Shot by Shot: One Round at the 2002 Kemper Open

I invite you to follow along with me as I play the first round of the 2002 Kemper Open. Actually, the story begins 10 days earlier, at the Holden Cup, an 18-hole tournament for Middle Atlantic Section members at Belle Haven CC in Alexandria, Virginia. I was not playing well at all this day, and to top it off my back, previously operated on three times, started to flare up. By the time I got home I was in serious pain, and 4 days without hitting any balls did nothing to make it better. Fearing the worst, I went for an MRI on Friday, and waited until Saturday to get the results. As it turned out, I didn’t have any further damage to any discs, the fusion was intact, and the pain was a reoccurrence of the old injuries. In short, I just needed time to let it calm down, time that I didn’t have.
 
For me to get ready to play in a Tour event I need three and a half days. That would include Sunday afternoon to play the course and decompress from a week full of lessons, a full day Monday either for a practice round or a pro-am and time to hit balls and get anything straightened out with my clubs that the Taylor Made guys can fix or change, and Tuesday and Wednesday to play and practice everything that I will need during the tournament. I’m sure that most players would not consider this regimen adequate preparation, but it’s the best I can do with the time that I have, and I’ve learned to make due. I’ve found that it’s best not to worry about this seeming lack of time, but to use the time I do have to work hard. One of the reasons my physical conditioning is so important is that I have to go at it hard for the days I have directly prior to the tournament, and I can’t afford to get tired or injured, the latter of which is exactly what happened this week.
 
Actually, by Sunday afternoon my back had calmed down to the point that I felt it was O.K. to drive out to Avenel and play 9 holes riding in a cart. It was the first test of the week and things went well. My back felt fine and my new driver (Taylor Made 510) was feeling great. I was ready for the pro-am on Monday, and with my old friend Paul Rankin carrying my bag I went out and shot 69 and had a blast, pretty amazing considering that 3 days earlier I was ensconced in a tube getting x-rays of my back. I played and practiced Tuesday and Wednesday, Tuesday at Avenel with David Hutsell, Brian Quackenbush and Joe Ogilvie, and Wednesday I went over to Congressional where Head Pro John Lyberger was nice enough to get myself, Monday qualifier Mike Pearson, and Miguel Rivera off for 18 wonderful holes on the Blue Course. I went back to Avenel in the afternoon for more ball hitting, short game work, and putting, and everything seemed to be in good order for Thursday.
 
It seems that the more experience I get playing in Tour events the less nervous I become. Maybe it’s that I’m getting older and I understand now that I would be foolish to measure myself by my performance against such superior competition. It could also be that after so many tournaments and with more success behind me I understand that no one shot or one round is the end of the world. In fact, treating any tournament as such is a sure recipe to self-destruct. My attitude could best be described these days as “get up and hit it and see what happens”. Not that I’m any less intense as I play. I still have a strong desire to play well at all times and a deep hatred of poor shot making of any kind. I do have, however, a more advanced and healthier perspective regarding results, which allows me to hang in and overcome poor decision making and execution by maintaining my cool and coming back with better shots instead of worse ones.
 
I have always thought that the TPC at Avenel is a vastly underrated golf course. Any time you see 11 under par win a Tour event (the eventual winning score for the week) you know you are looking at an extremely difficult course. One of the things that make Avenel so hard, besides the heavy rough and hard, undulating greens, is that each missed shot ends up in a place where the recovery has been made more demanding by the architect. It seems that every short side miss leaves you with a shot that has to land either on a down slope on the green or bump into the side of a hill where anything can happen. Every drive that ends up in the rough leaves an approach shot to a green wholly unreceptive to shots with no spin on them, and the resulting miss ends up in the aforementioned demanding short shot area. What is required is solid play from end to end, where conservative and patient play is generally rewarded, while aggressive, “go for the pin” play is often punished.
 
