf pants at the pro shop. About 15 minutes later, he returned wearing golf shorts because they didn't have any long pants in his size.

"How much were they?" I asked.
"Forty-eight bucks," he said.
I shook my head.

Once we started hitting balls, it was so foggy I could barely see where the balls landed. The shortest flag was 88 yards away. The next one after that was 123 yards, then no flags till the 200-plus yardage. This is definitely a practice area for the pros.

The ground was hard and the grass was worn down to show soil. It was like hitting out of other people's divots.

There is an area reserved for tour academy students and pros, but the public is not allowed there. I bet their grass is greener.

After my husband finished his sacks of balls, he watched me hitting the rest of mine. I had been focusing on practicing with my 8-iron, in preparation for the 17th hole at the Stadium Course, which is 92 yards from the forward tees. Then I switched to woods and driver. My driver was piddling around 150 yards, as far as I could tell.

"You don't really do that 'shaking hands' thing," my husband said quietly.
"Huh?" I said. "Oh yeah."

"Shake hands" was a tip we had seen on the Golf Channel recently. Greg Norman was explaining that when he drives, he reaches his arm out like he's going to shake someone's hand. It encourages good extension. I hadn't tried it yet. But somehow, in the shadows and fog, and with my husband's voice calm and devoid of any hint of offering advice, I was open to trying it out.

So I tried it. On the takeaway, I extended my left arm like I was going to shake someone's hand. My follow-through felt slower, but more effortless in some way. It felt the same as those long breakthrough drives I'd had on the back nine that day I'd played with Seri a couple weeks ago. The result was the same: a monster drive.

My husband smiled. And so did I. I had finally found a way to repeat my long (but really pretty average) drive. Would this help me out on the Stadium Course? Stay tuned to find out...

Winter Round: Signs of Improvement

Last Monday, Seri and I had a noon tee time. I wanted to cancel since there was snow on the ground and the temps were only going to hit 40 degrees with winds in the 10-13 mph range. I had never played in weather below 42, but Seri said she really wanted to play, and I thought, “Wow, this chick’s more hardcore than me!”

It was only 32 degrees when I left the house. I wore two pairs of pants, a turtleneck, a cashmere sweater, a pink fleece pullover, and my orange fleece vest. I also wore a fluffy ivory knit cap my aunt gave me years ago. I think she got it from her former Russian art-dealer boyfriend. It’s the warmest hat I own. With four layers of clothing on and a puffy hat, I felt like a fat clown. Seri was outfitted in a few layers of high-tech cold gear, plus her rasta hat. It was sunny out, and by the third hole, we were sweating.

The ground was hard as a rock and we had a hard time getting tees in the grass. We had to work them in like wooden screws. However, the cold hard fairway sometimes yielded benefits in terms of ball bounce, and I generated three decent drives in the 160-169 range. On a par 5 on the back nine, I lost a ball in a hazard but lucked out because course rules gave a free drop. Somehow I kept my game together. Even though it was below 40, I shot under 100 for the third time in my life. I shot a 98, to be exact. A good feeling, even if I did look like a fat clown.

Room with a View of Sawgrass

The bad news is hubby and I celebrated Valentine's Day late. The good news is we celebrated it here:

The Couples' Rules of Golf

Hubby is my favorite playing partner. When we’re golfing as a twosome, it can be dreamy, like the most romantic date. But if he’s not behaving, it can be a nightmarish outing with the potential to end in double homicide.

Such a tragic end can easily be avoided if hubby simply follows the Couples' Rules of Golf. I first learned these rules last summer from Coach Dori O' Rourke at the Carlsbad Golf Center. According to Coach Dori, there are only 2 rules for playing with a spouse or significant other, and here they are:

The Couples' Rules of Golf

1) Only offer advice when asked for it.

2) If asked for advice, only give advice on the specific topic asked about.

So, guys, when you’re out there golfing with your gal, remember the rules. The life you save may be your own.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fried Eggs, Bunkers, and Body Shots

Last Tuesday, Seri and I met up for our second game together. We had a tee time at one of the more expensive municipal courses, which was offering a reduced winter rate. The yardage from the forward tees is 4762, about a thousand yards shorter than the course where Seri and I first played. But, as I would soon learn, a shorter course does not mean an easier one.

It was the first full round I had played in a week. My weekend round with hubby was cut short due to rain. I had been looking forward to showing off my new monster drive, but it never reared its head, leading me to nickname it the Loch Ness Monster Drive, since it was acting like a mythical creature hiding in a lake.

Even though the course where Seri and I were playing was short, riding a cart is advised, due to lots of hills and some long distances between holes. “It is walkable,” said the pro shop cashier. “But I only know three people who have walked it.”

