Why Sentry Winner Chris Kirk Spent His Offseason Learning to Swing Lefty
Chris Kirk’s signature rope hook hit fairway after fairway Sunday at Kapalua’s Plantation Course, en route to his victory at the Sentry, the PGA Tour’s 2024 season opener. Three months ago, Kirk was busy doing the same thing, only he was standing on the opposite side of the ball, watching his draws work from left to right instead of right to left.
After failing to qualify for the Tour Championship in August, Kirk set out to learn to play golf lefty. While right-handed professional golfers might practice the occasional lefty shot to prepare for unfortunate lies or simply test their hand-eye coordination, Kirk took things to an entirely different level.
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Kirk, 38, didn’t touch a right-handed golf club for more than two months.
Callaway, Kirk’s equipment sponsor, set him up with a full left-handed bag, and he immediately got to work. The idea was first inspired by an annual tradition he participated in with his friends before having children.
“Every December me and some of my friends would play every day for a week left-handed,” Kirk explained in his post-round press conference. “We were all terrible. It was just a lot of talking crap to each and just having fun and goofing off.”
On Sept. 27, the now six-time PGA Tour winner took to Instagram to show off his unconventional offseason ritual. The swing video he shared looked like it could have been a mirror image of the rest of the posts on his feed.
“It has been a little over a month since I have hit a ball right handed but... on the grind lefty!” Kirk wrote. “82 is my low round so far. Goal is to break 80 in the next 2 weeks before real golf starts back. Shout out to @callawaygolf for my pure lefty set.”
In the post’s comments, Kirk answered questions from fans and fellow PGA Tour players about how the exercise was working out for him—and why he took on the challenge in the first place. Kirk made it clear that his lefty pursuit wasn’t at all injury-related, but was “purely for fun and to get a break from righty swings.”
Two-time PGA Tour winner Patton Kizzire wondered if he was able to properly execute a left-handed flop shot. “Actually, my lob wedge doesn’t come out of the bag. [It’s] there for decoration only,” Kirk answered.
Kirk may have a custom set of lefty clubs and a driving range in his backyard (that’s where the above video was shot), but posting an 82 with your non-dominant hand is still some seriously impressive stuff. Kirk said he often surprised himself with his left-handed abilities, and that was perhaps the most rewarding part of the whole experiment. It gave him frequent bursts of instant satisfaction, which are hard to come by when you play the sport for a living.
“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,” Kirk said. “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 make two pars in a row, I mean, that's unbelievable.”
“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,” he continued.
Although it doesn’t appear that Kirk achieved his goal of breaking 80 before the fall season got underway, the experiment must have had a positive ripple effect on his game. Kirk made two starts in the fall; He missed the cut at the World Wide Technology Championship but posted a respectable T28 finish at the RSM Classic. This week in Maui, however, Kirk was a ballstriking and scoring machine. Kevin Kisner, who made his debut in the broadcast booth for NBC this week, called his slinging hook “robotic.”
Despite being neck-and-neck with Sahith Theegala and Jordan Spieth all afternoon, Kirk’s focus never appeared to waver. While Spieth saw his round unravel after his drive plugged in the fairway bunker on No. 16 and Theegala failed to get one more birdie putt to drop on No. 18, Kirk did exactly what he needed to do. A tap-in birdie on the 17th set him up to play three safe shots on the closing par-5 for a comfortable finish.
While they may not have made the trip to Maui, Kirk’s bag of lefty clubs perhaps deserves a fair bit of credit for restoring some much-needed self-appreciation and fun to his game.