If you follow most sports, you notice similar surroundings. A basketball court will measure out the same whether you are in the Carrier Dome or Cameron Stadium. The hoops will measure the same height of ten feet, and each will be equipped with a special netting and backboards. The courts will be played on hardwood surfaces each with a distinct logo as a reminder of where they are playing the game. The court is surrounded by spectator seating generally similar, with the exception of the colors used to reflect the "home team" colors. This applies to several sports across the board outside of cross country and golf. Ironically, many Universities cross country tracks weave in and around the school's golf course.
We just returned from our Big Ten Championships played in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at Fox Chapel Country Club. It was a treat to have the site so close to our home base, not to mention a top 100 golf course to compete on.
The golf coaches in the Big Ten decided a decade ago to find "neutral sites" to host the Championships, with one big reason being fairness across the board to the visiting teams. Playing a tournament on your home course can have true advantages since golf courses can vary widely from place to place. Preparing for different venues is something competitive players are used to doing. It requires skill to adapt to changing speeds on greens, to rolling fairways that offer various lies, to types of grasses that can be different and react differently to a shot played.
It was a pleasure playing in our "backyard" and certainly offered some familiarity with grasses and vegetation. However, the Seth Raynor designed course from the early 1900's was no duplicate to the Penn State Golf Courses. The players were adjusting to the green speeds which rolled out much faster as well as the rolling terrain offering a number of bounces that required careful aim to execute the right line of the shot. Personally, it is fun to play a course like Fox Chapel, as it requires a great deal of creativity and feel for the shots needed to play each hole.
The 17th hole was a par 3, with a 75-yard-deep green (most greens average out to 36 yards deep). In the middle of the green was a swale that ran five feet deep. A ball falling short of a back pin would come to rest in the swale and offer a very interesting putt up the slope. The 18th hole was a par 5 with a winding stream left to right through the fairway. This required a strategy of playing short with your second shot or risking flying it over the hazard at just the right line in order to clear to an opposite fairway. Again, nothing on our home course resembles this type of hole. The 9th hole green wraps around a bunker in the very front middle location that requires a long approach over the bunker and onto the green.
I have always found this to be the interesting element to our sport. That we can play all around the world and each course will have its own nuances and strengths, that as a player requires a particular game plan.
We have a rule in the Big Ten that players are not allowed to play the Championship site in the same year as the tournament. This would have been ideal since for once we literally, were under a three-hour drive. My players were playing Fox Chapel for the first time, outside of the virtual tour we gave them on "google earth" prior to leaving campus. It goes to show, that knowing the layout, being comfortable with the terrain and having a proper game plan is extremely beneficial. We went from posting one of the highest team scores in round one to beating ten of the fourteen teams in the final round.
I believe some of that success is due to figuring out how they wanted to attack the course and settling in with their surroundings. We do our best to make our practice facilities at home "simulate" where we are competing, sometimes there is no replacing the "real thing". I am very proud of how our players improved with each round and kept it going, even when it could have been discouraging climbing up from the bottom. So much of our games' venues change, but the constant thread remains the ability to "adapt" your skills to the conditions and create a personal game plan.
It was also a blessing to play so close to home and having so much support while we were there. Several alumni from both our women's and men's programs came by to cheer us on, along with several families of our players and former coach Mary Kennedy. The best news is we have another year to experience the Championship at Fox Chapel Country Club and a line-up of players all returning. Let's hope we can take our experience and build on something extra special for the Nittany Lions in 2023! It was a special venue and fantastic weekend for the team. We hope to see you all there next spring!
