Good start to the tournament season

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. Not much has happened, and yet a great deal has changed. It has been over a month, a month in which Sean has almost singularly devoted his life to golf, even while undergoing one of those very significant life-transitions, preparing to end middle school to move on to high school in the fall.

When school was still in session, he had shed the yoke of his baseball team and wanted to golf as soon as he got home in the afternoons. He also would spend all day each Saturday and Sunday at the club. He couldn't get enough. On one weekday recently, one of the first full days after graduating from middle school, Sean was dropped off at the golf club at 9am and we only finally got a call to pick him up sometime after 9pm! It was totally dark and he had over the phone, "Hi Daddy! I'm just finishing up on number 18, can you come get me?" He had played 36 holes that day, shooting rounds of 74 and 75, and also won a little 9 hole challenge match 2-up against a fellow junior that was embedded within one of the rounds.

Since the last post, one of the bigger golf-related treats was that his mom and I let Sean out of school one Monday so he could caddy in a qualifier at a local Nationwide tour event. A young tourning pro playing out of the club, Ray, had asked for Sean's help. Sean had done so well in school over the year, earning honor roll status throughout, that we didn't see much wrong by allowing him to play hooky. Besides, it was the end of the school year and the academic program was rapidly winding down. We rationalized that whereas Sean would see it as mostly fun, we could call it a good learning opportunity, a chance to get an up close, inside the ropes peak into a life he dreams of one day living.

Still, the big and largely unstated questions in our minds over the last month or so, like a silent undertow churning below the surface and growing in strength, have been uncertainties over how Sean's competitive golf season will go. This will be his 3rd season of competing and will it be the break out season we all hope for?

On the one hand, I play with him at the club on a weekend and witness this tremendous golfing ability and ball striking skill, and occasional moments of brilliance around the greens. Sure, I can outplay him sometimes by a few strokes, but there is no longer any question he is the best golfer in the house. Literally before my eyes he is transforming into one of the better golfers at our club, too, juniors and adults included.

On the other hand, I see his bad shots and blown holes, and some game and even temper management issues where he seems to check out of the round for a few holes, and I recognize that tournament golf is a completely different beast. What tournament golf achieves mostly, at this level, is to amplify flaws and errors and mistakes. A single bad stroke can lead to a disastrous hole and completely destroy any hopes one has for the round that day. It takes a special skill and personality to deal with adversity of this sort. And up to this point, Sean hasn't many examples of success in his golf portfolio. Sean and I both wonder whether he has what it takes to carry his abilities in competitive rounds and have some success on the junior tours.

The father in me wants the tournaments to go well, not necessarily so that he can bring a bauble home and bask in a little glory as one of the better juniors in the field that day or at the club--though I can't deny there isn't some of that. What I most want for him is something positive to happen to reinforce all of the effort he is putting in to improving. Because no matter where this Budding Golf Star journey eventually takes him, I want him to look back and recognize that hard work and dogged pursuit can lead to success.

Still, this is ultimately a journey that Sean has to walk alone and figure out on his own, and I've come to recognize that the more he figures out how to do things on his own now will make him that much stronger down the road. So I now have to pick and choose the advice I offer and the comments I make very carefully, and bite my lip when I see him approaching things different than I would. He could, for example, probably play more conservatively than he does and score better as a junior. But he has tremendous length and power and needs to learn how to use it to his advantage, which down the road will give him an invaluable weapon and pay dividends in competitive golf events that are far more important than those he competes in as a junior. As the days go on, I'm less his mentor, I'm certainly not a coach, and much more his cheerleader.

There has been loads of preparation and some hopeful good scoring in his rounds Since the last post. Sean visited Bobby for a 2 hr playing lesson--9 holes out on the course, just the two of them, which seems to have done some good. I handed Sean off and went about running an errand or two and got some work done in the lounge. The big take away from the lesson appears to have been a putting tip, and probably even some strategic advice on chipping, though Sean seems to deny it. Bobby convinced Sean it might be better to lag putts to the hole, rather than to try and bang all of them into the back of the cup, no matter how long. Consequently, Sean has converted a lot of 4 and 5 foot come-backers into tap-in pars. These are things I've urged Sean to do in the past, but now that the coach has said it.....

On net, Sean's scoring during casual rounds at the club seems already improved, certainly over last year and apparently since early spring, too. He is turning in rounds in the 70's more frequently, some of them dancing proudly just at and above the par line-72, 73, 74, 75. His handicap is dropping, now solidly below four. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised to see it hovering around zero by the end of the season.

So over the last month Sean has worked on his game and has practiced a bunch. Most importantly, he seems to be practicing smarter, spending more time on the course playing holes than banging balls on the driving range. He has developed a chip and putt short game practice routine that keeps him on that an hour or so each day. He's put in a lot of effort, and the reward is beginning to show in his scoring.

Still, he seemed apprehensive and probably not very confident yesterday on the 90 minute drive to his first tournament of the season. Sure enough, the first round didn't go as well as he had hoped going into it, as he shot a 79 on the par 70 course, leaving him in 3rd place 8 shots behind the leader. He said he had four double bogeys, two bogeys and two birdies. On the drive home we talked and tried to take some of the positive away from it. He didn't have any major blow up holes...no triple bogeys or worse. We decided the most important thing to emphasize was that he had scored a tournament round in the 70's. It was only his second tournament round in the 70's. Ever.

He seemed less apprehensive on the drive down for the 2nd round, a bit more relaxed than the first. Still, just what was to come today weighed on him. Just like before the first round, I dropped him off at the range before heading out to find someplace to sit down and get some work done. I wished him luck and told him to have some fun.

I didn't seem him again until some 6 hours later (there was a rain delay) as a cart transporting them from the 18th green dropped him and the other two members of his threesome off at the clubhouse. It was a special moment. He seemed to be standing taller and then he spotted me and smiled.

"Seventy-one," he said.

We shared the moment of relief. And a special moment it was. I was so happy for him, because this was something he wanted more than anything. It was another one of those moments that I hope to remember for a long time.

Walker, one of his playing partners, introduced himself and complemented Sean on how well hedrove the ball and played on the back nine. What a good kid! Walker must have played well himself, shooting a 75.

Nick, the overnight leader and the winner, shook my hand to say hello and said he had shot a 76. Good enough to win by 3 strokes.

Sean told me that his 71 was good enough for 2nd place. It also tied the low round of the tournament, and Sean also had the only sub-par 9 holes of anybody in the entire field! He had closed the gap between him and the leader from 8 to 3 shots. And for the first time, Sean had scored two tournament rounds in the 70's. The seventy-one is also a personal best.

I think he learned a lot about himself today and he gained a significant dose of confidence. It wasn't a big tournament with a tremendously strong field. But it was exactly what Sean needed at this point in his development. We often like to say that people learn more from making mistakes or from losing than from doing well. Not this time. Today, Sean learned a ton about himself. It was a major breakthrough and that his breakit happened Hopefully, knowing he can put up a score like that in tournament conditions will help him relax a bit and trust his abilities and believe in his talent. It is a very difficult sport to play if one doesn't have such confidence.

I couldn't be happier for him. It looks to be a good summer ahead.