Well, I’m back in my home base of Dallas, Texas after a two-step in Georgia for the Athens Regional Foundation Classic and the South Georgia Classic Presented by First State Bank & Trust Company in Valdosta.  As always, it’s a real treat and privilege to be a part of the PGA Nationwide Tour.  So every time I get the opportunity to tee it up, it’s exciting. 

Before I write about the golf tournaments I played, I have to mention that I had the opportunity to be a “patron” of the final round of The Masters.   As a member of the Nationwide Tour, I am allowed a free , daily pass at Augusta National.  I scheduled my trip to begin early to take advantage of this tour benefit.   I kept thinking  “why didn’t they mention this after Q-school at the orientation?”  It’s a PGA benefit almost as good as health and dental insurance. 

The Masters

At  5:00 a.m. on Sunday of The Masters,  Nationwide Tour player and friend, Josh Teater,  and I left Athens and headed down I-20 toward Augusta to stand in line in order to get a good seat.  Going to The Masters was unlike any experience I’ve had as a golf spectator.  The course is phenomenal. It’s true that television doesn’t really show the slopes and elevation changes.  The fan atmosphere rivals that of a  football game on a Saturday at Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field.  I waited for two hours on the 8^th tee box to see Tiger and Phil come through and smash drivers.  Then  I spent the rest of the day on #15 the Par 5 to watch guys give it a rip in 2.  My swing coach, Neil Wilkins of Sugarland, Texas told me that you can only go to The Masters once as a spectator. The next time, he says, I must go as a player. So I guess I may not return to Augusta until I’m invited to play.  I know that someday I’ll be playing there.

 

Athens

Back in Athens at the Jennings Mill Country Club, I made my 6^th cut on the tour easily with opening rounds of 70-71. But during both tournaments I struggled with roller coaster rounds.  I was playing aggressively and making a lot of birdies.  But the downside was that I was also making some big mistakes resulting in double bogeys.  In Athens, I was T4 in birdies for the week with 20, but I was T2 in double bogeys with 4.  I don’t care who you are. You aren’t going to be able to move up the leader board when you are making double bogeys. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. So my goal is to continue to minimize mistakes by better assessing risks and taking trouble out of the picture as much as possible.

 I also witnessed something in Athens that I’ll probably never see again in my life.  I was paired with Brendon Todd and Neal Lancaster the first and second rounds in Athens.  Brendon Todd made a hole-in-one the first day on the 17^th hole.  I was thinking “wow that was a great shot”, but I didn’t think anything of it after that.  The very next morning on our first nine holes (we started on the back), Brendon gets up on 17 and aces it again!  Our whole group was stunned to say the least.   Here is the link to the video of Brendon’s second hole in one.

http://www.pgatour.com/video/?/video/video/nationwide-tour/highlights/2009/04/17/highs_nwtour_09athens_rnd2_17th_ace_todd.pgatour

Valdosta

In Valdosta at Kinderlou  Forest Golf Course, it was the same story.  I was T7 in birdies with 17, but T1 in doubles with 3. Kinderlou played almost 78-hundred yards, just about the longest course on the PGA or Nationwide Tours.  The distance wasn’t the problem for me though, as I struggled again on the greens.  I feel like I’m playing well enough every week to win, but I need to eliminate my mistakes and minimize penalties to avoid the big numbers.  My short game really needs to become more consistent if I want to win out here.  I didn’t have my best stuff in Valdosta, but I was able to keep the ball in play and shoot some consistent numbers. 

 

Statistics

I  finished T24 in Athens (70-71-72-70-283), and T29 in Valdosta (73-69-72-71-285) and remained in the Top 10 (#7) on the money list.  I lead the tour in overall birdies after eight tournaments, 30 rounds with 128 birdies. The player closest to my total has 18 fewer birdies at 110. I have 3 Top 10s and 4 Top 25s so far. The PGA statistics tell me to keep working hard on all aspects of my game.

 

What’s Next

 I will use the next couple of weeks that I have off to work very hard on my short game, as it was mostly my putting that cost me shots.  And I will play in my former golf team’s Texas A&M Golf Booster Club event at Traditions Golf Course in College Station. Gig’em Aggies!  This is one of my favorite things to do all year.

While my professional career is important, I value relationships and my faith above all else. I am not playing the BMW only because I am a groomsman in the wedding of my former Aggie teammate, Trey Todd in Abilene, Texas. It is the same week as the South Carolina tournament.  Meanwhile, I’m watching the swine flu news and am currently in the Mexico tournament. I’ll definitely tee it up at the North Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia tournaments making the trip in my van. The only airline flight is to Pittsburgh and a 2-hour drive to the Nationwide Tour Players Cup at Pete Dye Golf Course in Bridgeport, West Virginia. That’s five weeks on the road after Mexico.  Until then I’m going to enjoy the break.  The next couple of weeks I’ll be practicing hard on my game with some stick and puck sessions sprinkled in between. 