Standing on the 10th tee Thursday morning I took a second to reflect on my life in golf up to this point and to give myself a little pep talk. I had achieved a level of success the previous year, winning the National Club Pro Championship and the Middle Atlantic Section Player of the Year, that I never really thought was realistic to expect. Through all my struggles with injuries I had managed to play some fine golf, but nothing like the level of play I maintained for 3 months in the summer of 2001. Each time I find myself nervously awaiting my call to the first tee I try to recall the feeling of being on top of the world, having won out in the end over all the pressure that big tournaments have to offer. There is indeed no greater antidote to nerves than to have experienced success in similar situations, and to be able to remember and draw on that experience is a huge advantage. Of course, the PGA Tour is a different level altogether when compared to playing against club professionals, but it is still golf, and the clubs, the ball, and the course are still the same. If you can hit the shots under pressure once you can do it again. And as I was trying to calm myself down and pump myself up at the same time I glanced at the gallery and saw my wife Jennifer and my 10 year old daughter, Lindsay. It was the first time Lindsay had ever come out to watch me play, and seeing her there put a huge smile on my face, especially when I saw her own smile light up her already gorgeous features.
 
I was playing with Tim Petrovic, an exempt player who had made just about enough money for the year to put him in the top 125, and David Hutsell, one of the assistant pros from Columbia CC and a good friend. It’s always good to be paired with someone you know and are comfortable with, and this was certainly the case with David and me. As they were introduced and hit their tee shots I studied the fairway in front of me and prepared to enter into battle. The whole idea on any first tee shot, especially on number 10, was to hit the ball into the fairway. The best way to do this would be to make a good swing, with good form and rhythm, and the best way to accomplish that would be to do what I had been practicing, not only for 3 ½ days, but for my whole life.
 
A player’s pre-shot routine, after much practice, becomes almost subconscious, a Zen-like repetition of items in a precise order and timing that enable the motion of the swing to emerge from the relatively static set-up. All good players strive to maintain that routine when they feel pressure. For a player out of his element, like me, a club pro, in a PGA Tour event, the first tee is always going to be one of the most stressful shots of the day. From experience I can tell you that under extreme pressure everyone becomes tighter, and as a result the swing becomes shorter and faster, which is exactly why one of the main things to concentrate on when nervous is the attempt to make a smooth motion that is complete in the backswing and balanced in the full finish. The problem is that nervousness, in the form of an elevated heart rate and accompanying change in breathing, takes you right out of that mindset and causes what can only be called a blackout, where you can trigger your motion but everything that follows is a blur and is over before you have any idea what happened, until you look down the fairway and find that your ball is nowhere near it.
 
Now it was my turn: I went through my routine, feeling unusually calm, and hit my 3-wood off to the right, about 5 yards right of the fairway and into the heavy rough. With a creek guarding the front of a small, rock hard green, with deep bunkers and heavy rough around all sides, this was not the place to be on my first approach of the day. My lie was so-so, and with 151 to the back pin I had 133 to clear the creek. The first thought here has to be to take the water out of play and take a chance of going long, so I chose a 7-iron and aimed just right of the pin. As it turned out, both decisions were correct as the ball flew true and landed on the front of the green, rolling back to about 15 feet right of the pin. Fixing my ball mark I noticed that had the ball been hit directly at the pin it would not have cleared the creek. I made a decent run at the putt and happily left the green with a par 4.
 
Number 11 was playing short, only 138 to the pin, but the wind was coming in against us and I felt that a 9 iron would come up short. I swung at an 8, but much like the tee shot on 10 I moved ahead of the shot and shoved it to the right, into the bunker that carved into the green about pin high. It may only seem that way but I would swear that every bunker shot at Avenel lands on a down slope and is impossible to stop. The shot I was facing was one of these, and I would be lucky to keep it on the green, unless, of course, I hit the pin, which is exactly what I did. In fact, the ball hit dead center on the pin and still failed to go in, stopping about 2 inches directly to the side of the cup. For most of my previous golfing life I would have considered this a tremendously bad break. Now I was just fine with a 3 and moved on to number 12.
 
The 12th may be one of the most difficult par- 4’s on the planet. Playing to 470 yards, a creek runs diagonally down the left side of the fairway the length of the hole before cutting in front of the green, guarding the entire right side of the green, which is long and narrow and is divided by a huge hump that runs straight through the middle of it from front to back. Every shot on the hole is difficult. The drive must find the fairway and be long enough to leave as short a club as possible to the green; the second shot must clear the creek, avoid the collection areas to the left, and send the ball to the correct side of the green so that the first putt does not have to traverse the dead elephant buried there.
 
