Graham Averill has turned 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now an 8.2. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
I’m a middle-aged man so I thrive on routine. I walk the same loop with my dog every morning, eat the same turkey sandwich for lunch and hit the gym at the same time each day. Cue SportsCenter at 6 p.m. while I cook dinner. The familiarity of routine is comforting. Joining a club and having a home golf course has allowed me to lean into my routine-loving ways even deeper. I play my home course a lot.
But I also love playing different courses. Teeing it up on a new track in some foreign land (Alabama! Idaho!) is one of the best reasons to play golf. Golf has given me a new reason to travel and if you’re like me, you get giddy a few days before playing a new course. You check out the drone footage on the course website. You peruse some online reviews. You want to play well. We’re not talking about setting a course record or anything; you just want to do the course justice. Hit fairways. No three-putts. You want a golf game that travels. Is that too much to ask?
Usually, yes. That’s too much to ask. Amateurs typically play their best golf on their home course and that’s definitely been the case with me since picking up the game again a few years ago. I developed a theory over those years that when you travel, you can expect to add at least five strokes to your typical score at your home course.
Playing good golf when you travel is hard because you don’t know the new course’s secrets. You don’t have intimate knowledge of its greens. You don’t always know where to miss. Playing well on the road is hard. But it becomes less hard the better you get at golf.
There are a lot of things I like about getting better at golf. My worst scores are better than my old best scores and I don’t lose as many balls these days but being able to play well while traveling is at the top of the list. I’ve always wanted a golf game that travels and I feel like I’m finally making progress towards that goal.
While I’ve played the vast majority of my rounds at my home course in the last six months, I’ve also had the chance to play several travel rounds: a buddy trip to Florida, a handful of rounds at other courses here in the mountains of North Carolina, the occasional round at random courses while on work trips… And my away game has steadily gotten better as I’ve worked on the fundamentals of my swing and course strategy.
For instance, early in the spring just after beginning my lessons with Sam Hahn, I had the chance to play The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, the site of the new Biltmore Championship PGA Tour stop in my hometown of Asheville, N.C. It’s a Jack Nicklaus design with lots of bunkers and a beautiful routing that showcases a mountainous backdrop. I was excited to play it, hit the ball well on the range and then proceeded to find patches of rough and woods that no player has ever set foot in before. I was even playing with an assistant pro who told me exactly where to hit the ball on each hole. It didn’t help. My game didn’t travel.
It’s gotten steadily better since that outing and I had the chance to put my away game to the test on a work trip to Montana last week. I got to play two rounds at Rising Sun, an 18-hole gem designed by Johnny Miller. The course is part of a high-end dude ranch, Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, so it gets very little traffic during its brief summer season. Most people come to the ranch to ride horses so Rising Sun will see half a dozen tee times a day at most which is a shame because it’s a hell of a course.
The 18 holes are routed through the Paradise Valley in the hills rising from the Yellowstone River with views of Emigrant Peak and the Absorka Mountains throughout. The fairways are immaculate and the greens are pure lightning. The superintendent told me they were running at 13 on the Stimpmeter. It also has deep, imposing pot bunkers with thick, gray sand scattered throughout, and punishing rough that eats balls. It’s nothing but Wild West vibes beyond the fairways so miss the short grass and you’re toast.
My golf course body count is limited but Rising Sun is without a doubt the prettiest and best maintained course I’ve played.
I was in Montana to experience all that Mountain Sky Guest Ranch had to offer and I wasn’t sure how much golf I’d be able to play. I knew I’d squeeze in nine holes at some point but beyond that my schedule was up in the air. So I didn’t bother bringing my own clubs. I used Rising Sun’s rentals and played so fast I was able to fit two 18-hole rounds into my work trip.
And I played pretty damn decent. I didn’t have the advantage of playing with a local so there was a lot of guesswork involved, especially during the first round, but I chose to play it safe and aim for what I thought were the friendliest spots of grass. It wasn’t a perfect round (I donated some balls to the rough) but I hit a lot of fairways and actually putted surprisingly well on those lightning-fast greens. I wish I would have had my own clubs but I’m not going to blame any bad shots on the loaner Titleists. I hit the loaners well enough and managed to card a few birdies in the process.
The eagle putt I missed on 18 will haunt me for a while, though. Actually, the birdie putt I missed after missing the eagle putt is the one that will haunt me the longest. But for the most part, I’m pleased with how my game held up while traveling and playing a new course. My fundamentals are sounder so I’m hitting the ball where I want to hit it more often. And I’m making better decisions when the course presents unknown situations. Those two aspects combined translate into lower scores regardless of where you’re playing.
I shot 83 and 81 at Rising Sun. The rounds didn’t help my handicap—I went from an 8.1 index to an 8.2—but that’s OK. I played well enough to do the course justice. And that’s what I’ve always wanted. A golf game that travels. I’m getting there.
Next week, I’m going to put my game to another test when I play a two-day tournament. Check back next Friday to see how it goes.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham figures out if using a cart helps his score.
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5 minutes ago
Hi Graham,
I think you point to yet another reason as to why golf is so hard: every single course is different, and your “A game” on your local track could very well not matter on a strange course. I know all the tricks for my local: keep right on 2 and 9, missing short on the 3rd green is better than missing pin high, the dogleg on 8 is better for a short layup than going for it, etc. And none of it matters when I go somewhere else.
Graham Averill
6 seconds ago
That’s very true. I think I hit the ball better during my first round, but scored better on my second because I had a little more familiarity with the layout. I remember I played one round with a caddie at a course in Arizona right when I got back into the game a few years ago. My swing was terrible, I had no short game at all, but he saved me several strokes on the green alone by telling me where to putt the ball. Local knowledge is invaluable.