New Friends

 If you live near a Nationwide tour stop, come watch us play and I will sign a ball for you.

 

Thanks so much to my Athens host family, Laura and Kevin McHugh for sharing their beautiful home with my caddie, Russell  Helson, and me for the week of the tournament.  Y’all are the best, and no host family could be more loving and warmer than you both were.  Thanks for opening your hearts and refrigerator and letting me play with Halle, the dog, every day.

Thanks for reading my blog and God bless. 

 ^“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”   1 John 3:16

Well it feels so good to be back home in Texas after two weeks on the road. I love my Lone Star State and have become a boastful, native son, some might say insufferably proud at times.  The first week was spent in Lafayette, Louisiana at the Chitimacha Louisiana Open.  The trip was mostly filled with great Cajun food and four rounds of golf in between meals. Two of those rounds were unexpected!  The 36-hole cut line was a little more dramatic than I would have liked.  I made the cut on the number at one under, but I didn't find out until mid-Saturday morning when a large group of players finished their 2nd rounds a day late due to rainy conditions.

In the hotel room, Russell Helson, my caddie, was refreshing the computer every few minutes and giving a dramatic play-by-play of the action via the live scoring on pgatour.com.  It came down to one player making a final bogey on his final hole. This was as close as it gets! The player made a bogey and 14 guys were sticking around for the weekend, when the cut moved from two under to one under. I was one of them. So we jumped in the car and rushed to the course to warm up.  On Sunday, I posted a 66, my best score on the Nationwide Tour at that time. I finished in a tie for 36th place at four under for the tournament.  Thank you Neil Wilkins, my swing coach, from Sugarland, Texas for making the trip over to Lafayette.

Here's an article from pgatour.com

After Louisiana,  I headed to Houston to Monday qualify for the Shell Open.  I shot 70 (-2) at Cypresswood. 65 was the number. Though I failed to make it in, I played well and gained some confidence from the round on a course I had never seen before and with no yardage book available. The Monday qualifier looked like a PGA Tour event unto itself.  So many foreign players were in the Shell Open because of the upcoming Masters. That left some PGA Tour players out of the Shell and trying to Monday qualify for the very competitive event. After the Cypresswood round, it was good to reunite with my old teammate from Texas A&M, Canadian Tour player Bobby Gates and some other close Texas friends that I hadn't seen recently. 

From Houston, Russell and I jumped on a Continental flight and headed for the City by the Bay.  I was mostly pumped for the week, because of the beautiful views that San Francisco has to offer and also the daily visit to In-N-Out Burger. Seriously, it is one of my west coast "food groups."  Stonebrae Golf Course in Hayward, California appears to be the highest point in the entire Oakland/San Francisco area, as you could see both skylines from the 1st tee. The first day was incredibly windy. The course is completely unprotected, so scores were especially high on Thursday.  I shot 74-67-63-70 - 274 (-10) to finish in a tie for 4th.  The 63 in the 3rd round tied my personal best for lowest round in a tournament. 

Here are the results

It felt good to be in the hunt again on a big stage. I felt confident all week, and I was very aggressive.  In the final round, I got off to a shaky start with a four-putt on #1 and a bogey on #2. I stayed patient and positive.  I know I have the game to compete out here. I just need to minimize  my mistakes. Through six tournaments, I have three Top 10 finishes (Moonah, NZ Open, Stonebrae) and my putting stats are #1 on the Nationwide. I am currently #1 in birdies on the Nationwide. But I have many things to  learn and work on to improve and minimize costly mistakes. Russ and I are working hard on getting the right club in my hands at the right time too. 

It was fun to be interviewed by The Golf Channel at Lafayette and San Francisco.  Thank you to all the television folks, especially Jerry Foltz for all the positive comments he wrote on his blog, "Shag Bag." Some people wonder if the television coverage is distracting. It isn't for me.  My mom is a producer, and I've been in front of her cameras for years.  However, I do plan to take voice lessons and improve my singing for future appearances on The Golf Channel.  My loyal audience is demanding an encore!

I have this week off, although I will be headed back to beautiful College Station, Texas to play in an AJGA Junior-Amateur, a charity event at Traditions Golf Course.  It will be kind of surreal to hang around a junior golf tournament.  Not since the summer of 2004 have I played in an AJGA event, the world's best tour in junior golf. I look forward to seeing my A&M Coach, J.T. Higgins and many of my former teammates on the Fightin Texas Aggie Golf Team. Whoop!

Russ and I leave on Saturday for a two week trip to Georgia where I'll play in the Athens Regional Foundation Classic and the South Georgia Classic in Valdosta. So can you guess where I will be on Sunday? My PGA membership gets me one free day pass through the other set of pearly gates, the ones in Augusta. Until my next post, God bless you and pray for our safe travel on this exciting journey.   

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!"

2 Corinthians 5:17