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Crafting stories from the ideas that tumble from my mind.
My next round at my home course of Avery ranch will be an irons-only round due to recovering from surgery. The idea is to only hit 3/4 shots with the irons and navigate around the course in a low-stress easy swing way. In addition, as discussed in my previous blog, “Analyzing Game Golf Stats…“, I intend to emphasize the 7-iron as my go-to club to do my very best to keep the ball in play.
This sets the approach for analyzing the round using Google Earth. However, in order to evaluate the round correctly, I need to set assumptions based on my game golf stats and the easy-swing strategy. First, I will assume that a 3/4 7-iron off the tee will travel 135 yards. Off the grass I will use 125 yards for 7-iron. Several holes need to carry over hazards and I will use the 6-iron on those with assumed tee distance of 140 yards. There’s also a long par 4 with enough fairway that I feel comfortable using the 6-iron to gain a bit of advantage. All shots off the grass will be 7-iron and higher lofted clubs as distance dictates.
With a 24 handicap, my goal in every round is to get to bogey golf. However, because my irons are a bit short, I would be happy to have this post-surgery round with no more than two blow-up (triple or worse) holes and a score in the mid-90’s. I’m hoping the stress-free nature of the round and the comfort I have with hitting the 7-iron will limit (or eliminate!) blow-up trouble. In a future blog I will write about how I plan for a tournament round where I expect to take a few calculated risks during the round.
If you as a golfer have not used Google Earth (GE) to evaluate a course, you’ve been missing out on a very useful and valuable tool. The web and version on tablets don’t have the versatility of the application version so I recommend downloading and using the application itself. On the screen shot here you can see in the upper left the distance measured by the yellow line from tee to mid-green. In the upper right corner is a compass which is useful if you know the prevailing winds. Thus, if I’m hitting with or against the wind I adjust my assumed distance accordingly.
For a course I’ve seldom or never played, the altitude in the bottom right is useful. An example is hole 9 at Twin Creeks Country Club in Cedar Park near my home. I looked at that course on GE and saw 180 yard par 3 over nothing but rocks. I can’t hit 180 yards reliably with any club. However, when I looked at the altitude I saw the green was 95 feet below the tee box and knew that much drop allowed me to hit a safer iron shot. When I played that hole I hit a 6-iron to the fringe just short of the green.
The scroll wheel zooms in or out over the terrain and another nice feature is that if you press shift while depressing the left mouse button, the view can be tilted so you’re looking at an angle down the fairway. I find this useful visualizing target lines. Finally, GE is great for evaluating how to avoid hazards.
I will show Google Earth screen shots from five holes evaluated with post surgery strategy on Avery Ranch – a long par 4, a hazardous par 4, a medium par 5, a long par 3, and a short par 4.
From the whites, the Fourth at Avery Ranch plays 385 yards, which is long for me. Conceptually 385 divided by 3 is 128 yards which I could play with three 7-irons. However, I am a lot more accurate with my 8 or 9-iron so I will tee off with a 6-iron on this hole. The fairway is a generous 38 yards wide at my assumed 6-iron 140 yard distance so I feel very comfortable hitting the 6-iron there. I plan to follow that with a 7-iron off the deck which should leave me with a 7 or 8-iron to the middle of the green depending on wind strength as this hole typically plays directly into the prevailing South wind. This is one of the holes where I make an exception in the Scoring Method scoring. Normally at my level I should give myself a check for Entering the Scoring Zone (ESZ) if I get within 100 yards of the middle of the green, but this hole is so long that I give myself an ESZ check if I hit two acceptable shots that leaves me a clear short iron shot to the green.
My best result on this hole came when a front blew through directing a decent helping North wind. I hit my 3-wood 253 yards, then planted a 7-iron in the middle of the green and secured the par with a lag putt to inches from the hole. That was my first and only “pro par” on this hole. However, I’ve had a couple of up & down pars on this hole.
The seventh hole is the nemesis for most golfers at Avery Ranch. There’s nothing but trouble everywhere! You’d think playing 339 yards from the whites (359 from blues) that this would be a short, easy hole. No way! The Google Earth image does not do justice to how much trouble confronts your every shot. First you have to hit the tee shot at least 123 yards to cross a 50 ft deep gully. To the right is another impassable deep, ball eating gully, and to the left is a shallower, but still ball eating creek bed and gully. The trouble doesn’t end there because another gully crosses in front of the green! In other words, it’s fairway or the alternative drop box across the gully.
