Tournament Golf

I have made it a personal goal to play competitive golf. This sounds relatively simple but in reality is it anything but simple. This idea started formulating several years ago when I started checking in to how to accomplish this goal. Most of the tournaments in this area are charity events aimed at raising money. They are typically four man scrambles where a team each hits the ball and then they play the best ball of the group. This process is repeated until they hole-out at which time a score is entered.

I have played in these types of tournament and enjoy them quite a bit but it really didn’t satisfy my competitive urge to compete individually. Besides, the scores in these events are really anything but reasonable and I have always suspected there is a good deal of fudging of the rules and perhaps a stroke subtracted occasionally. Any tournament that allows the buying of mulligans might be profitable but it isn’t really competitive.

The Alabama Golf Association has amateur events all the way up to and including US open qualifying. While it is a rigorous path, it is possible to follow this process up to qualifying for the US open. My goal is quite a bit lower than that. I want to be able to win some amateur events. That in itself is a significant accomplishment; and one that I fully well realize I might not ever realize. However, it is something I have committed my time and effort towards.

I picked up golf in my early thirties and fell in love with the complexity and difficulty of the game. Something about a purely struck shot conquering all the variables is almost spiritual. It is often the culmination of practice and a sort of letting go and allowing yourself to operate on auto pilot wherein you see the shot and then hit it without analyzing how to do so. I have always loved that pure sound and feel of a well struck shot and the parabolic flight of a ball spinning its way toward the target. It is a wonderful sensation but it is very hard to produce with any regularity because of the precise repetition required.

I taught myself how to play and have never had a formal lesson. My lessons were hours and hours on a course or range learning how to produce that feeling. My first experience in an amateur event convinced me that my putting and short game were seriously substandard to what was required to compete at that level. On the relatively flat greens I was used to a pitch within a few feet one way or another was sufficient to get you really close to the hole. The first Senior Amateur a played in had huge mounds on the greens so the effective target to get a pitch close was sometimes very small. I had a lot of short game bogeys and a couple of double bogeys from bad tee shots but finished about 4 strokes from making the 2 day cut.

After thinking about it a little I decided I needed to play harder courses, work on my short game, and eliminate the occasional wild tee shot. I joined a facility with two championship type courses and much better practice facilities and went to work on my game. As it turns out, the occasional wild tee shot required a LOT of work to fix. I basically rebuilt my swing, making it much tighter and connected which also made it shorter and more controlled. Regardless of what anyone tells you grip, setup, and connected changes are hard and take a massive amount of repetition to become normal. I feel like there is a BIG difference between what causes a wild shot now and what did before I made these changes. Don’t misunderstand, I have not made them impossible but I had to make a really bad swing and I usually instantly recognize what I didn’t do correctly when it does. Before I made the changes I often didn’t know what caused such a shot so it was hard to get confident I wasn’t going to repeat it the very next shot. Now… I find it easier to understand and dismiss the bad shots.

Basically I have made great progress in playing harder courses and eliminating wild shots. My short game has also come in for a lot of work and it is much sharper in being more exact around the greens. Unfortunately, some of the changes I made don’t hold up that well under pressure with my short game so my bad shots are sometimes horrendous if there is enough pressure. I know this and have taken to playing more high percentage shots but it has tended to stifle my creativity so that I don’t make many really good shots around the green like I used to. My putting has also been an area of focus although I have days when it gets uncooperative as well. I putt best when I don’t think about anything but stroking the ball to the hole. I suspect everyone would same the same thing but when you miss a couple of short ones it’s pretty hard to maintain that attitude.

I played a senior four ball tournament this year on a really punishing course and felt pretty good about how I played except for a few holes. I had five birdies over two days and we were in the running until about half way through the second day. Still… something extraordinary occurred on both days. Whenever my partner was out of the hole and my ball was the only one in play I got very erratic. Obviously, this was not a coincidental thing and I could feel myself tightening up when it occurred. The second day we both had some bad holes but by then I knew my bad holes were coming from the pressure of the moment. We tried letting me go first instead of my partner but honestly, he handled the pressure after I hit a bad shot worse than I did so we stuck with him going first and me second.

