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Veteran golfer fooled by large holes

Two West Shore golf courses dabble with eight-inch cups
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Dan Soberg watches his putt head toward an enlarged hole during a round Monday at Metchosin Golf Club. The club installed eight-inch cups for the day's play

Dan Soberg has been playing at Metchosin Golf Course for many years and knows the nine-hole layout pretty well.

Even he was a bit taken back during senior’s day play Monday, when the club installed jumbo eight-inch holes on each green to accompany the regular four-inch diameter cups.

“It is a totally different challenge,” he said of the larger holes, part of a move being considered by the club as a way to attract new golfers and help improve the scores of novices.

“You get over confident and over aggressive and I found myself missing the hole. I showed them more respect on the back nine and did better.”

Soberg, who plays three times a week on average, liked how the change made his regular weekly game more challenging.

“The whole secret of golf is to make it fun and this is another way to make it fun and increase the challenge. Not that golf needs more challenges but it adds variety to the different games we play.”

Metchosin head professional Jeff Dinn said the club gave the larger cups a one-day trial to see what the response might be. They’re looking at swapping out the regular cups as often as once or twice a week starting in July, he said.

The idea came to club owner Grant West when he was watching the news one day and saw a club in Langley using the bigger cups.

“He saw the people smiling and playing quicker and decided we should give it a try,” Dinn said.

The Metchosin club wasn’t the only one on the West Shore to give the bigger holes a shot this week.

Highland Pacific installed the eight-inch cups early this week and left them in, allowing golfers to play either sized cup on every hole.

“It’s been going pretty good. We’ve been getting some good reviews,” said club pro Warren Reeves. “We put them out for men’s and ladies nights, which are both team games.”

The club tried the large holes a couple of years ago, Reeves said, and decided to give them another go.

For details about the program, call Metchosin at 250-478-3266 (metchosingolfcourse.com) or Highland Pacific at 250-478-4653 (highlandpacificgolf.com).

– with files from Arnold Lim

editor@goldstreamgazette.com