2022 US Open Local Qualifier | Recap
It's not how you start, it's how you finish ...
The US Open … the only professional major that anyone with a low enough handicap (real or imagined) can attempt to qualify for. The joke you always hear on the first tee of these things goes something like: “it only takes the three best rounds of your life to make the US Open! Haha!” (the breakdown of motivation for saying this out loud is 75% for a laugh and 25% an internal justification for dropping $180 bucks on a round of golf).
These folks aren’t wrong … make it through locals and you get to play sectionals against the real dudes who make a living doing this … and maybe if you’re lucky and you do in fact play the best golf of your life, you’ll shoot something in the 130s over two rounds at sectionals and MAYBE sniff a top-10. Sadly though, you’ll probably need to be top 3 or 5 depending on the site and your consolation prize is getting a chance to do it all over again the next year.
And yet, despite the difficulty of the ascent to making the US Open, thousands of people hear their name called on the first tee every year at these qualifiers … and every single one of those people believes, somewhere in their core, that maybe, just maybe, this is the year.
I was one of those people this year. I’ve been one of those people at least ten times in my life so far. The closest I’ve come to qualifying was being one under and in first place after nine holes in 2021 before shooting a back nine 41 to miss by a handful of shots.
I was particularly excited this year, given my renewed commitment to eventually playing with the guys who don’t need to go through this annual obstacle course. I’ve worked really hard the past year re-inventing my golf swing and putting stroke. I’ve been playing pretty decent golf at my home club. I am in the best mental headspace I’ve ever been when it comes to golf. When I teed off at 10:15am on a dreary, 55 degree day at Foxborough Country Club, I really did feel like maybe I could put together the three best rounds of my life…
Fast forward to roughly 2:30PM and I was rolling in a tough, hard breaking right-to-left six footer to save par on eighteen and finish off a twelve-hole stretch of bogey free golf and a fourteen-hole stretch of playing to level par.
Sadly, they make you write down scores for all eighteen holes … and I had played the first four like a complete @ssh*le. When all was said and done, I shot 79. I was SEVEN over through the first four holes (yes, that is not a typo). I started off double-double-bogey-double to “jumpstart” my ascent to professional golf.
I hit a good drive down one, missing the fairway by about two feet and getting a bit of a jumpy lie in the first cut. From there I hit a 9 iron about 30 yards over the green, flubbed a chip, and then took three more shots to get the ball in the hole.
On two, another decent drive, just missing the fairway. I proceeded to pull an 8 iron, hit the cart path just left of the green (an aside … why are golf course architects still putting cart paths within 5 yards of a green?) and left myself short sided in the “thickest rough on the course” (one of my favorite golf broadcast lines … umm how the f*ck do you know the exact relative thickness of every square foot of rough on a bajillion acre golf course, Paul?). Four shots later and I had the privilege of putting my second “6” on the scorecard.
Three was a long par three into a strong wind…missed green, bad chip, two putt from 20 feet … bogey … five over through three.
And the the coup de grace came at the par-5 fourth hole. I hit a great drive, leaving myself about 230 into a green sloped hard from back right to front left with bunkers both right and left of the green. I decided to hit four iron and just run it up the front of the green, planning to leave myself about 30 feet up the hill for an easy birdie at worst. I put a decent swing on it but left it about 7 yards out to the right where it came to rest about a foot from the lip of the bunker. Not one, but too awkward stances (and two bunker shots) later, I’m chipping for par (straight downhill) and ultimately making ANOTHER double.
Younger Colin would have been in a really bad place at this point. Present day me wasn’t particularly happy of course … I’m putting a lot of energy and commitment into this journey, this was clearly not the way I wanted to start … but present day me is also mature enough to know that golf is a marathon and not a sprint. Walking to the fifth tee, I chose to erase those four holes from my memory and pretend I was starting my round, back at even par. I even mumbled to myself on the fifth tee, “now driving, from Sandwich, MA … Colin Andrade!” as though I was being introduced on the first tee again. Sounds stupid, but I needed to do something to get myself going.
I hit my first green in regulation on five, three putted six for bogey (incredibly difficult pin so I didn’t feel too bad), birdied six after sticking a wedge to 7 feet … and then rattled off twelve straight pars to end the round. Standing over the aforementioned 6-footer on eighteen, I actually had convinced myself I needed to make that putt to shoot even for the day. Reality hit hard when I looked at my scorecard before walking into the scoring tent, but for a second there I felt pretty good about what I had done.
So what changed on those last fourteen holes? Not much technically to be honest … I focused a little more on making sure I was turning behind the ball and getting my weight forward on the downswing (something I’ve been working really hard on with my coach). On the greens, I was solid all day to be honest, and I didn’t need to work terribly hard to hole out. I managed to avoid any difficult up and downs after those first four holes.
The biggest struggle was not my swing and the direction of the flight, but the distances I was hitting the ball. I mentioned the misclub on the first hole, hitting a 9-iron about 160 into the wind. I did the same thing (to a lesser extent) three more times with wedges in those last fourteen holes, and then overcorrected twice by clubbing down when I was in between clubs and leaving myself 35 footers for birdie. All in all, it led to a lot of guessing at how far I would hit the ball, which is not a recipe for making birdies.
I am looking forward to chatting with my coach about this next time he and I meet, but my hypothesis is that it is due to some of the swing changes we’ve made that have allowed me to compress the ball a bit better. Add some adrenaline to the mix and there is clearly a recalibration required as I move forward into future tournaments.
So what lessons am I taking away from my seven-over-par, 79 in the first tournament of the year?
Well, for starters, I’m going to remind myself that I was the only person in an 86 player field of pros and elite amateurs to go bogey-free on the back nine of a very difficult course (yes, I looked at every single scorecard to verify that). Bogey avoidance is an incredibly important skill and I’m proud of what I was able to do today in those final fourteen holes.
Today was also a good reminder that golf may be really hard, and when it goes bad, it can go really bad. BUT … as quickly as it can go bad, things can turn around and it can go decent, or even good! As we all know, the game is just as much mental as it is physical and the power of a deep breath and a reset of the mind is pretty remarkable. Golf is about the current shot, not the next one, and certainly not the previous one. I’ll never forget today’s round for the way I turned things around (I know this sounds cliche but I truly think it matters in the long run).
On the more critical side, I need to figure out a way to start a little faster. I had this same thing happen to me three times last year (a horrible first few holes and even or under par the last 15 or so). I can say with confidence that the nerves of tournament golf don’t have a massive effect on my physical swing. But I do believe those nerves speed me up mentally and force me to make process mistakes I wouldn’t normally fall victim to in a practice round. I also lose a bit of confidence in my short game when I transition from practice to tournament. I tend to get heavy handed and stabby … clearly not a good combination.
I’ve got just over a week before my next tournament, the Mass Open Qualifier at LeBaron Hills, a course I’ve played a couple of hundred times (my childhood home course), so I’m really looking forward to getting back over there in a tournament setting. My practice will be focused on engraining the good stuff I’m doing in my full swing while dialing in distances a bit better. And then a lot of short game work and practicing some of the shots I know will be useful over at LeBaron next week.
Strokes Gained Summary (not compared to the field, but to how a touring pro would play the course) from the round below … please do not look if you have a history of poor-golf induced nausea:
And my stat tracking scorecard from the round (get used to seeing purple marker!):
