Recap | PGA Tour of Australasia Q-School
The season may be over, but the climb continues ...
I’d like you to perform a thought experiment with me …
Think of a time you undertook a challenge and did nearly everything correctly … yet still failed. You put in the work, executed at a high level, outperformed your own expectations … and walked away with nothing to show for it.
Maybe you’re one of my high finance readers (shout out to the Berenberg crew) and you spent weeks analyzing one of the companies on your watchlist. You built detailed models and spoke to company management. You worked closely with multiple knowledgable economists to get a sense for which way the economic winds were blowing. Everything screamed “buy buy buy” … so you did, and you felt great about it. And then the next morning Trump woke up and decided he thought the CEO of the company you just invested in was more handsome than him and told Elon to give an important government contract to their biggest rival. There goes $2 billion of projected revenue over the next five years and company issues a profit warning … stock craters … you lose your shirt.
Or perhaps you’re an analytics consultant (hi team MERU!) and you’ve been working for three months with a client to deliver modern data infrastructure that will be integral to the client making smart decisions moving forward. You’ve aligned with the company on a roadmap for the infrastructure and the reporting you’ll build and you’ve started the process of curating your data pipelines, populating the new data warehouse, and building the dashboards everyone has agreed upon. You’ve been diligent in tracking progress to the statement of work and keeping all core stakeholders aligned. The project is somehow even ahead of schedule! But wait, you’ve just discovered the finance team has been using outdated accounting rules and every f*cking number they have been tracking in their ERP is wrong … and therefore every f*cking number in your data warehouse is wrong … and therefore every f*cking number in the fancy new reporting you’ve built is … you guessed it … wrong (and useless).
Anything like that come to mind? Surely it has … and if not, good for you, sounds like you’re killing it.
How did it make you feel when you came to the realization that you had put in all that work and walked away with nothing tangible to show for it? Did it help knowing you did everything you possibly could to ‘win’ that challenge or did it make it worse knowing your best effort still wasn’t good enough?
These are some of the (many) questions I’ve grappled with over the past few days as my season came to a close with a 40th place finish at first stage of Aussie Tour Q-School. 72 - 73 - 72, four-over par for the tournament and five shots out of a qualifying position.
I missed by five measly shots across fifty-four holes AND I BARELY MADE A PUTT OVER FIVE FEET ALL WEEK LONG. I was 50 for 50 on putts 5 feet or less.
That number is meaningful for three reasons. Firstly, the average PGA Tour conversion percentage from inside 5 feet is 96.75% meaning even the best in the world miss from that distance every once in a while. Second, it means that I only made four f*ckin putts from outside of five feet across three days of golf on pretty well-maintained greens running at a very reasonable pace. And third, I only made four putts outside of five feet despite having roughly 40 birdie putts with many of them being from a reasonable enough distance to expect a few makes. I’ve included the conversion statistics from my week below for the nerds who want the data.
What is perhaps even more frustrating is that I hit a lot of really good putts. Dom (who came down to caddy for me) and I felt confident we had a good sense for how the majority of the putts were going to break. We had a good feel for the speed required. And I put really good strokes on a lot (admittedly not all) of those putts. And yet they still didn’t go in the hole. We had burned edges, hard lip outs, putts left a roll or two short … and even a couple that managed to break UP a hill (would love an explanation on how that is possible from any physics experts reading this).
Now, I don’t want to pretend like none of this was my fault. I failed to match the right line with the correct speed too many times. We misread a few putts. I wasn’t aggressive enough at certain points with my approach shots to give myself more of those really short looks at birdie. There were a lot of things around the greens that I could have improved and golf doesn’t just give you things because you think you “deserve one”. But damn, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was borderline torturous …
I’m going to dive into the round recaps here in a second, but I thought it was important to set the context around my inability to get the ball into the hole because this week was a true microcosm of my ‘24-’25 campaign. I have gotten so much better at golf over the last six months. My golf swing is better. My short game is better. My putting is better (no seriously, it is … I promise). My body is better. My mind is better. But at the end of the day, the game is about getting the ball in the hole and I’m just not doing that consistently fast enough yet …
Round 1 (72, +1)
The week couldn’t have started off any better. After a couple of days of practice (both on course and off) with Dom, we were ready to go and excited about where my game stood coming into the biggest event of the year.
That excitement and polish translated into a birdie on the very first hole of the tournament. Driver down the middle, hybrid to the middle of the green, and two putts later I walked off the par-5 first hole with an easy four. One hole, one birdie. Had you told me there would only be four more of those over the next fifty-three holes, I would have laughed (or spit depending on who you were) in your face.
I then proceeded to rattle off seven straight pars … most of which were uneventful. In fact, all of them were uneventful. I hit every fairway and every green in that stretch. And proceeded to miss birdie putts from 25, 15, 20, 15, 23, 15, and 13 feet. Besides the putts on the second and the sixth, they all had a more-than-reasonable chance of dropping.