We wound up missing the cut after three double bogeys on the back side. The nagging realization that it had all been pressure related gave me some pause. No one likes to admit they choked under pressure but I knew that is what had happened. I would think about what the shot meant instead of what the shot should be and it would get ugly. I managed to feel my way through a couple of scrambling pars but I knew the shakiness of the shots was directly related to the pressure of the situation. Afterwards, after some honest analysis I decided that I needed to put myself in those pressure situations more if I expect to learn to react to them better. It is as simple as that. The learning curve exists not only on how to hit the shots but how to do it under pressure.

One thing I noticed with the better players I played with was that they too hit worse shots under pressure. However, since their worse shots were only mildly worse it didn’t absolutely kill their scores. Also, at least of couple of them seemed less affected by the pressure and with a little reasoning I put together that they had played a lot of tournament golf. Many of them played competitively in college or on mini-tours so they had been exposed to more pressure. This made perfect sense to me as I had found the same thing out about performing under pressure in both work and sports, the more you do it the better you get at doing it.

This led to me searching for a way to play more tournaments. Instead of the 2 or 3 AGA events I was eligible for, I want to play at least one a month through the winter and a couple a month afterwards. Many of the private clubs in the area have invitational tournaments but most of those are spring to fall. I finally found the Golf Channel Amateur tour online and decided to play some of their events.

My handicap is low enough that it put me in the Championship Flight on their tour which suits me just fine as I don’t want to compete against people with inflated handicaps or try to play the sandbagger game. I want to play with players I can learn something from and I want to play hard courses so this seemed a good fit for me. Most of their local events are one day affairs so that suits me as well because they are usually some distance from where I live.

The first tournament was at a course called Ballantrae just south of Birmingham. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get time to play a practice round so I was playing it blind on tournament day but I knew it would give me a chance to play under pressure. I practiced quite a bit for the tournament on all aspects of my game with special emphasis on my wedge distance and direction control. This part of my game is easily sharper than it has ever been at the moment and I reasoned that I should at least get up and down better than I had been.

The course itself was very nice but had received around 10 inches of rain the week before so it was very, very muddy. Not only was it muddy the fairways were long because they hadn’t been able to get on them with mowing equipment. The greens were very grainy but rolled at a decent pace. I didn’t quite realize that the Championship Senior flight is the same as the Championship regular flight but I was ok with it when I did. I was paired with two guys in their mid and early twenties and we were playing from the very back tees on a very muddy course.

My good drives carry 250 or so and usually roll out another 15 yards or so but on that day they were plugging in the fairway most of the day. This had me hitting a lot of 3 irons at tucked pins and I missed a lot of greens. Unfortunately, my pitching practice had been on level ground that wasn’t muddy and I was quite unprepared for the plugged, muddy lies at had all day at Ballantrae. The worst part was that the pressure and the conditions combined to make me lose all confidence in my short game. Chunked, bladed, and fat chips were the norm and I had trouble getting the speed on the greens so I 3 putted a lot as well.

All of this combined to give me a horrendous score of 98. I can’t remember the last time I shot 98 but I did that day. I started off with a pull hook drive, a fat layup out of the trees, a fat wedge, a fat chip, and a 3 putt. 7 on a relatively short par four. I never really settled in and had very few pars and a lot of others. It was a thoroughly bad day and I never played well at all until the last two or three holes when I just started hitting shots without worrying about results.

Doing my thinking and analysis after this round was not easy. It was like a bad dream. How could I shoot a 98? I play harder courses at my home course and routinely shot in the mid-seventies. I know my game is pretty sound and getting better. How did I shoot a 98? In truth, it was such an unpleasant thing to think about that I didn’t want to think about it very much. I chalked it up to inexperience and not knowing the course and registered for another event 3 weeks later.

Again, I worked on my game meanwhile and worked hard on my chipping and pitching from wet, muddy lies. I even went to the practice area one Sunday when it rained hard all day and practiced in the rain for a couple of hours. I gained enough confidence to hit down and through the mud and felt pretty good about my progress. I had started to try to maintain connection on my pitches by locking my arm to my chest which worked well as long as I didn’t turn my legs too much. I felt like I was on the way to playing well in a tournament. My wedge play was even better and my driver was accurate and a decent distance.

