Carnoustie pro reveals strategies for Tiger Beach

Nowhere else in the world’s most populous nation is there a course sculptured to replicate the famous barren courses of the East coast of Scotland, where the modern game evolved and where the hard, bumpy ground, the relentless sea breezes and bunkers deep enough to bury a bus in have created a style of golf all on its own..

As the professionals begin to gather for this week’s Omega China Tour – Shandong Leg to prepare for a rare taste of the links game, one of the world’s links experts shared his tips.

Lee Vannet, a former European PGA Tour player, was born and raised in Carnoustie, the sister-course of Tiger Beach and the layout on which the Shandong venue has been modeled.

The club’s professional since 1995, Vannet has been playing links courses from around the time he stopped sucking his thumb. His knowledge could fill a bookshelf, although his first piece of advice - on the typical deep, steep-sided ‘pot’ bunkers - can be written on the back of a postage stamp.

“You have to accept your punishment,” the 38-year-old declared abruptly in his thick Scottish accent.

“Usually if you go into a true links bunker, you just have to get a sand wedge and get out.”

The lesson is brief, but simple: stay out of the sand!

The other secrets to links golf are not quite as straightforward. Even on a beautiful, calm day when the seaside courses are at their most benign they can’t be played in the same way as a typical parkland course, particularly around the greens.

“The shot-makers will shine through on a links course. It’s not like some of these parkland courses where the guy who smashes the ball 320 yards wins. There is a lot of strategy. You have to account for how the ball is going to behave when it hits the ground,” said the former British Boys Champion.

“Links golf courses are hard and fast. The ground is so hard it’s difficult to hit a shot 175 yards and stop it dead. If you try to do that on most links courses the ball will bounce and run for another 20 yards. But usually there’s a route to get to the green along the ground. So you have plan where to put the ball off the tee and learn to use the contours of the ground and run the ball up to the green,” Vannet explains, before going on to describe the ground-hugging short game that is so different to the high-trajectory backspin shots played around the greens of ordinary courses.

“The chip-and-run shot is the staple shot in the short game on a links course: The 7 iron, the 5 iron or the old ‘Texas wedge’ – the putter – to run the ball up to the flag. There are times when I’ve putted from 50 yards off the green! These days most players are so dependent on the sand wedge.

“The beauty of the chip-and-run is that nine times out of 10 you’re going to get a good result. It is possible to take a sand wedge and try and ‘nip’ it (to create huge amounts of backspin), but that is not a high-percentage shot. You’re not going to get that shot right that often. However you need a good imagination to visualize how the ball will behave on the contours; to see the shot and work out what line will get the ball closest to the hole. The best players can see angles that no-one else can.”

But even the best players suffer when the wind blows and links courses change from mild-mannered companions into snarling psychopaths.

“I remember Tiger Woods first playing Carnoustie as an amateur in 1995 or 1996. He was so naive playing in the wind. He would hit the ball high in the air. He didn’t have the skills to play that kind of course,” said Vannet.

Woods remembers that trip to the Scottish Open too: vividly!

"On the first day I hit 6 iron to the par-3 16th and the next day it was 3 wood," Tiger would later recall.

"On the 17th, I hit 4 iron, 4 iron, then driver, driver. I didn’t know what was happening!

"I had never played golf that tested every facet of your game like that. But the thing was I loved it, even though it was beating me up. It is a challenge - and that’s what we live for. It’s the nuances I love most. There are always a lot of options round the greens. That’s why I play golf, for the creativity. You learn new things every round."

That lesson was the same one that most of the Omega China Tour field had to learn during May’s Zhuhai Leg, when the entire field finished over par for the four rounds because of the strong winds whistling up the Pearl River Delta. Indeed only the winner Zhang Lianwei was not double digits over par.

That’s a figure even Tiger Woods has endured, during a similarly windswept 1999 British Open at Carnoustie (he was only three-shots away from making the play-off), although by then he had a far better grasp of the links course game.

“He did learn very quickly,” Vannet admits with a laugh. “Back then when he first came he didn’t have the ‘punch shot’ to play underneath the wind. The punch shot is crucial.”

Typical of anyone who has taught golf for a living, Vannet jokingly asks where to send the invoice before going on to describe the technique.

“It’s a softer shot. What you’re trying to do is hit the ball without spin. If you hit it hard into the wind, the spin on the ball will just make it climb upwards into the wind,” he explains.

“If you’ve got 170 yards into the wind and normally you’d take a 5 or 6-iron, you’ll hit a 3 or 4-iron. You grip down the club and move the ball two or three inches back in your stance. Then you put 60 per cent of your weight on your left foot. It’s not like a normal shot where you want to shift your weight across. You want to maintain 60 per cent of your weight on the left foot throughout the swing. The swing itself is a three-quarter swing. You want to firm-up the left-hand grip and you want to hold the club face so it’s almost open. It’s very easy with a shortened swing to pull the club face through, so this makes sure the club face remains square at impact.”

However, along with the technique for the punch shot, Vannet believes the key thing when the wind blows is having the right mentality to do well.

“You have to know that, if four or five-under-par is normally a really good round, that two-over-par might be a great score on that day,” he declares.

“Experience is something you can’t buy. Some of the older players will always do better, because they are more patient. They understand that on a certain day on a certain hole a bogie can be the equivalent of a par.

“Sometimes you can only be hitting a 3-iron 130 yards the wind is so strong. Even downwind you have to use your strategy. You have to realise if there is a bunker 280 yards from the tee, a shot that might normally need driver can be as little as a five-iron, because the ball might run for 100 yards after it lands. And in cross winds you have to be able to control the ball. So if the wind is right-to-left you have to be able to hit a ‘cut shot’ so the ball holds against the wind. You don’t want to be leaving the ball at the mercy of the wind because you have absolutely no control of what will happen to it.

June 12, 2006

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