After a very eventful start to the year hanging with Jonathan Ray and helping with the Chasin the Chains winter series in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and San Diego, I was very eager for the tournament season to get underway, but I didn't think these past two weeks would be as exhausting as they were. Side note, I did pick up my second PDGA win at the Chasin the Chains Flex Start at Conocido shooting a 1064 rated round, I was super pumped and it gives me confidence that I can continue to have a great year if I play my game!
GCC! After missing last years GCC due to work it was nice to get out to this event and take in everything it had to offer. There will always be complaints about each and every tournament, but in Vegas we ran into a lot of weird things that I felt could've been avoided with more foresight from experienced players. Either way the courses each had unique challenges, some a little more gimmicky than others, but they were challenges none the less. I held together after my first round to have a very strong finish to put myself in a solid place. The second round was mixed with just a handful of mistakes but other than that it was very solid golf. The third round was where I realized that I wasn't much of a fan of the courses because it kept feeling like we were playing the same holes. You throw far and avoid a hazard and pitch up over more hazards to a basket on a mound. Lots of "tweener" holes that couldn't necessarily be reached but the majority of the field would take the same score on the hole. I would shoot my lowest rated round of the weekend, which lit a fire under me a little and allowed me to gather myself going into the final round. I was motivated and I knew what I was capable of. I had one hiccup that cost me a stroke or two early, but the real bummer was on the final hole. I played what I felt was the right shot and got a reverse skip and roll into the water. I collected myself got a good read on the wind and threw the shot exactly how I wanted but it wasn't good enough and I found myself OB again. I still had an opportunity to make a putt for a 5, but I didn't realize that there was a random patch of OB 18ft from the basket out of my vision from where I was putting, I didn't even know that there was OB there because you rarely ever ended up behind the basket. So I end up throwing OB for the third time on the hole and made my putt for a 7, not the way I planned on finishing my round that was going so well. That was one of the gimmicky things that I noticed and it was a total bummer to have ended the tournament the way I did. I complained plenty about it, but in the end it is what it is and I had to live with how it all played out. Please understand that the things I am saying here do not take away from all of the people involved at the GCC who worked tirelessly to run a successful event and kicked off the year with style. There can always be ways to improve and I hope they listen to the feedback and make next year even better. In the end I was able to average over 1000 for the weekend and finish in 26th place. Of course we expect more but I am very pleased with how I handled myself on the course and even when I didn't shoot my best I was able to play some really solid golf. Finding the positives isn't always easy but it can really help you shape yourself to be successful in the future.
With only two days of rest we headed down to Phoenix and tried to practice some of the courses to just refresh ourselves but with some inclement weather we never really got any solid practice in. Still feeling fatigued from GCC I could tell that The Memorial was going to be a tough uphill battle. The first round was very boring out at Fountain Hills with not many birdies and not many bogies. I wasn't upset but I just found myself not being able to score, it was feeling reminiscent of GCC, playing holes where it felt tough to score except these were all holes that you can score on, I just didn't. Then we were off to Fiesta Lakes, this is not a caliber of course that I think we should be playing at a DGPT event, but it shouldn't determine how I played. I went out and did not play very well and I let my thoughts on the course influence my play. This was my biggest mistake on the weekend, I allowed myself to be influenced in a direction that would ultimately hurt me for an entire round. I found lots of OB and had a couple of bad breaks on putts, but I could've turned it all around had I gone in a little more hungry to play and compete. This was another moment where I found myself getting motivated by my lowest round of the event. I went into round three at Vista Del Camino a lot more hungry. I started slow missing the first three but the one thing I managed to do was focus on each shot and trust that if I kept to my game that I could still score very well. I managed to play incredibly clean golf and put up a very solid round to climb 30 places moving from 71st to 41st. Going into the final day back at Fountain Hills, I was fortunate to have an incredible card with Jake Palmer, Jacob Mott and one of my very close friends AJ Risley. We had such a good vibe going and it all propelled us to play some incredible golf. We all climbed up some in the standings which was great to see, but I lost the card so it stung a bit more. All three of those guys came out ready to play and I hope to have more cards like that in the future. Plus we four way chest bumped every time we got a star frame... we did it four times that round, one hole where nobody was even inside of the circle, it was great! After everything is said and done, I was constantly checking the scores to see where I ended up, I finished 39th which is very respectable considering my play in the early rounds. I managed to again shoot just over 1000 on the weekend and that is something that became a goal for the weekend. I battled and I climbed back from the dead. It was great just being able to play a tournament after coming short two years ago.
Now we are off to Texas, with a ton of events coming up real soon. So be on the lookout for some WhalePants clinics! I am looking forward to having the opportunity to compete more and continue to prove myself in this sport. I have incredible support from my sponsors, Dynamic Discs, Whale Sacs, Booom, Team Nati, Handeye Supply and Launchpad. I want to thank everyone who has supported Tina and I in all of our endeavors, you guys make this all possible and we are hoping to give back. I want to thank Tina for putting up with me and working with me everyday to be a better person, I definitely wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her.
Thanks everyone for reading! Keep those PutterPants on and keep having the Most Fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylA2OehiOfU
Enjoy!