My next tournament was at Bear’s Best which is just northeast of Atlanta. This time, I made sure to go a day ahead and play a practice round. The course is a compilation of Nicklaus’ favorite holes all over the world so it is a mix of styles. I played a practice round with some local players that knew the course well so I learned a lot about it initially and played a pretty decent round. The good news is that even though it was wet and muddy it wasn’t as wet as Ballantrae had been and the back tees were not playing anywhere near as long.

It is amazing how nervous I get before these tournaments. Not just butterflies in my stomach but more like wild herds of buffalo galloping around down there. I have trouble keeping anything in my stomach the night before and tend to have to work hard to maintain any sort of calm. The one thing I hadn’t done was putt well on my practice round as the greens were bumpy with lots of unfixed ball marks and I had trouble getting the speed down. I had decided to spend most of my warm up practice on short game and putts so when I got to the course that morning that is where I started.

I missed several short putts on the practice green but was happy to see my speed was much better after concentrating on it for a little while. My ball striking on the practice tee was pretty good and I felt ready to play. I was with the first group out instead of the last. It seems that the Georgia local group wants the better players up front setting the pace which is logical if you think about it. My cart partner was a nice guy if a little bit of a loudly confident type. He had hired a caddie to work with him so he was with us for the day which turned out to be very handy. He worked as a forecaddie, often going well ahead to watch where our balls landed which turned out to be very helpful on questionable shots.

I was playing with a group that included 2 players who had played in college and one who had played some events on the Hooters tour so I knew they would be good players. Again, I was anxious not to embarrass myself or hold them up by hacking it all over the course. On the very first tee I found it impossible to concentrate on anything but not missing the ball and I hit a pulled hook accordingly. It was a sharply downhill shortish par four so I wasn’t too worried as long as I could find my ball. It was played as a red hazard down both sides so a drop was available if I couldn’t (a good policy for first holes in my opinion).

Thinking back now, I realize everyone in our group hit bad tee shots on that hole. Two of them were far enough right to be blocked out. I was in the trees on the right and one of them went far enough left to be on a steep slope trying to hit a small green with water on the right. At the time however, all I could think of was the 7 I had taken my last tournament on a similar hole. I hacked it out into the middle of the fairway and had a 160 yard downhill shot at the green. Determined not to miss it in the water on the right I aimed a little left and wound up hitting a very thin shot into a grass bunker just left of the green.

Meanwhile, my playing partner with the caddie hit one in the water trying to go over a tree and then claimed he thought it was a bunker from where he hit it. This seemed a little odd as he professed to be familiar with the course before we started. By this time my brain was telling me to just ease it on the green and let it roll somewhere close to the hole but that little Scottish golf demon inside was screaming at me not to hit it thin over the green and into the water. When I got to my ball it was well above my feet in some tall rough kind of sitting well up. In an effort not to swing under it and leave it in the grass bunker I bladed it all the way over the back of the green. Laying 4 behind the green and determined not to use a wedge again at the moment, I putted it from the rough through the fringe and left myself about a 20 footer for double bogey. It looked makeable to me at the time but I misread it so bad that it broke 3 foot left when I thought it would break 8 inches right. Now, with a five footer for 7, I naturally pulled it right and took an 8.

I had lipped out a birdie putt on this hole the day before. Unless you have been there it is hard to describe how that makes you feel. I felt like a disappointment to everyone who has ever played golf. “How does this guy get in the championship flight” is what I imagined my playing partners were thinking? Through the screaming voices in my head telling me I suck at golf it slowly dawned on me that my playing partner had a 7 and one of the other guys had a 6. Even then, I was so busy feeling like an imposter that it didn’t dawn on me that they were feeling pressure and not responding well too. I remember hearing my playing partner loudly proclaiming he had never had a triple on the first hole but all I could think was that I had done it in my last tournament. The only difference was that today I had just made an 8 so I wasn’t going to claim it was anything but a reflection of how I normally play in tournaments.

