Confessions of a Hacker – Letting the ‘Big Dog’ eat
If you can shuffle the whole Kevin Costner/ Rene Russo love interest subplot off to one side for a moment, driving range pro Roy McAvoy comes up with a number of pearls of wisdom in the movie ‘Tin Cup’. However, course management is not exactly one of Roy’s strong suits – a flaw he tries to pass on to this new student (played by Russo) when he tells her to “Let her loose, let her rip, let the big dog (i.e. the driver) eat”. The driver is undoubtedly the most fun club in the bag to hit, but should you always reach for it?
After joining Yowani Golf Club in September last year, the first few rounds were spent trying to work out which holes the big dog should eat at and which ones it should remain in the bag for. Taking out the par-3s, there are still 14 holes on the course of sufficient length for the driver to be a possibility, but some of them pose far more risk than reward.
The short par-5 15th hole is an example of this. At first your eyes light up at the prospect of belting a drive down the middle and having a crack at the green in two. Then you hit the driver into one of two deep bunkers on the right hand side, from which a short-iron pitch out is often the only play. Or you fan one well right and out of bounds. Or you get scared by the bunkers and OOB and instead rip one left into the waiting line of trees, from which a chip out is frequently the ‘penalty’.
Somewhere around your fourth shot of the hole, you reach the narrow strip of fairway to the left of the bunkers and ascertain that at its most narrow point, the fairway would be less than five metres across. An iron or fairway wood off the tee (to the wider area of fairway before the bunkers) doesn’t seem quite so wussy now.
Professional golfers know when to leave their ego in the bag – or if they don’t, they become driving range pros like our flawed hero.
Never was this more evident than in the play of Tiger Woods at the 2006 Open Championship (British Open) at Royal Liverpool. On fairways that had baked in the unseasonably hot and dry summer, guess how many times he pulled out the driver in 72 holes? The answer was only once, on the 16th hole of the opening round. He navigated his way around an array of fairway bunkers using primarily his 2-iron and occasionally his 3-wood. Whilst he often approached greens from further out than his competitors, he missed only four fairways all week and won the tournament by two strokes at 18-under par. It was a display as impressive in its discipline as in its execution.
Deciding when to hit the driver and when to leave it in the bag can be complicated at times, but often it boils down to four critical factors:
(1) Can you hit a fairway wood, hybrid or long iron significantly straighter than your driver? One of my regular playing partners (and our Making The Nut IT guru) Adrian is a rarity among club golfers, in that the driver is pretty much the straightest club in his bag (much to envy of your humble author). If you also fit this mould, take the extra distance/ accuracy combination and disregard the remainder of this column. For the rest of us, three more factors need addressing:
(2) Does the geography of the hole lend itself to an optimal distance for your tee shot?Golf course architects are sneaky buggers sometimes. They add in water, fairway bunkers, trees or strategically-placed dog legs on holes to force players to reassess their game plan. Sometimes a 250-metre-plus drive is best; sometimes it is 220, others it is 200. If you can reach an area of distinct trouble with the driver but not with a ‘safer’ club, discretion may be the better part of valour.
(3) Which approach shot clubs are your favourites?For me personally, anything in the 7-iron to pitching wedge range is a shot where I’m expecting to hit the green, and therefore the benefits of hitting wedge from 110 metres out are not much greater than hitting 8-iron from 140. On holes where the driver would only give me minimal advantage from an extra 30 metres or so in distance, it stays in the bag. It might feel weird to think of tee shots as ‘layups’, but if you can frequently hit the ball to a distance where your favourite iron(s) come out, you’ll be in good shape.
(4) Think about the hole backwards.When you’re next on each green of the course, look back down the fairway. Where would be the ideal place for a realistic approach shot to be hit from? Where would be the next best spot? Think about what kind of tee shot you would need to reach that position and what club(s) in your bag could deliver it.
Depending on how your local course sets up and how your own game meshes with it, you may find after addressing these questions that you still hit the driver 90 per cent of the time, which is perfectly fine. At Yowani, I hit the driver on seven of 14 non-par-3 holes – compared to 8 of 14 at my former club of Gungahlin Lakes and 10 of 14 at my even older stomping ground of Coffs Harbour. Each time, I’m trying to pick the club that best fits the (tee shot) purpose.
Contrary to the beliefs of Roy McAvoy, there is no magic number for how often you should let the big dog eat and how often you should layoff a little. However, irrespective of the final outcome, your club selection process off the tee should merit as much consideration as it would for an approach shot.
Previous ‘Confessions of a Hacker’ columns:
(1) Seeking help, (2) Racking them up, (3) Holding your nerve, (4) Five-foot putts
