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David Lower played Italy in 2010 and 2013
“To be honest, Italy don’t even play the golf courses on their continent. There are a lot of rivieras and courses that the Italians (on a good day) won’t even touch. When you get to the driving range, they’re playing a different game. So that was a challenge to that. That’s one of the reasons why they recommended to me to bring my team over there. We’re testing their (approachable) location. I’m testing their course locations too, so that’s really important. It’s not just about finding out how many yardages I can throw this shot for this competition, I’m also asking them if I can go through the terrain of their courses.
“For example, I have a challenge where I’m trying to get as many holes as possible for beach golf. To me, the biggest challenge is how to site the island and what the island is looking like and what it’s going to feel like in real life. How the architecture and the shape and the temperature of the island plays in real life. These questions are all relevant and I’m also asking them as well. They have not won anything like this before so they’re going to feel on the bubble as well. It was great to see these guys who are playing 100m away from home and having to travel by air and by car, and everyone is tired. It’s a really tiring game in real life. To them it’s extremely tiring. It’s very physical. But it’s exciting to see players trying to back up those days at the driving range.
“Some of my best advice is just to drive a little bit further here and there. You’ll make some mistakes in reality, and if you have five minutes or six minutes to be able to rethink what you’re doing, you’ll turn it around. Especially when you’re getting too comfortable and it’s easy to swing too freely. You have to get a little bit of confidence. It’s not an easy game. The ball will travel a certain distance based on the slope, the angle of the tee, the size of the hole. It doesn’t matter where it lands on the course, the ball will eventually land at a certain distance based on your type of golf swing.”
David played in a Top GOLF contest on Sicily’s Puntarenas Golf Resort in 2016.
“I’m a big fan of pizza and beer. That’s where a lot of the shooting (taking practice swings) will be. On the golf course it’s going to be maybe some more traditional competition, where we’re going to compete and see how we can execute on these golf courses.”
“The world’s best players are starting to go to different parts of the world, and they’re just looking to test themselves on the extreme variety of golf courses. Most players travel more than once or twice per year. But for us, we have to travel for three or four weeks to get to our destination. It’s really important to take your time there.”
David played the GB & Ireland team at the BMW Masters at Wentworth.