In my neck of the woods, we anxiously waited for the arrival of the warm spring weather. It has arrived and many us are excited to spend more time outside in the fresh, warm, sunny temperatures. The last six weeks has seen many variations in the temperature, but we are now on the upward climb. If you are not aware, in Canada warm weather brings out a golf hazard that lasts about six weeks. Black flies and horse flies think of golfers as a buffet; no amount of bug spray seems to help…..it is a hazard we all must endure.
At my home course, the back nine is cut through the woods and black flies are an announce for the entire round. The swarm, bite, and frustrate us all at the worst possible time. I have missed many shots over the years because of these little pests. But, these little beasts are not the worst. Horse flies take this hazard up a couple of levels.
On the 13th tee, it seems that the horse flies congregate and wait for golfers to show. As soon as we round the corner from the 12th hole, you can almost hear their pincers grinding. The 13th tee is the worst area on the course for the horse flies and black flies. This double whammy forces us to hurry our shots just to get our the hazard area.
I do have a public service announcement regarding the use of bug spray to prevent these vicious insects from affecting our game. Here take a look:
The insect hazard is upon us. No matter where we are on the golf course, these little biting devils are relentless. Thankfully, they last for about 6 weeks and by the end of June most will be gone. Until then, be prepared to manage this hazard.
I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!
The Grateful Golfer 
Jim, is there a freshwater marsh near your 13th tee? I understand that’s where the horse flies breed. I also read something somewhere that says they are attracted to the color blue? Break out your Tiger red!
Thanks,
Brian
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Brian,
The 13th tee box is lowest on the course and has a great deal of standing water in the bush until July. It is definitely a breeding ground for these pests. I did not know about blue, I read black is a bad colour…..early in the season, they are all bad colours….haha.
Cheers Jim
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We get mosquitos yearly, and deal with red ants year round but not much more here near the coast. Kind of makes up for the gators. Lol
Here’s another video on lag. A slightly different set of steps. Lag later sounds good at least. What I’ve been doing only differs in that I release the wrist to start allowing lag as I start the downswing not after.
I won’t say yet that I’ve got this ingrained, but I will say I’m seeing more instances where I miss long lately. Sometimes surpisingly so. I will say that I seem to find hitting stingers easier lately. I seem only to need to think about holding off and I get a nice low trajectory even with the shorter irons. And of course thats caused a few long misses too. Game wise it’s been a mixed bag. About what you’ld expect when you have to question your distance control. The driver though is another story. I’m sure with it that any minor gains I might make get cut at least in half from the ball traveling higher. I’ve keep getting sidetracked from getting my fitting in. Don’t think it’s the best idea while my swing is still adjusting. But I don’t know. Maybe that’s just an excuse.
What I do know is we didn’t win the best ball tournament. And on one par four where I hit a good drive and still needed 80 yards to reach the green, a kid behind us had to yell fore from the tee box. He didn’t quite reach but he made it an easy up and down. It wasn’t all that long ago when I could do that once every round or two. Not today. Skylab has more to worry about than a 310 yard green does from me right now. We came in tied for 14th with a 67. Better, really, than I expected with the group I was in. No plus handicappers in our group. I think the greens kept scores higher. I saw a lot of bouncing in our group. Other than that though the course was nice. Brand new Yamaha carts with 12 inch gps screens and usb connections to charge a phone or run a fan. An app we had to download to our phone for scoring complete with leaderboard. That was a first for me. Golf goes more digital by the day. The big disappointment was the promised trackman data. The guy I guess was scared away by the weather report but the rain never came.
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