Q-School - Round 4

Score: 77

I'm just now getting to this post. After Friday's round, I dropped my dad off at the airport and drove to Houston. I got in kind of late and then was on the road at 7am heading to Baton Rouge for the football game last night. I finally made it back home around lunchtime today.

As you may have assumed by now, I did not make it through the pre-qualifying stage of q-school this year. I needed to shoot 68 to get in and I ended up shooting 77. Again, I started out with a birdie on the first hole but any momentum was lost after following that up with 4 bogey's in a row. I was able to finish out the front side with two more birdies and made the turn at +1 over.

At this point, there was still a chance, I just needed to attack every hole. A double-bogey on #11, however, made my job even harder for the remaining holes. I birdied #12 & 13 to regain hope, but a missed fairway on #14 lead to another bogey. I proceeded to bogey the last three holes of the day and finished at +5 over (77).

I've had some time to think about what happened and here's what I've come up with. I think after playing so well in the practice rounds I had a false sense of security going into the first round. Primarily, the fact that I was driving the ball well in the practice rounds caused me to have a totally different outlook on the golf course. I was hitting fairways with the driver which lead to shorter irons into the greens and the ability to hit the par-5's in two. However, once it was game time there were nerves and pressure to deal with and now all of a sudden I'm steering the ball off the tee and struggling to make par's. Having missed only 1 or 2 shots in two practice rounds, I honestly didn't give much thought to all the trouble that lined every hole. The shrub, cactus and rock mine field was nearly impossible to play from and the most important part of the course to avoid if trying to shoot a good score. By the final round, my dad and I came to the conclusion that I probably could of hit 2-iron off every hole and shot better than what I did. Granted, I did hit some bad shots with the 2-iron as well, I certainly found the fairway more often with that club than I did any other.

The other thing is not only was I playing well during the practice rounds, but the people that I got paired with were as well. After seeing 6 or so people (myself included) go around the course making birdies and making the course seem relatively easy, we got the sense that everyone was going to be playing well that week. We felt as though the scores would be low and that it was going to take anywhere from +2 to +5 over to make the cut. As we know now, that was certainly not the case. The course was playing tough if you weren't hitting fairways, and then add in the pressure and nerves of the q-school atmosphere and you have a cut number of +13...almost three times higher than what we projected.

When it's all said and done though, the bottom line is I just didn't take care of business. I never found that confidence I had during the practice rounds and struggled with almost every aspect of my game throughout all four rounds. My putting was non-existent on the greens which I take full responsibility for. It's not easy practicing on flat greens that roll at about a 8 and then play on huge, undulating greens that roll at a 11 or 12 even. My speed for most of the week was relatively good but we never could read a putt. Even the short ones. But that's part of the game, and if I expect to be a professional golfer then I'm going to have to learn how to adapt to different greens around the country.

I'm really disappointed at the outcome of this week. I practiced extremely hard going into this tournament and felt good about my game when I left for San Antonio. It's a tough pill to swallow, but I guess there's not much else to do except suck it up and move on. I signed up to try and qualify for the Viking Classic in Jackson, MS which begins this coming Friday. I'll be heading up there Thursday to play a practice round and the one-day qualifier begins Friday. More on that to come.