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A Striking Course

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By MICK ELLIOTT

melliott@tampatrib.com

Published: March 19, 2009

PALM HARBOR - The Transitions Championship begins first-round tournament play today at Innisbrook Resort's Copperhead, a course often praised as one of the PGA Tour's most wide-ranging tests of shot-making skill.

Each year when tournament week arrives, "a ball-strikers' course" becomes the weekly catchphrase. A list of past tournament champs support the claim. Major championship winners Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh and Mark Calcavecchia all are past winners at Innisbrook. K.J. Choi, the tournament's only two-time winner, has one of the purest swings on tour and typically plays his best golf on the toughest course.

Being known as a "good ball striker" on the PGA Tour is like having Billy Joel applaud your piano recital. But what exactly does "good ball striker" mean to guys who really know?

Best of the Best

It's not as if some guys on the PGA Tour can't get the ball airborne. Everybody seems to hit it long and far.

"I think it comes down to the flight of the ball," Goosen said. "How the ball comes off the club face. Just the sound of it and how the ball flies - especially in the wind."

To be one of the tour's better ball strikers does not necessarily mean a player has more shots and does the most things with his golf ball. It means knowing what each shot is going to do.

"In its basic premise, it's a guy who hits the ball solid every time with control of yardage and control of height," Harrison Frazar said. "Somebody who knows how his impact is going to be every time is the guy who is going to play well week after week. I'd say that's a good ball striker."

The Test

The Copperhead course is a par 71, playing more than 7,300 yards. Unlike typical Florida golf courses, its level of difficulty does not depend on wind and an overabundance of water as a primary defense.

Change of elevation, tight pine-tree-lined and doglegged fairways demand accuracy, distance and good approach angles.

Those demands greatly reduce the number of potential winners.

"This is a golf course that you can't fake it around," veteran Fred Funk said. "Definitely the guys you'll see on the leaderboard at the end of the week are the guys that are really playing their best golf. That's what you want in a golf course, to identify the guy that's playing the best that particular week. This golf course will do that; where there are golf courses we play that don't do that."

Surprising Few

It only looks like hitting a golf ball is easy for every PGA Tour player.

Surprisingly, golf's general consensus is that very few tour players qualify as "good ball strikers."

"I would say 10 percent of guys out here are good ball strikers," defending tournament champ Sean O'Hair said. "I would say everybody is a good golfer; they find a way to get the ball in the hole. But I would say only 10 percent are good."

Demands Research

Fans love to see drives hit so far they change area codes, but driving statistics rarely are going to identify those who are the best at their craft.

Instead look for greens hit in regulation.

"That's the best indicator," Frazar said. "There are guys who hit fairways who are not necessarily good ball strikers. But the guys who hit a lot of greens, I'd say are going to be the best - at least the most consistent."

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