I’ve recently been playing some of my golf from the forward tees at Cumberwell Park.
So naturally, my next experiment was to go in completely the opposite direction.
On Monday I played the Red/Blue combination from the Green tees at 6,917 yards.
Par 71.
Handicap Index: 6.7
Playing handicap: 11
Final score: 86 gross, 75 nett and 32 Stableford points.
It was certainly harder.
But perhaps surprisingly, I think I enjoyed the course more.
We started on the Red nine, shown as holes 10–18 on the scorecard.
Why go all the way back?
There’s actually some logic behind this.
I’ve previously written about playing from the forward Purple tees and why I’ve been experimenting with making the course shorter.
Part of that is about learning to score.
If I’m presented with more birdie opportunities and get myself around or below par more often, hopefully being in that position eventually starts to feel normal rather than something I need to protect.
I recently spoke to my coach, Chris Tyson, about what I was doing and asked what he thought.
His suggestion went in the other direction.
Why not also make my practice golf as difficult as I reasonably can?
The idea is that when I subsequently play a competition, the course shouldn’t suddenly feel harder than the golf I’ve been practising.
It made sense.
So I decided to try Red/Blue from the Green tees.
All 6,917 yards of it.
I probably could have chosen a better day
Emma and I had both been playing really well before going away on holiday.
Then we had a week off.
No golf.
Since coming back, I haven’t been striking the ball anything like as well as I was before we went away.
I was also still experimenting with golf balls.
I started the round with a TaylorMade TP5x. After three holes I’d decided I didn’t particularly like it and gave both TP5x balls in my bag to Emma.
Then I tried a Srixon TriSpeed.
Didn’t particularly like that either.
After six holes I settled on a Srixon AD333, largely because I hadn’t brought anything else with me.
So Chris had suggested making my practice golf as difficult as possible, and I’d responded by choosing a 6,917-yard golf course on a day when I wasn’t striking the ball particularly well while changing golf balls during the opening nine.
I was certainly following the brief.
It didn’t start particularly well
We started on the Red course rather than Blue, which is worth mentioning because the online scorecard displays the two nines the other way around.
My opening six holes weren’t good.
There was some poor ball striking, but the bigger problem was where the poor shots left me.
I seemed to keep finding the sort of rough where the ball sits down, or finishing behind trees where the only sensible option was to play sideways.
I also missed a few more putts than I normally would.
The result was:
Double, bogey, double, double, double, bogey.
Ten over par after six holes.
Perhaps Chris had a point about making practice difficult.
I’d just expected it to take slightly longer.
Then something changed
The interesting thing is that the round didn’t continue in the same direction.
I birdied the 179-yard par-three next hole, bogeyed the following hole and then made par on the 600-yard par-five that finished our first nine.
From there I played the Blue nine in 41 shots, five over par.
So after being 10 over through my first six holes, I played the remaining 12 holes in five over.
That included two birdies and a par on a 600-yard par five.
Which is one reason I’m reluctant to look at the 86 and conclude that 6,917 yards was simply too long.
It didn’t feel that way.
Were the Green tees too long?
Honestly, no.
The par fours didn’t feel ridiculously long.
The par threes required decent shots, but none of them made me stand on the tee wondering why I’d done this to myself.
The par fives were different.
They all seemed to become roughly 600 yards.
So I changed the way I thought about them.
They’re three-shot holes.
There’s no point standing on a 600-yard par five thinking I should be reaching it in two. Hit three decent shots and see what happens.
Ironically, I managed to make par on one 600-yarder and birdied another par five later in the round.
There was really only one occasion when I genuinely thought the course might be asking me for more than I had.
I don’t think I can reach this
The eighth on Red was playing into the wind and sun.
After my drive I still had about 210 yards just to reach the front of the green.
I took 3-wood.
Given how I was hitting the ball that day, it was about as much as I could realistically muster.
I hit it well and, looking directly into the sun, thought I’d seen the ball land somewhere around the bank in front of the green.
Maybe it had kicked forward.
Maybe it had rolled back into the little ditch at the bottom.
When we got up there I started looking for it.
Nothing.
Eventually I discovered why.
I’d gone long and the ball had finished through the back of the green.
The one time during the round when I’d genuinely thought, I’m not sure I have enough to get there, I’d actually hit too much club.
Golf is helpful like that.
A five that could have been a ten
Blue 2 provided another good example of why the Green tees were interesting.
From that tee I actually prefer the angle.
It’s a much straighter shot over the pond. From the other tee box I tend to feel as though I need to aim farther left.
So I’d discovered a longer tee that gave me a view I preferred.
Naturally, I celebrated this discovery by hitting a terrible drive that barely cleared the water and stopped somewhere around the Black tee marker.
Then I duffed a 3-wood about 60 yards up the fairway.
Two shots gone and I was still a very long way from the hole.
I hit another 3-wood and this time absolutely flushed it.
For a moment I thought it might get onto the green.
It finished about 50 yards short.
I then hit a 58-degree wedge which struck the flag and stopped about six inches from the hole.
Tap-in five.
The scorecard records:
451-yard par four – bogey.
It doesn’t mention that after two shots I was well on my way to making about ten.
That’s golf scorecards for you.
Longer doesn’t always mean worse
Something else I hadn’t really considered before playing the Green tees is that moving backwards can change more than the yardage.
It can change the angle of the hole.
Blue 2 was actually a good example. I preferred the view from farther back even though the hole was longer.
There will undoubtedly be other holes where the opposite is true.
That’s another reason I want to play these tees more often rather than making a judgement after one round.
And that’s really what this was.
Round one of an experiment.
I shot 86.
But I don’t think it’s reasonable to say I shot 86 because the course measured 6,917 yards.
I wasn’t striking the ball particularly well.
I got myself into some awful positions.
I missed some putts.
I changed golf balls several times.
And I was ten over after six holes.
Yet I played the remaining 12 holes in five over.
The distance certainly made the course harder.
I’m just not convinced it was the biggest problem.
So am I going to do it again?
Definitely.
In fact, I enjoyed Red/Blue more from the Green tees.
There is an important caveat.
I don’t want to be the hacker playing from completely inappropriate tees for the sake of ego while everybody behind waits for me to reach the green.
The course was quiet when I tried this, so I wasn’t getting in anybody’s way.
That’s how I’ll continue doing it.
When the circumstances are right and I’m playing on my own, I’ll go back and make things difficult.
I’ve also given myself a new target.
My playing handicap from the Red/Blue Green tees was 11.
I want to get that into single figures.
If I can do that, I suspect the scoring and handicap side of things will largely take care of itself.
When I’m playing with Emma, I’ll probably continue playing from the Purple tees instead.
That’s more sociable. We can play from similar positions and enjoy the round together.
So depending on the day, I could now be playing Cumberwell from close to the front or all the way from the back.
It sounds slightly contradictory.
But I’m beginning to think there might be some sense in it.
From the forward tees I’m learning to deal with opportunities to score.
From the back tees I’m learning to deal with a golf course that asks more difficult questions.
And somewhere in between are the tees I’ll normally encounter when I’m playing competitions.
If Chris’s theory is right, perhaps those competition tees will eventually start looking a little friendlier.
We’ll see.
I’ve got another couple of hundred yards to deal with first.
