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Back Nine Uphill Challenge on Sweetwater Golf & Country Club, Apopka, FL

11/25/2013

I thought Sweetwater Golf & Country Club's golf course was going to be easy to play until I reached hole 10. This is not to say that the front nine holes lack challenge.

The Sweetwater Golf & Country Club in Apopka, FL is friendly to visitors. The golf clubhouse is split between several buildings--the snack shop for instance shares quarters with the pool crowd. Dining at the snack shop is very good, I liked the turkey sandwich just fine. There's a separate place for the pro shop and another place for dinner dining. We didn't get golf cart service but they provide drinks vending machines at the bathrooms halfway along each nine.

The golf photograph above is about half of hole number ten. The hole travels uphill through the trees and when you get to the top, you find the lake and the hole curving around it to the left. This hole is pretty tricky since the side hill lie tends to want to put your golf ball in the water as does any roll.

The golf photograph to the left shows one of the tricky par 3's on Sweetwater Golf & Country Club. Three of the par three's require a drive over 150 yards, including this one that has a deep gully and pond. Other challenges on the golf course include a sand trap hidden in front of one green, another long sandtrap beyond a tree that allows golfers to shorten the distance to the green.

This golf club is pretty lively with many events, an upcoming Thanksgiving Day buffet, and a long time on the golf course--5+ hours for our round.

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About Player Assistants, Golf Course Marshalls and Golf Course Starters

6/1/2013

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Player Assistants, Golf Course Marshalls and the Golf Course Starters play an important role on the golf course. Often these positions are filled by volunteers, some may even receive discounts on their golf but some are paid positions depending on the golf club or even the golf pro.

The role of the player assistants is to make sure that the golf course play moves. When courses get busy, it's not unusual for a golf course to let a new foursome go out on the golf course every seven minutes. This is because a typical four hour golf game will take approximately 20 minutes per hole maximum, and many times two foursomes can be on a given hole at any time. With golf carts, the play should precede faster because there is less delay getting to your ball.

Golf Course Starters have the list of tee times. They take receipts from players and help regulate the first tee by ensuring that golfers are paired up into foursomes, informed about rules and regulations on the course, providing directions to how to know where the next hole is, where the pin is, and that everyone is ready to go, where the bathrooms can be found, where to find water, and that everyone feels welcome.

Golf Course Assistants in my experience play a big role, often rescuing golfers on the golf course and thereby making sure the game proceeds in a timely fashion. The most important job they do is reassuring golfers they are welcome and chatting with them while they wait. Other duties include:

rescuing golfers when golf carts won't go
providing medical aid for a variety of conditions including snake and alligator bites, heat exhaustion, heart attacks, fainting spells etc.
providing water and ensuring the water containers are full (sometimes cold and flavored with lemon)
retrieving lost clubs from previous holes
delivering golfers to the bathroom or clubhouse
warning about storms
providing rakes, flags and other essentials forgotten by golf course staff hurrying to finish their work before the customers show up

Golf Course Marshalls are a different name for Golf Course Assistants and provide many of the same duties, but they also ensure the game proceeds in a timely fashion by asking players to:

pick up their ball after a given number of strokes
limit their search for golf balls to a given time
play best ball when beginners lose too many balls or are too slow
asking golfers to allow other golfers to step aside and let the players waiting continue their game
asking players to limit drinks when they are damaging the course or equipment

Golf Course Marshalls, Golf Course Assistants, and Golf Course Starters are their to help everyone have an enjoyable game. If you have a question, they're the right person to ask.

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How to Identify Pin Placement from the Fairway

5/1/2013

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This particular photograph was taken at Providence Golf Club in Davenport, Florida. This card is posted in the golf carts there so that golfers will know where the golf will be on every hole.

The starter at Providence Golf Club informs golfers which placement the flag will be for the day. Just before chipping on to the green, golfers can check the car to get an idea about how the green is shaped and how much space on the green there is for the ball to roll to the hole.

Other golf courses may not be as sophisticated in their pin placement. Some golf courses don't have starters and the club pro or person at the cash register when ringing up your green fees will tell you.

Some golf courses only use the color of the flag to indicate pin placement. Again, the golf cart, or the score card will tell the golfer what the color of flag means. Not all golf courses change their flag color or provide a map. Then it is up to the golfer to estimate based on experience (and sometimes a sneak and peek drive ahead) to determine where the hole is.

Why is it important to know pin placement if you have a distance reader?

Pin placement maps show you how much space surrounds the flag. Depending on the space around the flag, you may choose to have a chip with more or less loft. Hazards will also affect the decision.

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Chipping Lesson at Twin River's Golf Course with Golf Pro Mitch

9/25/2012

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Well, I had my first ever golf lesson at Twin River's Golf Course in Orlando, Florida with Golf Pro Mitch. My husband and I have played for fifteen years, just learning by doing. One of our biggest frustrations is our short game. So we asked Mitch for a joint 1/2 lesson. The cost was $30 for a half hour, then half price for the second person, me.

So what does one do in a chipping lesson?

Well, we took our clubs in a cart over to the driving range and practice green area. Mitch brought his own pitching wedge, a bucket of golf balls and set up a flag on the green.

His first question was what did you want to learn?

My husband answered that he wanted to be able to chip over a trap, land on the green and stop. There are many varieties of chips and pitches that one does during the game of golf, but Twin River's Golf Club has many holes in which there is a sand trap right in front of the green or surrounding the front of the green with only a narrow neck on which to bounce up. The photograph here shows a chip used to get under low hanging growth, not one we wanted to explore at the moment.

So Mitch said, "Show me what you do."

With a pile of golf balls in front of us, my husband and I each chipped onto the green near the flag.

After we did so, Mitch focused on what my husband was doing and explaining what parts of the chip were not quite right. He explained how the stroke should be continuous from reaching back all the way through connecting with the ball on toward the flag. He explained that distance was subject to how far back you reached, not slowing the down stroke and not shortening up the follow through.

So what did we learn?

The number one thing we learned in our chipping lesson is that every person has their own unique weaknesses.

The second thing we learned was that being told how to do things better, is not the same thing as doing them better. I started chipping up pretty close to the flag, but as I worked to modify what I was doing, I started committing the number one mistake in chipping: I didn't look at the ball!

The photograph here shows the way turf can hide a ball--balls deeper in the turf are likely to slow down your shot. My yellow golf ball I use often is easier to spot in the bright sunny weather in Florida.

How did our lesson differ:

My husband found he wasn't rotating his hips through his chipping stroke. And that he was trying to use his wrists rather than the club angle to create the loft.

I found that I wasn't standing near enough to the ball and that I was rolling my wrists back rather than lifting them up, to do Phil Mickelson's hinge and hold technique he talks about in his book that I discussed in my review of the Secrets of the Short Game. Unlike my husband that was accelerating through his shot, I tended to also slow down through the shot as the ball connected.

Was the lesson worth it? You bet. Both my husband and I learned what to pay attention to in our stroke, something we couldn't necessarily diagnose for ourselves.

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Mixed Set of Golf Blog News

8/8/2012

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Today's Golf for the Love of Ithttp://www.scoop.it/t/golf-for-the-love-of-it

features the new Nike Wet Weather Shoe, a spoof about golf pros, silly golf tips, charity events and much more.

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Back Nine Uphill Challenge on Sweetwater Golf & Country Club, Apopka, FL

About Player Assistants, Golf Course Marshalls and Golf Course Starters

How to Identify Pin Placement from the Fairway

Chipping Lesson at Twin River's Golf Course with Golf Pro Mitch

Mixed Set of Golf Blog News

Sheri Fresonke Harper

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