Recap: 2024 Asian Tour Q-School (First Stage)
A bit of everything amidst challenging circumstances ...
Despite the anticipation and excitement for testing myself across a four-day event in brutal conditions, the golf itself only had a small part of my focus last week. And the disappointing result (T-23 and a long way back from qualifying) matters very little in the context of what my family has been forced to reckon with over the past ten days or so.
This past week, my Grandad, Mitchell Davidson, passed away after three weeks of battling a variety of ailments brought on by some ill-fated combination of old age and a fall he took on Father’s Day. A stubborn Scotsman-cum-Australian, the man hung on for dear life for days longer than any of us thought he would just to make sure he saw my Mum, his only daughter, one more time as she raced across the world to be there for him. In the end, he passed peacefully while surrounded by loved ones … and we are all grateful for the opportunity to have been there with him right up until the end.
I always credit my Mum for being the one to get me into golf. It was her bag in which I hid my clubs from the starter when I was seven years old, only to pull them out and start playing for free on the second hole at Poquoy Brook all those years ago. And while that is unquestionably true, it is also true that despite living a world away in Australia, my Grandad had just as much of an influence on my love for the game as my Mum or anyone else in my orbit.
Grandad was a proper sportsman. A soccer player in Scotland and Australia, he was also an eager golfer and found himself playing every weekend for decades. My Nana always likes to joke that despite being possibly the fastest player on planet Earth (this is true, he didn’t give a flying f*ck whose turn it was … he just kept moving), his trips to the course every weekend morning somehow managed to be a six to seven hour endeavor (with likely only three of those being on course and the rest being at the bar in the clubhouse).
He and Nana used to come over to the States to stay with us for six to eight weeks at a time each summer, and I’d have the privilege of playing with him a handful of times each trip. I got to watch him stripe his trusty 5-wood down the fairway all day long. He wasn’t very long, especially as he aged, but the man could hit a golf ball straight. A typical hole might be driver into the middle of the fairway, 5-wood layup straight down the middle again, 5-wood onto the green, two putts. He did it all with such style. He always hit this little cut and if you squinted closely, you could see a bit of Arnold Palmer in the way he held off his finish and watched the ball move gently left to right.
On the rare occasion when it didn’t fly the direction he wanted or he missed a makeable putt, he’d address himself in the third person using one of his various names, “Mick”, “Davo”, “Mitchell” (only when he was really mad), and make sure everyone knew that he was more disappointed in himself than anyone else could have been of him.
On the flipside, there was no one more supportive of others on the course. I remember going out there and feeling buoyed by his commentary on my own game. He was always so proud of the good shots both me and my Mum hit and would remember the really good ones to talk about after the round. In more recent years, he continued that support, always asking me about this tournament or that tournament. If I played like crap, it didn’t matter to him … he was just proud of me for doing what I love.
A big part of the calculus for why we moved to Australia was to be closer to my Nana and Grandad. It is almost surreal that we’ve lost him so shortly after getting here, but we are so grateful he got a chance to meet Jack and Lorena in person. He will be with us always and I’m not sure I’ll ever set foot on a golf course again without thinking of him.
Amidst the uncertainty of my Grandad’s health, I played Asian Tour Q-School last week. My own health was a little questionable after our family had the flu tear through the house (bouncing from kid to kid to parents and included two burst eardrums for Jack that necessitated an ER visit the day prior to the event), but besides a bit of fatigue, I ended up feeling pretty good for most of the week.
The bigger challenge was the weather at Mt. Derrimut. I mentioned in the preview that wind was going to be a factor. What I didn’t fully comprehend was just how exposed the course actually was to the elements. With very few trees and the property sitting up on a hill, the wind felt supercharged as it rose up and over the crest of the hill and dropped down into the valley where the majority of the course sits.
