TPC Sawgrass - Winners

To round up the last tournament of the Fall semester we headed to Jacksonville to visit one of the most famous golf resorts in the world. Instead of playing the Stadium course we were playing the tougher Valley Course which made the Nationwide tour players look fairly average two weeks prior. After playing the practice round i quickly realized that hitting fairways was the key to scoring well around the valley, luckily i was swinging great and felt good about the way i was hitting it. Safety at pins and missing it on the correct sides were key strategic decisions needed. The rough was so thick if u missed a fairway it was often a good decision to take less club off the tee to make sure that accuracy off the tee was maximized giving myself a good chance of hitting the middle of the greens on the tough holes and firing at the pins on the easy holes.

The first day was playing tough early with wet and windy conditions beginning on the tough holes was a real struggle and pars were tough to come by. After opening up with a few bad holes i somehow steadied the ships with a couple of birdies. Despite this rain got hard and my tee shots didn't set me up to make solid pars on the tough closing holes. The next round i started fast with 3 birdies in 4 holes. Despite hitting a tough tee shot out of bounds i played very solid for a level par 72 on one of the toughest courses in Florida.

The last day i was paired with a great player Alex Carpenter from Abilene Christian he has won 10 times in Division two golf and is the only division two player to be picked for the Palmer cup team, he also played the pga tour event at Bay Hill last year.  It was good to play with such a good player and i learnt a lot and at the same time i beat him!

The course was playing tough very windy and cold which isn't ideal when you have a tight driving course with lots of water hazards. I played smart golf through the first 7 then faced 6 of the toughest holes i have ever played, i chose smart conservative strategy and it back fired. Some holes i took less club off the tee to maximize accuracy and then ended up having so much club into pins that really needed short irons into, even when i tried to hit middle of the greens it was often difficult to get it within two putt range. I managed to have a couple of birdies coming and finished with a solid round in very tough conditions. Im extremely pleased with how i handled myself in tough testing conditions something to gain a lot of positives from. 

Overall i finished the tournament in good position and I'm happy with how i played. There is still a lot of work to be done but the most important thing is to keep doing what I'm doing and keep playing in as many competitions as i can. Its easy after a few bad shots to look for things to change technique wise when planning how to improve however sometimes its better to make a few minor tweaks and to really just keep playing often we can fix it through feelings when we hit a particularly shots. A lot of my bad shots this week came from not committing to the shot 100 percent this is clearly under my control a hard thing to accomplish but when you do then golf seems very easy.

The 17th Green on the Stadium a huge target and looks like you can throw it on the green.

Weaknesses

Lag Putting - speed/green reading

Driving accuracy good in places still can improve

Par 5 scoring average 5.00


Strengths
Par 3 Greens in Regulation
Attitude throughout the tournament
Holing out inside 15 feet was great

Plan to Improve

Identifying shots that i could have saved through

• Better shot selections when i made a higher score than i should have
• Better Commitments to the shots (letting go)
• Poor focus or decision making
• Typical shot that caused problem (toe hook with the long clubs)

Work harder on lag putting/ green reading / speed

Improve short game lofted pitch shots and shots out of the rough

Continue to work hard on habits which create commitment on the course