After Chris Kirk claimed his sixth PGA Tour victory at The Sentry this week, many of the questions were about how he managed it against such a stacked field as well as his journey from addiction to sobriety - and rightly so.
Then there were a couple of queries about why he decided to relax during the off-season by making what is an already very difficult game even harder. "Why did you play left-handed, Chris when you're naturally right-handed?"
Also a completely valid question, and all born from the 38-year-old uploading a video of himself out on the course with a custom set of left-handed Callaway clubs during the early days of the FedEx Cup Fall series last year.
At the time, Kirk revealed his goal was "to break 80 before the real golf starts back" - something most would be happy with using their regular set - and that his lowest total to date was 82. Well, while we're not quite sure whether he achieved that particular target, Kirk did manage to do quite well after the "real golf" resumed.
In the aftermath of his victory at the Plantation Course, Kirk was asked what prompted him to try the game left-handed and had he discovered anything in the way of transferrable skills that he could carry over to his day job.
He said: "Nothing, no" before going on to explain how the video of his alternative swing came about.
Kirk continued: "Before I had kids, every December me and some of my friends would play every day for a week left-handed. We were all terrible. It was just a lot of talking crap to each other and just having fun goofing off. That's mostly what it is now. Like, it's just fun.
"For me to feel really great about a shot that I hit right-handed, it's got to be something phenomenal, something like on 17 today. But, you know, left-handed, if I hit the fairway or if I hit a 7-iron on the green, like, hell, yeah, that's awesome. You know, like, you make two pars in a row, I mean, that's unbelievable.
"So, it brings back a little bit of the kind of childlike nature of the game, and my expectations are so low that it is way easier to be happy about what I'm doing than it is right-handed, to be honest. But, yeah, it's really hard left-handed. Really hard."
Two greens, double the fun.@AkshayBhatia_1 and Nicolai Højgaard face off in a match on No. 5 @ZOZOCHAMP.The catch? They’re playing with their non-dominant hand 😆 pic.twitter.com/DK1Yivni1zOctober 18, 2023
Kirk was not the only player in the field at The Sentry with a little bit of non-dominant hand practice under his belt recently, with close challenger Akshay Bhatia having filmed some content for the PGA Tour alongside Nicolai Hojgaard around the Zozo Championship towards the end of last season.
The left-handed Bhatia and right-handed Hojgaard took turns using each other's set of clubs to try and reach two greens on the par-3 fifth at Narashino Country Club in as few shots as possible.
While Bhatia did not appear as naturally gifted as Kirk with an unfamiliar instrument in hand, the American did hit a couple of nice shots and competed well with his European rival before succumbing to defeat, as you can see in the video above.