On days two, three, and four, we had wind gusts of close to 50mph and on day two, it was SUSTAINED at about 30mph. Balls were wobbling around on the greens. Downwind shots were nearly impossible to stop. Into the wind shots went nowhere. The scoring average in the second round (a day when I put together a truly remarkable 89) was hovering around 80 for the day … a number that you wouldn’t normally see in a professional event, especially one with the caliber of players in this field.
To shoot good numbers in bad conditions, you really needed to be in control of your game and frankly, get a little lucky. I unfortunately did neither of those things the first three days. In the end, I shot 79 - 89 - 77 - 74 which put me in a tie for 23rd out of the 28 players who ended up starting the event. The 89 was the highest competitive score I can remember shooting … at least in the last fifteen years.
The biggest question y’all should have is “what the heck went wrong in the second round?”. The short answer is: a bit of everything. I putted poorly in the wind. I made a few bad swings that left me in pretty sh*tty spots. I got incredibly unlucky no less than four times. My short game was just a bit off. And I made too many big numbers (including an unfathomable quadruple bogey on a par three).
If there was anything GOOD to come out of that round, it was that I managed to par the last three holes to break 90. After the fifteenth hole, I did a bit of math in my head and realized that I was seventeen over and in danger of shooting in the 90’s. Because the day was going absolutely horrible, my first thought was “well, you have a bit of cushion to break 100 at least” (admittedly not a very productive mental approach). I quickly pushed that thought aside and told myself I’d do whatever I could do avoid my score starting with a ‘9’ … and I got to work. I made an eight-footer for par on sixteen (my first putt made from outside two feet all day), got up and down on seventeen from in front of the green for another par, and then two-putted the last to salvage some semblance of pride.
I spent the car ride home that night trying to figure out what in the world just happened. I didn’t really have any answers for myself other than I did a sh*t job of getting the ball in the hole quickly. Once again, I was too focused on the golf swing and the putting stroke … I simply forgot that stuff doesn’t matter and all we care about is the score at the end of the round. It sucked that I had to go learn that lesson all over again in a time and place where I couldn’t afford to make such big mistakes. It wasn’t until after a long walk with Kaylie, the kids, and the dogs that I calmed down and mentally reset for the final two days.
Day three was better, thankfully. In difficult conditions again, I managed to finally make a few birdies after another terrible bogey-bogey-bogey start (I played the opening hole two-over for the week, the par-5 second hole four-over, and the third hole three-over … good starts, eh?!). I played four through fourteen in one-under that day before bogeying fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen and ending with a 77. I hit the ball better, I putted better, but I once again let too many shots slip through my fingers. After the round, I skipped any kind of practice to head home, grab Kaylie and the kids, and go straight to the hospital to be with my family.
I had no expectations on Friday morning for the final round. I was pretty determined to do better, but I was ready for any result to be honest. The big change I made going into the final round was a commitment to not thinking about my golf swing and instead just focusing on getting the ball from A to B to into the cup.
As it turned out, that worked really well for arguably the best eight hole stretch of golf I’ve ever played.
With the wind blowing hard again, I started on the back nine to face off against the most difficult stretch of the golf course. I made a solid opening par on the tenth hole, two putting from forty feet after not getting the firm bounce I expected on my perfectly struck approach shot. On eleven, a short par-4 playing through a hard right-to-left cross wind, I placed myself perfectly in the fairway and then hit a crafty little sixty yard pitch shot to fifteen feet under the hole for birdie. I left the putt two rolls short but felt good about how I had played the hole.
The twelfth hole had given me troubles all week (I played it in five-over up to that point for the week, including the quad I alluded to earlier) but I stepped up to the 175 yard shot and rode the quartering wind with an 8-iron nearly perfectly, watching it stop fifteen feet short and right of the hole. I hit my worst putt of the day but made the comebacker for my third straight par and another boost of confidence.