So Seri and I shared a cart, and it was my turn to party because, as it turns out, Seri is really fun. This time she wore a navy blue puffy vest over a bright blue windbreaker, embroidered with the name of some designer I would surely recognize if I were into designer labels. I wore a pink fleece pullover with an orange vest, so we were a pretty colorful pair. I also wore golf shoes, an old pair of Foot Joys that I don’t wear often because they lack decent arch support.

But having rubber spikes do make a difference, and I parred the first two holes. This seemed to impress the young man who was playing with us. I’ll call him Lefty, for the usual reasons one would call someone that name. He said he played on the state’s professional lacrosse team. “Lacrosse is too easy, so you decided to take up golf, huh?” I said, and he laughed.

Truth is, we all had trouble with this course. Short as it was, it was full of blind fairways, rolling hills, intricate bunkerage, and putting greens wavier than a potato chip. Seri and I kept it fun with our exuberant exclamations after every shot and dramatic outpourings of “Ohh nooo!” each time our ball landed in a bad lie.

Whoever designed this course must have had some military training, for all the psy-ops at play. The hills and slopes played tricks on the mind till you didn’t know which way was up. It reminded me of a tourist attraction in California called the Mystery Spot, where you step into what looks like a normal house, only to find that the floors are not horizontal and the walls are not vertical, so gravity seems to be pulling at you in odd ways.

To psych us out even more, this course also had some diabolical tee placements that had us teeing off directly over hazards. And those tree shadows didn't help.

After nine holes of torture, Seri brought out some coffee and tiramisu cake for all of us to snack on. I think the real reason she always rides in a cart is because she brings lunch.

Seri speaks English with a Korean accent, and I can usually understand her, since I was raised by immigrants and I have a lifetime of experience interpreting Asian accents.

But when we were on a putting green and she asked Lefty about a “body shot,” I was stumped.

“Body shot?” I said. “You mean if he makes this putt, we should all do body shots?”

“No, no!” she said. “Body shot, body shot. I am asking, this is his body shot?”

“Oh, you mean birdie shot!” I said.

Seri also likes to abbreviate the word “bunker.”

“I hate landing in the bunk,” she would say with disdain.

But she’s right. Bunkers are bunk.

Whenever I land in a bunker, I try to make light of the situation by saying something like, “Looks like I’m going to the beach,” or “Guess I could use a little sand practice.”

But on one hole, I landed in a “fried egg,” which is when the ball embeds itself in a bunker so the surrounding sand makes it look like a fried egg. I was playing with a yellow ball, so this situation really looked like a fried egg.

But it wasn’t just a fried egg. It was a fried egg on an uphill slope. Notice the shadowy tufts of grass showing how close my ball was to the bunker’s edge.

I have read a lot about how to get out of bunkers, including tips specifically for women but I can’t possibly remember it all. I just try to keep it simple with these rules:

My Quick and Dirty Bunker Guide

1. Never ground the club (it’s against the rules).

2. Plant your feet and dig in a little by squiggling your ankles.

3. Sit down into your stance like you’re about to sit in a chair.

4. In a fairway bunker, take your normal club for the distance and try to pick it clean without hitting sand.

5. In a greenside bunker, lean into your front leg, choke down on your sand wedge, aim for the sand behind the ball, and hit as hard as you can.

Some people say you should open your clubface, but I don’t really know how to do that without being afraid I’ll miss the ball. Turns out that it was fine not to open the clubface, because on a fried egg lie, you’re actually supposed to close the clubface.

And on an uphill fried egg, the rule about leaning into your front leg doesn’t apply either. You’re supposed to lean back so the ball has a better chance of shooting straight up.

But I didn’t know any of that at the time, so I just dug my heels in, leaned forward, and whacked as hard as I could. The ball shot up the slope and backward, landing a few feet behind me, still in the bunker. But it was in a flat lie, so I got it out from there with no problem.

Yeah, bunkers are bunk. Maybe we should all do body shots after getting out of them.

How Long Is Long?

I remember the day when I first got my driver to hit the ball up in the air. I was by myself at a driving range, late on a summer’s day in 2008. I had taken a couple of lessons and read a lot of golf magazines, and somehow all of the wisps and whispers of golf tips that had been circulating through my brain came together to produce a shot that launched the ball forward in a high arc that ballooned upward and then plummeted gently to the ground. Its trajectory was a perfect miniature of the swing I was most familiar with, my husband’s golf swing, and I knew I had done something right. The ball went all of 120 yards, and I was darn proud.

Within a month or two, I was at the range three times a week and getting the ball to go 150 yards. In the fall, after watching the 2008 RyderCup, I was inspired by something Anthony Kim had said about taking a shorter backswing to gain more distance and control. I tried it out on the range and found myself pounding balls stick straight 180 yards.

