Sonny, a local pro and occasional golf partner, went down to Ojai to play in a senior US Open (golf) qualifier. He went down a couple of times for practice rounds and brought his brother in for strategy planning.
Sonny felt that he could play the course with a score of 65 to 67. As it turned out 67 was needed to get into the Open. They were going to pass two players into the Open and provide two additional alternates.
The strengths of Sonny's game are his driving, mid irons, and his putting. The course layout was not that long, so his driver length was long enough. He doesn't hit it 300 normally, 265 or so is normal, but he seldom misses fairways. Since the par fours were 420 and under, his driver length was more than enough.
But the big problem turned out to be the green speed. It was slow. Ok, it was very slow. One of the requirements of an excellent player is the ability to alter one's play based on conditions. Green speeds vary based on a lot of things, and it is not unusual to run into fast and slow conditions. Different courses take care of the greens differently. One of the strange things about this was that the practice green was fast and the course greens were slow.
Sonny had trouble adjusting to the speed and that generated some angst. Angst, a borrowed German word, pronounced properly as "ahhngst," is used to denote to some degree an irrational fear when used in English. In German it is just fear without any baggage attached to it. But I digress. Sonny's job was to adjust quickly and it trned out to be a problem.
Of course strange green speeds will alter more than putts. Chips, pitches, and approach irons might all have to be adjusted based on how much roll out is expected. And you have to believe and trust that you can, must, and want to make the changes. Indecision is the killer and of course, you have to get it right. But the putting was the big problem and Sonny wasn't happy and he describes headaches as he approached the putts. He started to steer putts to the hole, rather than stroking the club and letting the ball find its path.
Sonny put in a fair amount of effort into the tournament. His dream is make it to the senior tour. There is a Q-School in November. He and I sat down over a delicious and economical Costco lunch and kicked around what lessons were learned from the experience. We talked of the need for rapid adjustments and trusting them. I was also tried to recall something that I had written about in a prior post and that was problem with thoughts of winning before you won or losing before you lost going through your head. That experience is common to all humans and the solution is let them run, acknowledge them - you can't block them - but then return your full concentration on the next shot. Maybe you have to get a bit mechanical in your thoughts, but you have to push the destructive win/lose thoughts out of the way for the moment, continue your work and at some point realize the contest is over and you've done your best.
Sonny realized from the greens that he wanted to create a preshot routine for his putting. He thinks this will relieve some of angst, which gets swallowed by the routine. The routine is the mind clearer; you've done it every putt and it's an old friend.
Ok, learn from this and on to the next contest!
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