With two shaky pars in hand I knew that I had to start hitting the ball better or the round was bound to take a turn for the worse. I did what I had to do, driving the ball into the fairway, and, with 190 left to a pin that was no more that 20 feet from the creek on the right, I took a 4 iron, conservatively aimed 30 feet left of the flag, and struck a solid shot toward the green. The problem was that the ball was pushed, and as it took off just to the right of the pin I knew I was in trouble. Fortunately, the ball held its line and landed on the green to the right of the pin, not more that 15 feet from the cup and 5 feet from a watery grave. It looked like a great shot, but anyone who knew anything about golf knew that the only way the ball ended up where it did was by mistake. I barely missed the putt, and again I left the green relieved.
 
The 13th and 14th holes are two of the easier holes on the course, as long as you hit decent shots. Make a mistake and either or both can reach out and bite you, but with more tough holes coming up it is a good time to be aggressive. I drove the ball well on 13 and was faced with a pivotal shot. I was 255 yards from the pin with the ball in the light rough slightly above my feet. The shot was quite a bit downhill, so a 3-wood was enough to reach. The problem was the creek running up the left side of the fairway all the way past the green, and with the ball above my feet the tendency would be to go left. My caddie, former Maryland Open champion Keith Unikel, asked me what I wanted to do, and when I said “Let’s give it a go: I didn’t come here to lay up”, he smiled and said “that’s what I want to hear”. I believe that there are shots you are faced with where discretion is the better part of valor, and a conservative play is the smart move. In some situations it is just better not to stress yourself over a certain shot when an easier play still leaves you with a good chance at birdie. Other times I like to test myself, knowing that to be good enough to contend and win at this level I should be able to hit this shot. If I never try hard shots, how am I going to know if I’m good enough to hit them? In this case I pulled it off nicely, roping the 3-wood down the right side of the fairway where it kicked up onto the front fringe some 60 feet from the hole.
 
As I walked to the green and approached my ball, I had to laugh when I saw it sitting on the fringe about 4 feet from the green, normally an easily puttable ball, but not with a large sprinkler head directly in front of the ball in line with the cup. One of the reasons I teach players a chipping technique from fairway cut grass close to the green is that often something is present to keep you from putting. This was a perfect example, and a chip was certainly called for. I bumped the ball onto the green with a 5-iron (just enough loft to carry the sprinkler and land on the green) and it rolled out to about 2 feet, where I tapped in for birdie to go 1-under for the day.
 
At this point in the round I would like you, the reader, to stop and consider for a moment the number of times a club professional stands quietly and listens to a detailed account of a round of golf. The advantage to reading this is that if you get bored, you can stop reading. The club pro, however, must exude understanding and empathy for each shot of the account. He or she must care, and if they don’t, they must act convincingly that they do. This is not much different for friends as well, although it’s easier to tell a friend that you are only interested in the final score and not the description of how it was accrued. I prefer if people concentrate on the highlights of the round, but when we talk about our own games every shot and detail seems too important to leave out. In defense of the length of this account, there is a lot going on during a round of golf, especially in the thinking and decision making process. The difference here is that I am probably good enough that you might learn something from the details of my thoughts, whereas listening to a long-winded account of a 93 is enough to make you want to shoot yourself. What we are looking at here is “course management”, and most players are not very good at it. It is also worth mentioning that one of the truest measurements of friendship is the willingness to sit through a blow by blow account of a meaningless round of golf without jumping in at the first pause to begin recounting your own round. Sometimes you just need to talk about your golf to someone, and since your spouse’s eyes probably glaze over at the phrase “on the first hole I…” you normally turn to your playing partners or your teacher, which is one important reason that so many good players employ a “coach”.
 
The fourteenth is a birdie hole for sure at only 310 yards, but with a creek winding down the right side of the fairway and a difficult up and down from the left side of the green, most players choose to lay up with an iron or fairway wood to a full lob wedge away. I hit two excellent shots with a 5-wood and a 58 degree wedge to 3 feet, and rolled in the putt to get to 2-under and onto the leader board. It’s not every day that you see your name on the leader board at a PGA Tour event. In fact, it was my first time, and I’m not embarrassed to say that it was a charge. As I mentioned before, I don’t consider myself in the same league as a Tour player. Not that I don’t have the potential to be that good, but I really haven’t shown up with my “A” game at the some 15 Tour events I have played in, which, to be realistic about it, means I’m probably not quite up to their standard. At this moment, though, I was feeling comfortable at 2-under and ready to go deep.
 