For an amateur woman, 175 yards is average, according to this chart on Golf Club Distances. 

Of course, the professionals can hit much farther. Michelle Wie is famous for drives of up to 350 yards, but even Morgan Pressel, one of the LPGA’s shortest drivers, drives around 230 yards on her worst day. Not that I aspire to such great lengths. When Pressel paired up with Annika Sorenstam at last November’s ADT Skills Challenge, Sorenstam was only hitting about 200 yards or so. Sorenstam once had a driving average of around 265 in her prime, so you can see how not playing regularly can really drop your stats. But if a retired, former number-one professional golfer over the age of 40 can still bat the ball 200 yards, then so can a never-ranked, completely amateur golfer in her 40s, such as myself.

Why is driver distance so important? It directly influences how many shots you need to reach the green. Theoretically, on a par 4, you’re supposed to reach the green in 2 shots and hole in 2 putts. So if you can’t reach the green in 2 shots, then you’ve got a lot of pressure on yourself to make the putt.  

Now there are those who have done research showing most golf courses are actually disproportionately long for women when compared to men, based on amateur swing speeds, an average woman's drive of only 140 yards, and a general rule of thumb that the total fairway length should be 30 times your driver distance. So in terms of tee box placement, golf courses should be moving the forward tees even farther forward.

In fact, last summer, Play Golf America launched a “Tee It Forward” campaign encouraging golf courses to add more distance-appropriate tees for all amateur golfers. According to their guidelines, if I am driving an average of 150 yards, then I should be playing a 3500-3700 yard course. That’s 1400 yards shorter than the forward tees at my usual local course! That could take at least a dozen strokes off my game. But until golf courses permanently create these distance-appropriate tee boxes, I will probably just keep trying to slug away. The only other alternative, as the campaign suggest, is to literally set up your own makeshift tee ground on the fairway. But I doubt I’ll ever do that.

I already know that life isn’t fair, so why should my local golf course be? And now that I know that I'm playing courses that are really too long for me, it makes playing well on them all the more sweet.

A Breakthrough

After a couple of range sessions practicing the teddy bear drill, I was itching to take it to the course. Last Tuesday, Seri had signed us up for one of the first twilight slots at a local course. It was sunny in the mid-60s, an unseasonably warm day for January, and as Seri had predicted. “All the mens will be out.”

I arrived an hour early and hit the range, swinging my teddy bear swing till my left shoulder was sore. I met up with Seri in the pro shop.

Seri is in her late 40s, but looks like she’s in her 30s and dresses like she’s 13. She wore tight black pants and a satin jacket emblazoned with a sparkly logo across the chest. Her knitted cap was puffy and domed like a Rastafarian tam, except it was pastel pink and had a visor. Her gold faux leather golf shoes had a crystal butterfly affixed to the laces.

“What is that?” I asked.

She bent down to pull the butterfly off her shoe lace. “It’s a ball marker,” she said, demonstrating its magnetic quality. “Isn’t it cute?”

At tee time, the starter paired us with two men. I’ll call them Trek and Shrek, since one of them was outfitted in a black and grey pantsuit that reminded me of Spock, and the other was tall, with broad shoulders and a large head.

The starter asked Seri to share a cart with Trek. Shrek and I walked. Among golfers, there are those who walk and those who ride. Walkers are the traditionalists. They believe that a true golfer is supposed to walk the course, hence the saying, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Shrek was even more of a traditionalist than me, since he carried his golf bag on his back. I used to do that, too, but that was before “the injury.”

So off we went. My first drive was respectable, but Seri drove about 10 yards farther. I felt a bee sting to the heart, but despite that I said, “Good ball!”

I generally praise other people’s good shots and remain silent on bad shots. In between shots, I like to chat. It lets off steam and lifts the spirit, which can be good for my game. But because Seri and Trek shared a cart, they did most of the chatting, while I walked alone and Shrek walked along the sides of the fairway, looking for lost balls in the deep rough. Seri and Trek even kept score on the same tee card, something I would never do with a stranger.

I was feeling a bit left out of the party that Seri and Trek seemed to be having in their cart. I found myself landing in a lot of bunkers, and on the front nine, I scored a snowman and a lollipop on my card.

Then, on the first hole of the back nine, the unthinkable happened. I whiffed on a drive. “What the --?” I said, looking at the ball on the ground next to the wooden tee.

“Oh no!” Seri said. “You know, when I play with my other golf friends, we usually allow two mulligans per round.”

