At some point, there became a notion in the U.S. that the game of golf needed to be fair. All of our sports are fair — each baseball team gets three outs, both rims on a basketball court are 10 feet high and each football team gets 11 men on the field. So, when a golfer walks up to the tee and can’t see their target, it’s natural for them to think it’s unfair. But they’re wrong.
Golf isn’t like those other sports. It isn’t always fair and that’s part of its everlasting charm. It’s you versus the Earth in a battle in which you are very much overmatched.
Blind shots are one of the more controversial topics when you ask golfers about course design. Some despise them, and it’s easy to understand why. What kind of ridiculous sport makes you try to hit a tiny ball toward a green or fairway you can’t even see? There seems to be some level of diminishing skill there. We’re all just guessing at some point, right? And there are some obvious downsides as well. Blind shots can slow down play on busy courses when you can’t see when the next shot is clear. They can also lead to lost balls when cruelly designed to trick the golfer. And none of us like paying for new golf balls — especially when we don’t feel like we deserved to lose the last one.
But the fun that comes along with blind shots far outweighs the few negatives (that often don’t even apply). The best golf courses challenge us and demand us to answer a variety of different questions. A blind shot is simply a new question: Can you focus on an imaginary target and accept where your ball ends up?
I look forward to blind shots. One of the most exciting moments in golf is turning the corner or climbing the hill to a blind green, peeking over as early as possible, trying to glimpse where your shot ended up. What pure joy! What other sport allows you to be surprised by your own play like that? What a roller coaster of emotions for your ball to disappear, only to be found exactly where you were hoping for.
Of course, as the saying goes, it’s only blind the first time you play it. That first play-through is a moment of exploration, your own chance to find what terrain and challenges lie ahead. A time to learn and remember for the next time. After that, it becomes a challenge of memory. Do you remember what the best line is and where the best place to miss would be? There becomes an advantage to repeated play.
Golf architecture is all about variety, so too many blind shots might not be ideal, but a couple won’t hurt anyone. It’s all about balance. Some golfers, myself included, even seem to hit better shots on these holes. Without a target to keep looking at, my mind is freed up. I can focus on a smooth, simple swing, where I don’t have to worry about being so precise. Is there a better feeling than hitting a shot flush, seeing it disappear, then looking over at a friend, shrugging and saying, “We’ll see, I guess.”
