Disappointment at a US Jr Amateur Qualifier

Not so good, but hopefully a great learning experience. Sean shot an 85...I think he was 10 or 11 over on his 1st nine holes. Most of the damage came as a reverberation from one swing on his 3rd hole of the day, a difficult par 3 where he carded an 8 before the smoke had cleared.

Presumably still reeling from the disappointment, he had double bogies on his next two holes. Nine over par in just 3 holes!!! Ouch.

I suppose there is something to learn from playing well, but I think this one gave Sean an almost invaluable lesson.

You see, he and I had gone up to the course several weeks ago to get in a practice round, but were thunderstormed off the course after the front nine. After returning home, I gave Sean the chance a couple of times to return to the course to finish the back nine practice round, but he insisted he was ready and didn't need it.

On the qualifier day, he started on the back nine and apparently things went pretty well until his third hole, which is a long (~200 yd) par three nestled onto a hill slope that falls from left to right into a lake. Sean said his playing partner had honors and had his tee shot, well struck with a hybrid, come up short into the bank just above the water.

Simply put, Sean was uncertain what to hit. After seeing his partner with that shot and having never played the hole before, he chose his hybrid worried that a 3 iron wouldn't be enough. But thinking it was too much club, he said he probably decelerated his swing and pulled it badly left, into the water. From there, according to his buddy who served as his caddy, things sort of spiraled out of control. Something about making a poor choice on his drop option, and a mistake that followed that.

Remarkably, that 8 was his first hole he scored worse than double bogey all summer long. In contrast, last summer he was averaging two holes worse than double bogey each round. Although, not surprisingly, the next two holes didn't fare well, he then pulled himself together and finished out the rest of the tournament holes at only 4 over par. I believe something right at par qualified for the event, and only a handful of kids made it.

The good to take away from something like this is to recognize that he is almost to that point where all that separates him from really, really solid scores is a swing or two, here and there. You can see his game tighten up almost on a weekly basis.

Besides, it is hard to see the downside of trying to qualify for a USGA event. My guess is that Sean will be eager to have another go at it next year, and probably will be focused to extract his measure of revenge from the event at that time.

It is all good at this stage. As long as he is playing a lot of golf at home and seeing some good competition in his events, it is all good.

A solid tournament and AJGA Status!!!

Sean played well in a tournament far from home a few weeks ago, the Pepsi Little Peoples in Quincy Illinois. He shot a 78-73 (par 71) to finish in 8th place, competing against ~30 players in the event.

The tournament result has much greater significance than playing another event with two solid rounds in the 70's, which is our main goal for his summer.

His top 10 finish in the 14-15 age group, in fact, gave him "Junior All Star" exempt status for the remainder of this year and for next year in the Gary Gilchrist Golf Academy Junior All Star Series of the American Junior Golf Association. JAS exempt status is just a notch below fully exempt status but, because so few kids seem to have fully exempt status, for all practical purposes JAS exempt makes him fully exempt, and will allow us to create a set schedule for next season centered around a handful of AJGA events. We won't need to worry about whether he will be accepted into the fields for these events, which is a really big deal, and can plan accordingly.

We are getting a running lesson through all of this on how competitive junior golf is structured.
To play AJGA events seems not only fairly important, but essential for someone with his aspirations. As a 14 year old, the most important reason to play AJGA is simply because their events have deeper fields. Competing in stronger fields will give him a better sense about how much he'll need to improve to continue on the path of playing golf at the collegiate level. Because he will only be 15 years old next summer and just finishing his freshman year of high school, I'm far more concerned that Sean uses these AJGA events for younger kids to learn how improve than as a way to impress college coaches.

We entered Sean in the Little Peoples tournament mostly because of the way they dangled generous AJGA exempt status for the top finishers. We looked at their tournament records from past years and felt that Sean would need to play solid, but that shooting a 150 was well within reason, that something around 150 had a good chance of earning him a top 10 finish. Playing in that tournament seemed like a much quicker route towards earning better AJGA status than grinding away in his regional tour events for 'performance stars.' We weren't sure how many regional events he would be able to enter for the rest of the summer, and even though very competitive, these events don't earn players too much in the way of AJGA status.

Sean started the Little Peoples tournament with the mindset of finishing in the top 10 as his primary goal. We thought the Westview Golf Course, a small town muni track, would be a fairly straightforward course. A practice round dissuaded us of that notion fairly quickly. It was a remarkably challenging test of golf, with thick rough, dog-legs, blind tee shots, well placed hazards and out of bounds, and very challenging greens, many with very significant back to front sloping. Add to this the fact that the course, already long playing at over 6800 yards, was pretty wet from record rains.

Sean's first round 78 was worse than he had expected of himself, but left him in 12th place and within touch of the leaders. His second round 73 was remarkable for a few reasons. He asked both myself and his mom to walk along with him to watch him play, which seemed to telegraph that he was growing in confidence. Second, it was just a fantastic round to watch. He really ground it out, sinking several good putts to save par on greens that played much faster the 2nd day. His game management was superb. He just played real steady all day, and only made what you might consider two mistakes. In the end, he was one of only 3 or 4 players among the top half of the field to improve his score on the 2nd day.

Something important was on the line, and he rose to the task. We were very proud of the way he played and stepped up to the challenge. And his reward: we signed him up for the AJGA so he should get one of those big red AJGA bag tags in the mail any day. These things seem to be the ultimate junior golf status symbol, and veritably shout out that a playa has just arrived onto the tee box!

Good stuff.