Own it, I was thinking. Own the fact that you just can’t deal with pressure. Don’t complain, don’t make excuses and don’t act like a whiner. Seeing my partner do all of these things made me determined I was not going to do any of them. All of this occurred to me but it didn’t help calm me down. I hit an inch behind my next drive and barely cleared the hazard before the fairway. My playing partner drove by my ball as if it didn’t exist. To be fair, he had hit it so far past me that he probably didn’t believe where mine was. I walked back to my ball with my laser and a couple of woods and a 3 iron. I might could cut a 3 wood around a tree to get to the small green but I knew it fell off down to the river behind so if I missed I was looking at losing a ball and a penalty stroke. I found a good layup to the right and pulled my three iron even further right thinking it might still go over a mound and disappear into the river behind. It stopped on the upslope of the mound and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

When I got to my ball I realized I had a tree directly in the way that I couldn’t get over and had to punch a 7 iron under the tree through the rough and onto the green. I hit a good shot but it came in a little hot and rolled off the green and up just into the rough left of the green. I putted it down and missed reading that it broke a foot left and down a steep hill so that it left an 8 foot putt up to the hole. I left it just short and carded a 6. Quadruple bogey, double bogey start and I was back in full choke mode. I was in shock. I was trying to remember swing thoughts and rhythm but mostly experienced flashbacks to every shanked, hooked, and bladed shot I had ever hit. My mind was on a fast forward replay of every terrible shot I had ever hit except it would go in slow motion through the shot and immediate aftermath of revulsion that would wash over me when I hit those terrible shots.

One of my playing partners was telling me to hang in there but I felt like a large bomb had went off next to my ear. I could hear what he was saying but it was being drowned out by this continuous replay of every nauseating shot I had ever hit on a golf course. That morning I had woke up from a restless night and seriously considered if I should pack it in and go home without even playing. The hamburger I had the night before was not sitting well and I knew it was mostly nerves but I wanted badly to not go play the tournament and go home instead. Now, I was thinking maybe I should of have done this and halfway wishing I would puke on the tee box so I would have an excuse for the awful mess of a golf round I was making on the course.

The next hole was a par three with a manmade dry creek in front. I took an extra club so I wouldn’t get in this ditch and then watched dejectedly as this toe struck weak shot hooked in a miserable arc right at it. It dove into the rough just short of the green but didn’t roll all the way back into the hazard. Meanwhile the only guy who had parred the first two holes in our group hit one so fat that it came up 30 yards short. It finally got through to me that we were all suffering our own arguments with mental demons; it was just that mine were winning the argument in my head. I had an impossible pitch, a downhill, side-hill lie and no green to work with. I hit a decent pitch that rolled some fifteen feet past and I realized every hole so far had been on a ridge in the green. It was like the worst pin placements possible on what was already a hard course. I two putted for a bogey and felt better. At least I was improving my vicinity to par with each hole. Maybe I would par the next one I thought.

Concentrate. See the shot and hit the shot I was thinking on the next tee. Meanwhile, my playing absolutely duffed on off the tee with a driver. It went only about fifty yards and wound up on the women’s tee in front but I didn’t even see the shot. I was so wrapped up in my own inability to hit a decent shot I probably wouldn’t have noticed a paratrooper falling into the fairway. It was a shorter hole that I had hit too far right on the day before with a 3 wood leaving me a blind shot into the green so I aimed further left and hit a heeled weak cut but a least it was in the edge of the fairway. We were playing lift clean and place because every shot was picking up mud. I could actually just see the top of the pin and thought it was on the left side of the green. I hit a pretty good 8 iron that I pulled a little and noticed the wind caught it and ballooned enough to dump it in the front right bunker.

