Image Credit: Kevin Diss Photography<\/a>)<\/p>\n\tFor a start, the days are getting longer, and that means we have more hours of daylight. It won\u2019t be long before you will be able to finish your round in the evening and still be able to see the ball!\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tCourse conditions at this time of year tend to be pretty soggy. Now you may wonder how that can possibly be a good thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tWell, if you know that you are getting absolutely no roll on the ball you will quickly learn exactly how far you fly every club in the bag – and that is something that is going to help you enormously as things start to dry out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tIt is also fun to stand over an approach shot at this time of year and know that if you hit it anywhere near the flag then it is going to stop dead. Don\u2019t forget to repair the massive pitchmark you will have left though!<\/p>\n
\tBunker shots are easier to play from damp sand. It\u2019s a fact. You don\u2019t have to worry about taking sand – you can simply clip the ball off the top and an added bonus is that if you make decent contact then you are going to impart backspin – a rare experience for most of us.<\/p>\n
\tIn these conditions you have to be more aggressive with pitch and runs and chip shots because you will get little or no roll. Again, as the season progresses, that can only benefit your short game. You also have to hit putts harder to get them to the hole, knowing that your ball is not going to run 15 feet beyond the cup.<\/p>\n
\tThis is also the best time of year to experience millionaire\u2019s golf. With so many people looking out the window and thinking better of it, the chances are that your course will be far quieter than normal, which means you almost certainly will not have to endure a five-hour round. Another bonus is that when the course is quiet, there is nothing to stop you chucking another ball down. And you don\u2019t have to adhere to the three-minute rule when looking for your golf ball because you will not be holding anybody up.<\/p>\n
\tIf you are out there on your own at this time of year, you can even give yourself “those” putts that your opponents would normally make you hole out.<\/p>\n
\tIf you are a golfing nomad, at this time of year you will be able to find reduced green fees. What\u2019s not to love about that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tPerhaps best of all, by the time the rest of your fiends emerge from their annual hibernation, you will already have your eye in and will be in prime position to give them a right good pasting. You will also have been able to identify which items of equipment should be replaced. Remember that there will have been a rash of new clubs launched and that means that last year\u2019s models will all have been reduced. You have the opportunity to steal a march on your mates.<\/p>\n
Derek Clements<\/a> is a seasoned sports journalist and regular Golfshake contributor, specialising in tour coverage, opinion pieces, and feature writing. With a long career in national newspapers and golf media, he has reported on the game across Europe, the United States and Australia. A passionate golfer, he has played and reviewed numerous renowned courses, with personal favourites including Pebble Beach, Kingsbarns, Aldeburgh, Old Thorns and the K Club. His love of the game informs his thoughtful commentary on both professional golf and the wider golfing community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many of us the golf season doesn\u2019t really get going until the first shot is struck at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-503362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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