Friday, August 6, 2010

85.  There I said it.  That's how many strokes it took me to get around today.  I have no one to blame but myself.  I took a quadruple bogey early and steadied the ship by making two birdies to close out my front nine and turn in two over par.  However, a triple bogey on my 10th hole derailed me.  For the first time in quite a long time I let the golf demons get to me and I more or less put my mental toughness in a blender.  Sure, I wasn't hitting it my best, but I could have grinded it out coming in and I didn't do that.  I am not mad about shooting 85, I am mad that I more or less lost it mentally.  I tried to put the blame on the fact that I was playing in a group today with 4 amateurs playing a scramble and it took us 5 hours to play.  I was back on a junior golf level with the way I acted on the course.  I didn't throw any clubs, or shout any obsenities, but I didn't have the swagger of a professional golfer.  I'm no psychologist, but I think I realized that I still haven't let the Turning Stone Monday Qualifier go in my head.  It just was totally uncharacteristic for me to fold it in like I did today, and the only thing I can rationalize is I am still held up on the ramifications of Monday.  Well this shocked my system the hard way back into reality and I can now move forward with no regrets.  This was my highest round of golf as a professional and it was embarrasing.  The good news is the sun will come up tomorrow and I have a final day tomorrow to play a solid round of golf and erase this 3rd round disaster from my memory forever.  I am playing great golf, I just slipped up today and for some reason flipped the switch off.  I'm going to flip the switch back on tomorrow rest assured.  I head from here to Springfield, MO for the Nationwide Monday qualifier.  You never want to make an event bigger than it is, but I really want this one on Monday.  It was last year that the Springfield Nationwide event left me 2 shots away from changing my life forever.  I need to play my way back into the tournament, so I can give myself that same chance.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Best wishes today and next week. I hope history repeats or improves itself next week.