“Well, I’ll take that as a mulligan,” I said. Under normal circumstances, I would do no such thing. I had already stopped trying to score, and had started to look at this as a practice round. I decided that I didn’t care if Seri was hitting farther than me all the time. I don’t know if it was fatigue, mental or physical, but I suddenly decided to take it easy and just swing slow.

At that moment, something clicked. My drive flew like a rocket. I could barely keep track of it in the distance. I knew it wasn’t an optical illusion because Trek called out, “Atta girl!”

When I got to my ball, I calculated that it had gone 179 yards. I was astounded. I couldn’t wait to hit the next drive. On the next hole, I took the club back slow, like before. It worked again! I drove the ball 183 yards.

After that, all my balls were flying. It felt so effortless, like I was swinging a ribbon in the air. I didn’t feel my fingers on the club. Each time, I had the sensation of letting the weight of the clubhead pull my arms long. There was a brief pause at the top. Then I seemed to make the turn in slow motion and simply let the clubhead fall down into place. I heard a melodic “ping” sound as the sweet spot of the club hit the ball.

On the remaining holes, my balls were landing 10 and even 20 yards past Seri’s. I think everyone was rather surprised.

By the 17^th hole, I was feeling invincible, and I birdied the par 3 by pounding my 7-wood 150 yards to within a few feet of the flag. Even with my mediocre putting skills, I sank the putt in one.

On the last hole, a long par 5, I drove using my slo-mo technique, and my ball looked like it would sail, but its path was rudely interrupted by a “thunk” as it struck a thick tree branch and dropped straight down.

“After a birdie, luck always goes the other way,” said Trek.

But I felt great anyway. I shot a 49 on the back nine, versus 56 on the front, for a total of 105. If I can continue to hit 170 to 180 yards on a drive, that puts me squarely in the average range for amateur women. Never in my life have I wanted so desperately to be average.

But the question remains: Would this miraculous breakthrough hold up? And the answer: Only time will tell.

What Color Are Your Balls?

Mine are a dull pink. I thought this would make them easier to find on the golf course. And they do, sort of. If everyone else is playing white balls, then I can spot my pink ball easily, as long as we’re on the putting green. In the rough, my pastel pink balls tend to get obscured by the leaves and pine needles. My balls are the same kind of natural pink that can appear on mineral-streaked rocks.

Don't get me wrong. My balls are definitely pink. But yesterday I played with a woman who has really pink balls. They were a hot, flaming, no-mistaking-it-for-pink kind of pink. A neon pink almost. A Precept pink to be exact. They were so easy to spot. Even poking out from a tuft of grass, you could easily spot that bright pink.

Now I have played with white balls (ho hum) and purple balls (talk about hard to find). I’ve even played with yellow balls, which you think would stand out like a stoplight, but on a sunny day, they blend into the grass like a Van Gogh brush stroke.

But pink is really my favorite ball color. Oh, how I want those hot pink balls I saw yesterday. And I will buy them, as soon as I finish the 3 dozen chalk pink and yield-sign yellow balls I bought on sale last Christmas.

Face it, pink is in. Even the guys are getting into pink. Just look at Bubba Watson’s hot pink shaft. (Driver shaft, that is.) I think it's only a matter of time till the men play with pink balls too.

The Teddy Bear Drill

I have one more lesson with Mike but I don’t want to schedule it till I can learn how to stop releasing the club early. So I resorted to surfing the Internet for golf instructional videos, which is a bit like wandering a street market in Marrakesh. You never know if clicking on a link will lead to a Moroccan souk hawking the next indispensible golf gadget.  

After watching some really bad and unintentionally funny videos, I finally found a good one. It’s called How to Stop Casting & Create Lag in Golf Swing by Herman Williams, PGA. Casting is the golf term for releasing the wrists and extending the club too soon before impact. Lag refers to the clubhead trailing the hands at impact.

The video has several drills, and they are all pretty simple. One of the drills is similar to the “pump” drill that Mike taught me. In another drill, you hinge the wrist at set-up, then move your body so that your clubhead is touching a wall. Then you finish your swing. This drill forces you to maintain the wrist hinge till you get closer to the bottom of your swing. If you unhinge too early, you’ll hit the wall.

The idea of this drill makes perfect sense to me. In my normal swing, I hinge the wrists last. So on the downswing, I would instinctively unwind in reverse order, unhinging the wrists first. After all, last in, first out is a principle that works with most other things in daily life, like getting on an elevator or unpacking groceries.

The only thing that doesn’t make sense about the drill is using a wall. I was afraid it might leave me with quite a bit of drywall patching to do. Instead, I set up next to the edge of my bed. To give me an extra incentive not to hit it, I propped up a stuffed teddy my hubby once gave me.

Cute, and effective. For me, anyway!