I walked to the ninth hole feeling good about how things were going thus far (one-under through eight) but knew scores were going to be pretty good with the wind down and was a little disappointed I hadn’t taken advantage of all the chances I gave myself early in the round.
On the par-5 ninth, I pulled a drive left of my target but ended up in a decent spot on the eighth fairway. I got back into position with a seven-iron over a small cluster of trees and left myself about 70 yards to a pin sitting on top of a shelf with a steep drop off a few paces behind the hole. My ball was on a slight downslope and caused the shot to explode off the club face a bit more than I had anticipated. We watched as the shot flew up towards the green, landed ten feet past the hole on the downslope and came to rest 25 yards beyond the flag and a good ten feet below the level of the green. It was probably the one mistake I couldn’t make to that pin and despite hitting what I thought was a good shot, we knew we had messed up a bit. Keeping my composure, I hit an awesome pitch shot using the upslope just short of the pin to deaden the roll out, but it still trickled about six feet past the hole. Unfortunately the putting woes continued and the ball turned the opposite direction of what I had expected leading to my first bogey of the round.
Nine holes in, even par for the round. One birdie, one bogey. Rising frustrations …
The back nine started very similarly to the stretch of golf I played through the middle of the front nine. Par on ten (missed twenty footer). Par on eleven (missed twelve footer). Par on twelve (missed seven footer thanks to a putt magically breaking up the hill). Par on thirteen (missed thirteen footer). Par on fourteen (great two putt from about fifty feet).
On fifteen, I hit a so-so tee shot and left myself 190 yards into what I think is the trickiest approach shot on the golf course. I probably psyched myself out a bit and pushed my six-iron to the safe side of the green where my ball ended up in a little gully about pin high. After debating whether to putt or chip the shot, I chose my 58 degree wedge and just didn’t commit to hitting it as hard as I needed in order to get it to the flag. Another agonizingly close putt later, I walked away with another bogey to fall to one-over on the round. At this point, I found myself internally frustrated (though I don’t think I was showing it on the outside). The way I was hitting the ball, I shouldn’t have been any worse than a couple under par at that point and instead I was over par with three holes to play.
That frustration compounded on the next hole when my birdie putt on the par-3 sixteenth did a 270 degree lip-out that might as well have been a kick in the balls. It looked like it was in the second it came off the putter face. In fact, I started walking it in and was ready to show a bit of excitement for finally making a putt before it ripped around the hole and shot the opposite direction. Looking back at things now, I think if that putt had gone in (or even the par putt on the previous hole), the entire tournament may have gone differently just because I’d have retained a bit of momentum after playing good golf through a tough stretch of the golf course.
That still left with me two holes to play. And after an extremely boring round of golf up to that point, things were about to get far more exciting.
On the seventeenth, I hit my only truly bad tee shot of the day. On what is a really easy driving hole (and one that was playing downwind), I made a terrible swing, blocking my drive up into a hill covered in little bushes. It was one of those places on the golf course that you have about a 50/50 chance of getting a decent enough lie to advance the ball. When we arrived to the ball’s landing spot, I initially breathed a sigh of relief when I saw I could probably get a club on the ball … but felt a bit more apprehension as I started taking little practice swings and realized that there was a lot of bush in my swing path that was going to make generating enough power to get it back into play difficult. We agreed I could do it and when I finally pulled the trigger, I had advanced the ball just far enough where I had a clear line to the green, but it ended up substantially short of where I was trying to hit it.
Now faced with 170 yards off a sandy lie to a flag cut on the right edge of a perched green with big trouble right, I was officially nervous (after having spent most of the day keeping my emotions in check). We chose eight-iron and agreed on going at the safer side of the green to avoid the big runoff to the right. I hated the bare, sandy lie and I told myself to just focus on making good contact. My feet were well below the ball and I was on a bit of a downslope as well, making the whole proposition that much harder. The resulting swing got a bit of a laugh from Dom as we watched it track towards the flag and land four feet beyond the pin. I essentially did a walk-through swing with my back leg flying forward to keep my momentum going down the hill in an effort to make good contact. It had come out perfectly (well, maybe a bit right of our target) and I couldn’t believe my good fortune in getting the distance spot on.
“What was that?!” asked Dom.
“Artistry Dom, artistry” was my half cheeky, half embarrassed response.
Whether it was skill or luck or some combination of both, I don’t know … but it was a pretty cool shot and one I’ll remember for a while. And the reason I’ll remember it fondly is because I drained the four-footer despite it breaking hard to the right after hitting a nearly identical putt from the same spot in the practice round. Had I not hit it the day before, I would have had no idea it broke so much and likely would have missed it right.
We walked to the final hole of the day feeling like we had stolen a shot back. With adrenaline pumping, I stood up and nailed a drive down the left side of the fairway towards a bunker that we thought I had no chance of reaching. We watched in horror as the ball bounded into the middle of the sand and looked at each other questioning how the hell I got it all the way there. