There is nothing like playing your home course. Playing a new course every day would be like having a birthday every day. It would be great for a while but you’d never get to actually play with your toys. Plus, how often did that awesome-gotta-have-it toy that the kids on the TV were LOVING actually end up being your favorite toy?

I love checking out different courses and get all kinds of jazzed up long before I ever reach the course. The drive in on unfamiliar roads and not knowing the prime spots in the parking lot and the walk into the clubhouse – it’s a lot to take in. Sensory overload is usually the result and, well, that’s not good for scoring.

When I played Sunday River for the first time last year, I was fighting over a year’s worth of anticipation. You know when you turn on the ignition and your car stereo just about blows you out of your seat and then you realize it was you that left it that way? It wasn’t too loud while you were driving because you adjusted to it. Playing Sunday River for the first time was like starting that engine up 18 times in a row. I walked off that course looking like Uma Thurman when she clawed her way out of her grave on Kill Bill 2. OK, maybe not THAT good.