My first birdie of the day came on the thirteenth after hitting an approach shot to ten feet and dripping my birdie putt just over the lip downhill, downwind, and scared sh*tless of letting it get past the hole. I had to back off the putt three different times as the wind gusted and the ball wobbled around on the green. Had I missed the hole with any kind of pace, it easily could have gone down the hill on the other side of the hole and into a fronting bunker. What was cool about that putt is that it was the ultimate “just do whatever you have to do to get it started on the right line” kind of putt. I was getting blown around so much that I had to change my setup entirely to gain some semblance of stability and I shortened my stroke to mere centimeters to ensure it got started on the right line. It was a microcosm of the mentality I had brought into the day … “technique doesn’t matter, just get the ball in the hole however you can”.
The round really started rolling at that point. Another good drive on fourteen and the coolest hooky punch four-iron dead into the gusting wind to a back left pin left me four feet for another birdie. I confidently knocked that in for my second birdie in a row before playing a smart shot into the par-3 fifteenth (an impossible green to hit that day), chipping to ten feet and then making that for a momentum-saving par.
On sixteen, they had moved the tees up to give players a chance to carry the wetlands crossing the fairway at about 275 yards from the tee. In the third round, I laid up anyway and left myself in a not-so-great spot right on the edge of the wetlands. On this day, I got aggressive and took it straight over the hazard, leaving myself an 8-iron into the par-5. A solid shot and two-putts later, I had made my third birdie in four holes and was playing with a confidence I hadn’t had in a long time.
I made my first meh swing on the difficult seventeenth, pulling my drive onto a little dirt mound left of the fairway. Left with 200 yards in and forced to hook a shot around a little sapling from a bare lie (I can’t tell you how many times my golf ball ended up DIRECLTY behind the nearly non-existent trees on this golf course), I took on the shot and hit a rope hook hybrid back into the wind (not dissimilar to the shot I hit on fourteen) and absolutely pured it. It settled just on the back fringe as I laughed to myself at how good the shot was (I was finally having a bit of fun). Two putts for another par left me at three-under through eight.
I mentioned earlier it may have been the best eight hole stretch I’ve ever played. It wasn’t that it was the lowest score I’ve ever made in any consecutive eight holes. It was more about the way I played each and every shot with purpose, in difficult conditions, after having played sooo poorly the three days prior. I had been searching desperately for anything to get me going and it turned out I needed to forget it all and just play … to just get the ball in the hole. I know Grandad would have been proud.
The rest of the day wasn’t quite as easy. I ran out of gas as I made the turn and made a couple of bogeys early on the front nine after getting slightly more aggressive than I probably needed to be. I kept giving myself decent birdie looks but couldn’t get anything to fall (two lip outs and another two that just narrowly missed). I made a bad swing on the par-3 sixth that led to a bogey and missed a three-footer on the last when a massive gust of wind kicked up right as I struck my putt (admittedly, I hit it weakly) and it fell left of the hole for a closing bogey. In the end it was a 74, better than the field average on the final day and something to be proud of to close the event.
Despite the disappointment of the overall result, I’m excited about things moving forward.
I learned a lot this week. Eventually coming out of a week just having learned from my mistakes isn’t going to be enough, but I’m okay with it right now. I played the first two rounds with one of the guys who qualified and he didn’t do anything spectacular. He didn’t do anything I can’t do on my good days. He was just consistently solid. I’m capable of doing that physically … I just need to figure out the mental approach. I think I’m much closer to doing that after this week than I was prior to the event.
We are still finalizing my schedule over the next few months but it’s likely I’ll be out in Western Australia for the WA Open in the middle of October, even if it’s only to try and get through the pre-qualifier. The meat of the season gets going in late October, November, and December so should be a busy couple of months depending on where I get starts.
I’ll be back in the coming weeks with more updates and hopefully some non-tournament related posts.
Thanks as always for the support. Keep climbing y’all and don’t forget to look up … where you will undoubtedly see my Grandad knocking his 5-wood down the fairway and hightailing it to go hit it again, and again, and again.
R.I.P. Grandad.
Great post and recap of this last round. I especially liked the closing tribute to your Granddad. My condolences on your loss; but know he is still watching over you, and your game!