The RoundHouse | 9/6/2019 5:19:00 PM

 
Grier Jones coached one left-handed golfer in his 24 seasons as men's coach at Wichita State. Tom McCurdy is in his 13th season as women's coach at Wichita State and hasn't coached one during that time.
 
Judd Easterling topped them in his first season as head coach at Wichita State. 
 
Freshmen Joe Bultman and Garin Ihrig are his lefties, the ones used to bad jokes, second looks and equipment challenges their right-handed counterparts don't deal with.
 
"You get the guys that pull the cart on the wrong side or stand too close on the wrong side of the ball," Ihrig said. "Everybody talks about it, when they see you on the range."
 
There's more. And it never gets old.
 
"You wouldn't believe how many times I hear people say 'You're standing on the wrong side of the ball,'" Bultman said. 
 
Since they've been left-handed golfers all their lives, they don't see it as something terribly interesting. To the rest of the golf world, it's a rare circumstance. About 10 percent of the population is left-handed, and the PGA Tour says five percent of its golfers are left-handed. 
 
"It's especially weird when you only have eight guys on the team," Easterling said. "It's a little bit different to coach. I'm a right-handed golfer, so it takes some adjustments teaching and developing a lefty."
 
Bultman, from Kansas City, and Ihrig, from Goodland, are used to the challenges. Equipment can be hard to find, although both said that search grew easier as they moved past the beginner stages. The influence of left-handers on the PGA Tour such as Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson is also a factor, Bultman said.
 
Bultman remembers one previous left-handed teammate; Ihrig says Bultman is his first.
 
"I do think there is a more of a rise of lefties coming into the golf world," Bultman said. "It's more accessible to get left-handed equipment. I do think it's cool because I'm not used to having a teammate that I can look at their clubs or try out their putter."
 
Bultman is a right-hander who started golfing lefty and never changed. He throws, signs and shoots a basketball with his right hand. He swings a bat and a golf club with his left. In his earliest golf days, he flipped right-handed plastic clubs and hit lefty with the back of the club.
 
"Being right-hand dominant, I feel like I'm able to control the club-face better pulling through, because my strong hand is on top and controlling the club path," he said. "You see that with Phil Mickelson."
 
Ihrig, younger brother of former Shocker golfer Gage, is ambidextrous. He throws with his right. He writes left-handed. 
 
"It's pretty random," he said. "I know my parents held back a lot of clubs from my older brothers and I ended up not being able to use them because I was hitting on the wrong side of the ball. From the very start I grabbed a club, it was the wrong way."
 
Wichita State's golf teams open their fall schedules on Monday. The men play at the Joe Feaganes Marshall Invitational in Huntington, W.V. The women play at the Payne Stewart Invitational in Springfield, Mo. 
 
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.