This hole I found out later was a copy of the Old Works hole in Anaconda, Montana. It has black sand in the bunkers. Yes… black sand. I had a decent lie and a straightforward mid-range bunker shot that was not a hard shot. The day before I had hit a few shots out of the practice range bunker. It was very heavy gritty sand with a thicker consistency than I was used to but the ball came out good although it was hard to spin the ball out of it. I was thinking all this over as I walked to my ball in the bunker. As I climbed down into the bunker I realized it was very fine sand, like black powder only lighter. Instead of thinking about how it would change the shot my mind was stuck on the question of where in the world the bunkers were black. China… South Africa…. Maybe Australia I was thinking as I took half practice swings careful not to touch the sand. Ok… Three quarter swing with a slightly open face I was thinking and it should come out just right. Then… as I got to the top of my swing it happened, the thought that kills. “Did I dig my feet in?”... I wondered somewhere in the back of my mind. In that short millisecond between starting the club back and determining how far to take it back that thought unhappily exploded like a mental land mine that I had stepped on. I found myself actually trying to feel if my feet were dug in or not as if by some sensory magical wizardry I could make this assessment and adjust my swing arc accordingly. As it turns out I am not a wizard so I did the exact worse thing I could do in that situation and just raised up a little as if that would help.

As most people know the correct adjustment in a bunker, assuming one was actually necessary, would be to hit down more. The worst thing that could happen from that adjustment is to hit if fat and leave it short of the hole. There is in infinitesimally small likelihood that raising up on a bunker shot is ever going to help the result. As a matter of fact there is a much larger probability that you might kill one of your playing partners with a bladed shot screaming at supersonic speed from such an adjustment. I can only attribute that thought taking over my body in that instant to the certainty that golf gods from a race that think bagpipes make pleasant music are perniciously cruel beings. The thin 75 yard blast that flew over the green and into the woods behind the green confirmed that it was the wrong adjustment. The reaction of two people studying birdie putts to a rocket flying over their head and loudly center drilling a hickory tree behind the green was almost as bad as the solid whack of a bladed sand wedge felt in my hands when I was expecting the soft thump of fine sand. Now I had a 40 yard shot with trees in the way that is completely blind up 40 feet to a green sloping towards the bunker I just hit out of to get in this place for my 4th shot. I couldn’t even see the top of the flag from where I was. The nerves feeding my hands felt like high voltage lines pulsing out of control and I was mentally going over whether I had a chance of blading this one through the French doors on the mansion overlooking the green. I hit a decent shot that I thought was on the green but it was just short and left enough to roll into a bunker behind the green. Again…. Black sand with the consistency of powder. This time… I played it with a harder, steeper swing and it came out beautifully with no second guessing demons in my backswing. I made the putt for a six.

Stay connected and slow down I was thinking on the next tee. My driver felt like an unruly alien being in my hand and I was hoping it didn’t sprout fangs and bite me on my backswing. Breathe… see the shot… are there out of bounds stakes up the right?… This was what was going through my head. A positive thought followed by a blaring neon loudspeaker screaming dire warnings with a lot of static thrown in. Somehow I managed to squeeze in a swing between the conflicting thoughts in my head and hit a little push to the left that was short but in the fairway. When I got to my ball, it was in a very muddy spot. No grass in the vicinity but not exactly standing water either. I marked it and cleaned it wondering how far I could legally move it to replace the position but decided that I had to set it within a few inches of the spot. I found two little sprigs of grass that immediately collapsed beneath the weight of the ball. Standing in mud, the ball sitting in mud and an uphill, upwind, 180 yard shot with a large wetland in front.

“Stay connected and slow down,” I was thinking. Whack… it was that sweet feel of a perfect strike that radiated up through my hands. I looked up to see a high tracer arcing hotly towards the pin. It hit in front of the pin and jumped past it trickling slightly up the steep bank of rough behind. I just hit a perfect shot out of a terrible lie. It was probably one in four of hitting it solidly at all and I hit it perfect. The chattering Scottish demons in my head shut off like somebody had flipped a switch for just a second but as I walked up toward the green I realized I had a steep downhill lie going towards a narrow green sloping away from me. Still… I had hit the shot and I could pull this one off too I thought to myself.

It was worse than I thought. I toyed with the idea of putting it but knew it might just dive down deeper in the rough and leave an even harder shot. I finally decided to just bump it with a 9 iron. I needed to fly it about a foot but it had to go in the air that far or it wouldn’t get out of the rough and bound down onto the green. I couldn’t use a connected swing… it was all hands but suddenly the club felt right in my hand and I knew I could do this just by using my hands. Sure enough it hit it perfect and it bounded down the hill and rolled some 5 feet past the hole narrowly missing going in. “Good shot,” someone said and I knew it was a good shot; that it had come off as good as it possibly could have without hitting the hole and going in. I missed the putt coming back but just barely as it drifted a little right on me from some slope that I hadn’t seen. Not the worst bogey I had ever made I thought to myself.