The 15th is one of the toughest holes on the course, due mainly to its length and the downhill shot to a two tier green. I drilled my drive and had a 6-iron left to the pin from 184 yards. If you’re going to have a good ball striking round this was the type of iron shot that you would knock directly on the green and have a reasonable birdie putt. I almost hit a good shot, but I shoved it just a hair and it came up slightly short on the edge of the right greenside bunker. Another two feet and the ball would have kicked toward the pin, but the end result was not too bad, and my pitch rolled down to about 3 feet. I have been putting well for a long time, and I expect to make all my 3 footers, but this one I just flat out missed. It wasn’t a bad stroke, it was just far enough away that a slight mis-read or mis-hit can have you missing the hole, and that’s what I did.
 
Earlier in my career the miss would have irritated me to no end, and might have even affected my next shot, the drive on number 16. Older and wiser, I have recently realized that getting upset does you no good unless it shakes you out of your lethargy and gives you greater focus and determination. I let the anger dissipate, and my drive on 16 was down the middle. The pin was located just over the cavernous bunker that guards the left front of the green, so I wisely aimed my shot about 20 feet to the right of the pin and hit a 7 iron to that very spot. You might ask why a player who can hit the ball exactly where he aims would purposely aim away from the pin. The answer is fairly simple, although most players, including some very good players, never really grasp the concept. If you aim directly at the pin when it is in a precarious position, only your best shot will give you acceptable results. Any miss will be penalized severely, whereas the ball aimed to a safe spot has a wider margin of error, although a perfect shot will leave the ball further from the hole. The player is playing the percentages, lowering the risk of bogies while still giving himself a reasonable chance at birdie. In this case the percentage play paid off as I drained the putt to get back to 2-under.
 
The 17th is a wonderful par 3, 195 yards downhill to a large, undulating green fronted by water and surrounded by difficult topography for getting up and down. I hit an excellent 5-iron, and as it soared toward the green I had no doubt that it would be the right distance. It ended up 10 feet above the hole, but I was left with an awkward double breaker that was quite quick to boot. I filtered the putt down to the hole with nice, conservative speed, but it was a little to the left and never really had a chance to go in. All in all, however, a 3 on 17 I’ll take everyday and go home. The same can be said for 18, and although I would usually take a 4 I rarely make one, instead goofing up either the drive or the approach shot and coming away with bogey. Today was no different, and my choice of screw-up was a 4-iron shot pushed 40 feet right of the pin and just over the green, with nowhere but a severe down slope to land the ball on and no chance to get closer that 15 feet with a pitch. I got it as close as I could, but the putt broke differently than we guessed, and I finished the nine at 1-under 34.
 
I made the turn and drove the ball nicely on number one, leaving an 8-iron to the pin, which I proceeded to pull left of the green. I hadn’t looked at the pin sheet closely enough to realize that the pin was no more than 4 steps from the left edge of the green, and when I pulled my shot I had a classic “short-side”, leaving a pitch from the rough with no green to work with. I usually like to land my pitch shots on the green, but in this case I had to land it short, bumping it into a hill on the fringe, and I pulled the shot off perfectly, running it up to a few inches.
 
I pulled my drive on the par-5 2nd, but I caught a good lie in the rough and knocked a 5-wood down the fairway to about 100 yards out. My 54 degree sand wedge landed a bit left and long but spun back quite a bit and left me with about 15 feet for birdie. I hit a good putt, but again it moved differently at the hole than we read and I missed to the right. The 3rd is a very long par 3, and today we had 226 yards to the pin, 217 to the front edge. The wind was slightly helping, so I decided to hit a hard 3-iron, which if it didn’t quite make it to the green would leave a relatively simple pitch, whereas a 5-wood, if I flushed it, would end up on the back of the green with a tough two-putt left to negotiate. I struck it sweetly, and it hit on the front and bounced up to about 20 feet, a result I was quite happy with. I hit another decent putt that didn’t go in, but again, par is a good score on this hole.
 
The 4th is a wonderful driving hole, with water all down the left side of the fairway, and it is tough to get yourself to release the driver, which makes the right side of the fairway and the right rough frequently visited. I drove the ball into the fairway, and had a 6 iron to a back right pin. I totally mis-hit the shot, chunking it onto the very front of the green, some 80 feet away from the flag. I always tell my students that if they want to be good lag putters they have to hit a lot of lag putts, and that includes extremely long ones of 60 to 100 feet long. There is really nothing to rely on but feel when hitting this type of putt, and mine was good in this case as I rolled it up to about a foot and tapped in for a par.
 
