Did You Watch Altered Course?

Monday night was the debut of GC's new golf competition show called Altered Course. If you didn't watch it, you missed something very interesting...

I'd describe the show as extreme team golf -- that is, golf played on a "course" that includes the kind of terrain that most golfers try to avoid -- and the two-player teams are timed, with penalties dealt out if a team takes too long. That means players are running between shots, and doing it over some pretty rough terrain. Even the host, Kristen Kenney, has to run during the show to keep up with the teams!

The "hole" for the first episode was a par-4. It started on the tee of the first hole and finished on the green of the second hole. There was a 100-foot drop from the tee to the fairway, and teams played alternate shot (both teammates were allowed to hit a tee shot to try and get one in play). They had to get a ball inside a predetermined checkpoint area, regardless of how many strokes it took, then play a blind shot over a rise with some trees on it to a green with a bunker on the left and a pond on the right.

There are eight teams and Monday's episode "seeded" them according to the number of strokes and time they took playing the first hole, with ties broken by physical competitions determined by a skills challenge. How do they do that, you ask? Well, one teammate tried to hit a ball as close to a specific distance as possible -- it had to go at least that far but they tried to get as close to that distance as possible. (Failing to reach that distance resulted in automatically being the low seed.) After each team had done so -- and yes, the balls went different distances for each team -- the other teammates had to run to the ball, pick it up and run back. Ties were broken by order of finish.

The team pictured above, Shepherd Archie and Wesley Yates, are "The Georgia Boys" and they are the top seed after being the only team to score 5 on the hole.

I think this show has the potential to be a real hit. It's a really interesting blend of match play and extreme sports, and it's worth watching at least once to see if you like it.

You can find the Altered Course info page on golfchannel.com at this link.