How to Play a Course for the First Time
By Steve Silverman
It's always more comfortable to play a golf course that you are familiar with. However, sometimes, you have to get out of your comfort zone. Instead of playing one of your normal home courses, you decide to play at a friend's home course, one that you are unfamiliar with. How do you play a course successfully that you have never seen before?
Instructions
Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Pick up the scorecard of the course you are going to play. Look at it and determine the hardest holes on the course. You can see this because each hole has a number from 1 to 18 under the column labeled "handicap." The no. 1 handicap hole is the hardest; the no. 18 is the easiest.
Look the course over before you tee off. Course officials are probably not going to let you walk the whole course, but they may let you stroll down the 1st and 2nd fairways or the 10th and 11th fairways on the back 9. This way, you can get a feel for the quality of the fairway, the condition of the greens and the difficulty of the hazards.
Talk to the club pro about the course and ask him to give you insights about the hardest holes, the easiest holes and the course's nuances that you should know about. Ask him about the greens. Are they fast, slow or average?
Walk up to the first tee, take one practice swing and tee off. Don't dwell on the fact that it's a new course to you. You play golf and you know how to hit the ball. Go up to it and strike it, and then walk to your ball and hit it again. This new course may have more water hazards or deeper bunkers, but you are still playing golf.
Give up your honors if you happen to win one of the early holes. You might be better served on certain holes by letting the "home" golfer hit first, so you can see his shot and how a particular hole plays.
About The Author
Steve Silverman is an award-winning writer, covering sports since 1980. Silverman authored The Minnesota Vikings: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Who's Better, Who's Best in Football -- The Top 60 Players of All-Time, among others, and placed in the Pro Football Writers of America awards three times. Silverman holds a Master of Science in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism.