Playing my iron-only strategy, I would have to hit a perfect 7-iron to make it across the tee-front gully so instead I’ll hit an easy 6-iron. That’s the approach I usually take on this hole, with about 50% success. Usually I fail when I push the tee shot right or top it forward because I’m too tense when I swing. A good 6-iron shot usually lands near or just beyond the drop zone leaving 179 yards to the green over the left gully. I only hit clubs that I think I can hit with 80% reliability and I don’t have a 179 yard off the deck club so I hit a 7-iron layup leaving a 75-80 yard wedge to the green. Two bunkers guard the front, both of which were recently renovated with nice fluffy sand. Finally, even if you get on the green, there’s no guarantee of a two putt because there is a tier in the middle and the green’s slopes are not gentle anywhere. Once I stiffed a wedge to 3 feet above and left of the hole which was placed on the tier slope. I barely tapped the ball which missed just high over the cup then rolled 15 feet below the hole. I was lucky to only three-putt that day.
I consider this hole a win if I get double bogey! I have parred it twice – once on a pro-par GIR two putts the very first time I ever played the hole (beginner’s luck), and once with a well struck wedge and one-putt.
At 469 yards, the par 5 10th hole should be a relatively easy hole to master. However, this hole has consistently given me trouble and I’ve only parred it 3 or 4 times. Most of the time I double it due to either three-putting or due to having at least one errant shot on the way to the green. For this round I plan to make it as stress-free as possible by hitting three 7-irons as shown which should leave me a perfect 75 yard 3/4 swing GW to the middle of the green. All the par 5’s used to give me trouble but lately I’ve been able to par or bogey both the short ~440 yards 14th & 15th holes with good Scoring Method golf. There’s no reason I should have problems with hole 10 as well so I’m hoping this easy-swinging conservative approach will take away the mental issues I have with this hole. I recently parred it with SM strategy hitting a wedge to the green for my fourth then sinking a 21 foot putt for the satisfying par.
At 190 yards from the white tees (204 from blues) this hole is one that I should be able to reach with a 3-hybrid. Problem is, I’ve never reached the green with a 3-hybrid – The stress of trying to hit this trouble-sourrounded green results in bunkers and trees intercepting the ball leading to the need to hit recovery shots to the green. I decided several months ago to lay up with a 9-iron in front of the large bunker leaving a sand wedge to the green. Since I’ve adopted that strategy I’ve never had a triple or worse and usually manage a bogey. The same day I parred hole 10 with a 21 foot putt, I parred this hole with a 19 foot downhill putt that barely toppled into the hole.
I’ve parred hole 16 more often than any other par 4 or 5 at Avery Ranch. At 267 yards from the whites (300 from blues), it is easily reachable if you don’t let the surrounding bunkers get in your head. Typically I hit a 3-hybrid and gap wedge on this hole. Even with my irons-only conservative strategy for this round, I can reach the green with two clubs. I’m confident I can get there with the 6-iron off the tee and an 8-iron to the middle of the green. The fairway is 32 yards wide next to the bunker shown, but I normally practice hitting the 6-iron to a 25 yard wide fairway so it shouldn’t be a problem. Even if I landed in the bunker I would just safely wedge out to the fairway then hit a wedge on the green and two putt for bogey.
There is a stark difference between the static images presented during this blog and the reality of the versatility of the Google Earth tool used live. Live, one can speculate scenarios for short shots and long shots, ball placement avoiding hazards and so on. For the five holes presented, a bogey is easily achievable on every hole and par possible on one. However, the reality is that I don’t perform that well due to poor ball striking and occasionally the bad bounce or two. I am of the mind that a lot of this is mental. I have hit so many good shots over the last year that I just need to mentally accept that I can play well and get over my current problem of 3 to 5 blow-up holes per round. I recognize this is a mental hurdle I can beat. I achieved my personal best of 94 since I started playing again on this course on a stress free day and that score included two triples and a quad bogey! I scored a personal best seven pars that day as well. It’s the latter I concentrate on – I have it in me to score well! I’ll get to bogey golf with a positive attitude and taking one shot at a time with intense focus on the target for that and every shot.
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