The next hole was a par three over water that is supposed to be like Muirfield village but looks suspiciously like number 12 at Augusta. Steep slope down to water, narrow green and huge bunker in front with steep slopes and a bunker behind. It was playing some 150 yards to the pin but I had hit a perfect shot here the day before about 5 feet from the pin so I even felt a little confident. There was a little more wind in my face than the day before but it was the same pin. There is a tiny bailout left but it leaves an impossible pitch down to a green sloping towards the water.

The first guy teeing off hit way too much club and it hooked very high and wide left eventually slamming into the cart girl’s refreshment cart parked there waiting for us. This started those nasty little Scottish golf gods giggling insanely up in my head, “and he hits it better than you,” they were saying. The wind was hard to figure as I could see it holding shots. I tried to assure myself that everyone was over clubbing because they didn’t realize it was a little downhill but I never got confident that my club choice wasn’t too much. Naturally, at the top of my backswing I decided to take something off the swing. I have been playing golf now for over twenty years and I have never hit a good shot by taking something off a swing on the way down but the seemingly omniscient mid swing correction voice blaring in my head convinced me it would be a good idea and I toe flipped it just short enough to hit the bank and bounce into the water. My third shot from the muddy drop area was a strange sort of sidearm trapped 9 iron that threw a divot that size of a painted road stripe majestically fifteen feet out into the lake and propelled the ball over the green and into the back bunker. Free drop from the ground under repair bunker which I putted confidently through six feet of rough down to the severely sloping green stopping 3 inches short of the hole. “Great touch” one of my partners said. He was right. Assuming someone ignored the toe flip and the trench digging sidearm swing you might possibly think I knew what I was doing on the really hard shot. A 3 inch tap in later and I was the proud owner of another double bogie on a hole I had birdied the day before.

It was about this time that something happened in my head. I realized the only good swing I had made was when I slowed down my backswing and stayed connected. I also realized I had hit it HARD. I hadn’t steered it. I hadn’t aimed it; I had wound up and HIT it. That’s my game. I don’t feather touch shots, I HIT them. I cut down my backswing and control distances and trajectories with ball position but I don’t finesse my swing on golf shots. I boomed the next drive with a faint voice of Hogan somewhere in my sub conscious saying he always hit the ball as hard as possible with full swings. I didn’t miss many shots the rest of the round. I lipped out a birdie on that very hole. I three putted the next two holes from good positions within 20 feet but I didn’t miss a full or partial shot. I went at flags and I went at targets from the tee.

I hit a 15 foot high hooking 3 iron under a tree over a ravine wasteland onto and through the green on a hole I was blocked out on. I hit a beautiful dead handed 9 iron chip to die it over a slope and within 5 foot of the hole on a very slick downhill green. I missed the putt for par but I made the shot I needed to so that I had a putt at it. I didn’t think about connection or use of legs or shoulders when I hit it, I just used my hands and my feel. I noticed the best short game player in the group had a terrible technique but great hands and the guts to hit it where he thought it needed to go. Thinking back now I hit a lot of good short game shots when I threw out all thoughts of short game technique in favor of imagination and touch.

I hit one bad drive on the back when I couldn’t decide where I wanted to hit it to approach the pin and drove it into a bunker under a steep lip. I lipped out a par saving putt on that hole. I stiffed a five iron to 18 inches on a hole and made birdie and I hit a beautiful cut 3 wood onto 18 and made birdie from 15 feet on the hardest hole on the course. I shot even par on the back nine; the lowest back nine of the tournament that day. Tucked pins on severe slopes be damned; I played the course well and made putts when I needed to the rest of the day.

Maybe there is hope for me yet as a tournament golfer. Maybe next time I will listen to my instincts and play my game instead of trying not to hit bad shots and succumbing to the Scottish golf demons in my head telling me I am not very good at this game. At the very least last Sunday I proved to myself that I can play tournament golf well when I get my mind right.