Regionals

We headed off to North Carolina for our South East Regional tournament. The chance to qualify for a National Championship is what we practice all year for and the thought of not going really is one that all of us wanted to avoid. Every tournament and practice session we are looking ahead to prepare for this one week where the stakes are the highest. Knowing the prospect of coming off a 37 shot victory we tried to use it as a way to refocus and use it as confidence that we knew we could play badly and still make it to nationals

The course Rock Barn was very similar to golf in England, with very similar damp weather conditions, a strategic game plan was vital. The course only demanded 3 drivers, the majority of tee shots were hit with hybrids and long irons. As a great iron player i looked forward to the chance to play and do well for the team. We woke up at 545 am on the first round raring to go, the course was extremely damp and we struggled to a 10 over 298. In complete shock the thoughts of not making nationals entered all of our heads and so we all headed to the practice tee to iron out our games to try to get us back on track the next day. Personally, my attitude was appalling the first round i shot +6 after being level par for 10 holes , bad shots led to bad shots because i was unable to get my emotions in check. The prospect of not making a lot of birdies was my first mental error, i forced and forced the whole way around the back 9, charging birdie putts and aggressive lines off the tees and into pins put together with poor reactions led to a frustrating round. Instead of playing for middle of the greens on the toughest holes i fired at the pins missed my target and suffered the consequences. My long game was great off the tee but my putter and iron game let me down due to poor mental strategy and emotional control. I knew straight after that my Tiger Woods attitude at the Masters this year was ineffective, like any good player i knew what to do.

Round 2 i headed out there aiming to shoot a solid round, i played really well all day hitting 14 greens after a couple of misplaced iron shots, a couple of three putts and some bad luck i signed for 75, i knew i had improved, oh and no clubs thrown. After shooting another poor 9 over the best team in the country looked completely devastated at the thought of being so dominant all year and at that time not being close to getting to the National Championship. Garret our coach was so upset and he even believed that we had blown it. We had a team meeting got our shit together and discussed the game plan. All of us got together as a team and discussed how we would approach the day and really fired each other up to focus on the process and let the results happen.

The next day we teed off at 8am in the rain and fog. I played very solidly through 9 holes with a even par 36. The next 9 would prove to be playing tougher yet i battled to a great -1 34. I knew the team were doing fairly well after Coach Garret walked me through a few of the tough holes. Coming up to the tough 590 par 5 14th i needed a birdie to keep my round going, i hit it into the fairway bunker 80 yards from the green in two. Then proceeded to hit a fantastic wedge shot to two feet and tapped in for my birdie. I played solid in hitting every green to shoot 71 and a great start for Nova. As the players came in i realized that we were doing amazing in extremely tough conditions. Oscar Lengden played fantastic for 68 -4. Ben Vertz hit it to 2 feet on the last to shoot 68 and Ben Taylor shot a -2 70 overall an absolutely amazing round of -11. We blew away the field and watched every congratulate us afterwards at such a fantastic feat. We waited for 2 hours nervously to realize we had made it to the national championship and spring sports festival in Louisville Kentucky. The bus ride was back to the airport was extremely sweet, all of us were over the moon at what we had achieved a simply astonishing performance. 

n Team                     Scores
   1 Georgia College          291  289  289    869    +5 
   2 Barry University         295  289  286    870    +6 
   3 Nova Southeastern U.     298  297  277    872    +8 
   4 UNC Pembroke             296  288  292    876   +12 
   5 South Carolina-Aiken     294  290  296    880   +16 
   6 Florida Tech             286  295  300    881   +17 
   7 North Alabama, U. of     298  293  292    883   +19 
   8 Georgia Southwestern     298  302  285    885   +21 
   9 Lynn University          288  298  300    886   +22 
  10 Florida Southern Col     297  293  298    888   +24 
  11 Rollins College          291  301  297    889   +25 
T 12 Armstrong Atlantic       297  295  298    890   +26 
T 12 Barton College           290  300  300    890   +26 
  14 West Florida, U. of      298  293  300    891   +27 
  15 Carson-Newman Coll.      296  304  292    892   +28 
  16 Eckerd College           295  295  305    895   +31 
  17 Wingate University       299  307  292    898   +34 
  18 Coker College            301  297  303    901   +37 
  19 Columbus State           301  297  304    902   +38 
  20 Valdosta St. U.          309  307  305    921   +57 

The next goal was to practice in order to focus on the National Championship we had a few days to prepare in which i focused on short game and putting.