The fifth is a definite birdie hole, and I played it aggressively with a driver off the tee and a lob wedge to about 10 feet left of the hole. This putt was a bit uphill and fairly straight, and I hammered it in to go back to 2-under. Moving to the par-5 6th, my drive ended up in the fairway, but on the right side, where a huge tree guards the green and takes going for the green in two out of the equation. I figured out my yardage to get my 2nd shot within 80 yards of the pin, but I hit it too far and ended up only 60 yards out. The shot from there has to be precise, as the green faces diagonally and is an extremely narrow target. I choked down on my 58 degree wedge and hit a perfect shot, solid, nice trajectory, right at the pin, but unfortunately it was about 15 yards too long and it flew over the green and one-hopped into the back bunker. The next shot was a nightmare, and a perfect example of the difficulties of Avenel. I was facing a downhill lie in the bunker, with the green sloping away from me as well, and 15 feet beyond the pin was the water, with nothing to slow the ball down if it was moving too fast. In a case like this there is nothing to do but try to relax and concentrate on hitting a good shot. If you let thoughts of the difficulty of the shot and the consequences of a misplay enter into your mind you basically make yourself nervous and raise the possibility of missing the shot. I picked the 58 degree wedge up quickly in the takeaway and chopped down behind the ball with the face wide open, and fortunately it came out softly and rolled 4 feet past the pin. I knocked the putt in and escaped with a par.
 
The seventh and eighth holes are brutally long par-4’s, especially against the wind. I hit decent drives on both, and I ended up with 217 yards to the pin on seven, and 196 yards on 8. I chose 3-iron for both shots, and hit a pair of ropes, ending up 15 feet on seven and 12 feet on 8. I failed to make either putt, but the two approach shots had been impressive. Walking to the ninth tee I felt great, relaxed and under control, even though the ninth has never been my favorite hole.
 
Along with the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, the ninth at Avenel has to be one of the hardest short par 3’s in the world. The tee sits way up, and the narrow, humped green is guarded by water in front and on the right. The bail out area is obviously left, but the green slopes from the left toward the water and the up-and-down from there is dicey at best. The wind was coming at us, and since I had hit solid 8-irons to the middle in my practice rounds I figured a knock down 7 would be the right play. Looking down at the green it has to occur to every player that you have to be an idiot to hit the ball to the right. The effort becomes one of not overly avoiding the water and yanking the ball to the left. I focused on a point just left of the pin, gripped down on the club, and tried to make a smooth pass at the ball. I looked up, and to my amazement the ball was heading way left, halfway up the hill that the gallery sat on to get a good look down on the green. I saw some guy duck as the ball bounced over his head, and the tall grass kept it from rolling down. Now I had a severe downhill lie, to a green sloping away, with water 15 feet past the pin and only a few feet of light rough to stop the ball. My only play was to land the ball short of the green in the chipping area and let the upslope kill its momentum, then hope it trickled down to the pin. This was another one of those shots that you just have to get up and hit, accepting the fact that anything could happen, a lot of it bad. I poked the ball down the hill but hit it a bit too hard. I watch in horror as the ball hit into the steepest part of the upslope and popped up onto the green, rolling toward and past the pin going a bit too fast. It stopped just off the fringe in the rough, and I bellied my sand wedge up to a foot for a tap-in 4. I was done in one-under 70, and I have to say that I have never been happier with a round ending bogey, since it could easily have been much worse. Dave birdied the hole and ended up with a 68, and we both were relieved and quite content as we signed our cards. Not only had I played a nice round and put myself in position to make the cut, but now I could scoop up my daughter and give her a big kiss as well. It was smiles all around, and I tried to absorb the moment, since I knew for sure that in golf, moments like these needed to be appreciated, as there is never any guarantee that anything this good will ever happen again.
 
Indeed, it didn’t take long for things to turn for the worse, as after lunch my back was too tight to practice and I ended up in the Tour fitness trailer with Dr. Scott giving me the once over. I hate not being able to practice after a round, but I had no option but to go home and use ice and heat to try to relax the spasms for Friday’s round. As it turned out, I did play on Friday, and hit the ball quite well, but the putter went cold and a 74 left me at 2-over par and 2 shots away from making the cut. As always, however, the experience was grand and this time left me optimistic that with 5 more chances that year at Tour events I might do something special.

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