Can Charlie Tame This Carolina Panther? “Breaking Par with Charlie Rymer” Episode 55
In the second leg of his Ocean Ridge Plantation journey, Charlie’s taking on another finishing hole – this time at Panther’s Run Golf Links, on a par four that’s not about to yield a birdie too easily. Let’s see what “The Big Timer” can do!
Charlie:
Cancer knocked me down, but not out. Now, I’m cancer free. The recovery? It’s been tough. I’ll need patience, a lot of humor …
(I don’t even have a writer!)
… And support from friends and family. Over the last two years, I haven’t played much golf, but there’s no better place to get back in the game than on 66 courses in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We’re keeping score, but just teeing it up means I’ve already won!
(I’m gonna show you all the best par you’ve ever seen after that one!)
Join me on my journey to break par!
Another finishing par four at the home of the Big Cats. Number 18 here at Panther’s Run looks pretty wide open off the tee, but you do need to be careful about not letting that first shot leak into the right fairway bunker. A good-sized water hazard stands between you and the green on your approach. Steady as she goes here folks. Oh yeah, we got this!
So I’m at a super cool location today. We’re very close to Sunset Beach, North Carolina. And Sunset Beach is actually a beach on a barrier island just a couple of miles from here. That’s an old-school, coastal Carolina vacation spot. The houses are up on stilts. You go over there and spend the day on the beach. And if you want to play some golf, you don’t have to come very far to see this 72-hole facility, Ocean Ridge.
And these are big golf courses. It’s a big facility. They don’t have a whole lot in common from golf course to golf course, they actually have really different character. What they do have in common is they’re named after “The Big Cats.” You got a golf course named after a lion, a tiger, you got a leopard, and then this one, it’s Panther’s Run.
This is the 18th hole. It’s a par four. Sort of like the mounding in here. Maybe it has a little bit of a Scottish feel. Got a little bit of rough I got to deal with here, some water short of the green. We’ll try to take it at that US flag just right of the clubhouse.
That’s right at the world. But we’ll find it. That next one’s going to give me the opportunity to show you how to hit out of the Bermuda rough. See, there’s a silver lining in every cloud!
That golf swing there with that driver. I know I looked a little off balance and I like coming out here and cutting up and having fun, but that’s due to neuropathy and a lot of people battle neuropathy. Sometimes it’s diabetics who get it and sometimes it’s folks like me that’ve had to deal cancer and have chemotherapy.
It just makes your darn feet hurt all the time and they get numb and it impacts your balance a little bit. Some days it’s better than others, but what I’ve found is a lot of my golf swings, I just can’t stay in balance like I used to. And it does hurt, too. It’s just one of those things you got to deal with. I understand that every day you’re not going to play your best golf. You just got to be happy being out on the golf course on those days when you’re not moving very good. Get your enjoyment from being in a beautiful place and hanging out with folks you want to be with.
All right, that was a pretty horrible drive I hit there to be honest with you. Right at 200 yards. Y’all come check this out, Christian, come check this out. Let’s get a close shot of this lie because it really was a bad tee shot. I’m back a little farther than I want to be and it’s sitting down. And so you have to sort of read this lie to see how the ball’s going to jump out of it.
There’s some water around there. It’s sitting down. This is going to create a flyer. So the water that’s there and the water in that grass is going to essentially fill up the grooves in the club and the ball’s going to come out real hot. It’s not going to have any spin on it. And so I might would normally hit a five iron here. I’m going to hit a six iron. I’m thinking about hitting a seven iron because the ball’s just going to go a good bit farther and it’s going to run when it gets up there.
So I’m going to have to try and hit this heavy on purpose. That’s coming out without any spin. Get up a little. Yeah, it’s a little short but didn’t come out quite as hot as I’d hoped it would. We’ll be all right. Some days you just got to scramble a little bit. If you’re up to the challenge, those are the fun days!
Just over the water. I couldn’t see it from the cart so I know I got another bad lie. Where’d it go? Where’d it go? Oh yeah, I got it. Come on in here one more time and take a look at this one.
This time of the year we’re here taping in the fall, balls tend to drop down the bottom of the grass because some of the moisture’s already coming out of the grass so the grass isn’t strong enough to hold it up on top. So it’s down in the bottom. And I got a tip for you on that.
I’m actually using my pitching wedge here and what I’m going to do is I’m going to open it up because I want to have less profile going through that grass so it gets a little less resistance. I want to feel like it slides through there.
If I use a lob wedge and have to have a square club face, all of the front edge of the leading edge of the club has to go through the grass. If it’s open club face, then I can slide it through there. Less loft will help me on a shot with a lot of green.
All right, here we go. Let’s open it up a little bit. Hold on, right there. All right, that’s not too bad out of that nasty lie. I need to start hitting it where they mow the grass it’d make this thing a whole lot easier.
All right, we got a little uphill, a little against this fringe. Well, I hate finishing with a bogey, but when you hit a drive that poorly, sometimes you got to pay the price.
It’s like my high school coach always used to say, “A bogey’s better than a double bogey.” It’s also better than a triple or a quad. So I got that going for me.
Well, that cat came up and bit me, didn’t she? We got two more we’ll try to tame, and next up is a tiger and you’ll see it from a wild new perspective!
