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Don’t let a new course smack you around

There are ways to keep from hating your scorecard after playing a course for the first time
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One of the keys to not letting a new course smack you around, according to Quadra Golf’s Jason Tchir, is to show up early and get to the practice green. Mike Davies/Mirror file photo

How do you avoid letting a course you’ve never played before get the better of you?

“I’m a planner, so I take at the very least five or 10 minutes to look it up on the Internet and figure out what I’m getting myself into,” says Jason Tchir, head pro and general manager of Quadra Golf, who is intimately familiar with people playing a course for the first time, since his track has only been open for six years. “Then once I roll up to the golf course, what’s big for me is to get onto the practice green and hit some putts.”

The speed and undulation of greens vary so much from one course to the next, he says, and so many strokes can be gained or lost on the greens, that it’s a relatively quick way to get lose some of the disadvantage of being a newbie somewhere.

“Having that upper hand, knowing how quick the greens are going to roll, how much break there is relative to how much break there looks like there is, that’s key to me,” he says.

He also recommends chatting to the staff, because they will obviously know the course and may be able to give you a few tips for how to get around it efficiently.

“Here at Quadra, for example, people will go around nine holes and then go to do their back nine knowing there were so many holes they didn’t need to hit driver on,” he says. “It looks like you do, but the trees and doglegs seem to get a little closer to you once your ball is in mid-air. So a little bit of insight from some of the staff or members that can say, you know, you don’t have to pull driver on number one, number two and number six, despite what it looks like.”

But other than showing up early to get a feel for the greens and talking to those in the know, the one thing you can do to set yourself up for a decent round on a course you’ve never played before is dial back and play smart.

“You don’t want to necessarily attack a course you’ve never played,” Tchir says. “Even with all the knowledge you can gain from the staff and regulars, and being told what to do – and what not to do – on certain holes, you never know how a course is going to react to your particular game, so to speak, until you get out and play it.”

So the key to not letting a new course demolish your scorecard is to go easy on it.

“Focus on hitting fairways and greens,” Tchir says. “I mean, whether you’re new to a course or not, that’s a pretty good piece of advice for making your way around a course in the fewest possible number of strokes, but it’s especially true if you don’t know where the misses are.”

Most importantly, Tchir says, don’t let a bad round at a new course get you down.

“I let a bad round motivate me to get back out there and get back at the course for doing that to me,” he says with a laugh, “and I think that’s a good attitude to have when you’re not happy with your score at the end of a round, no matter where you are playing.”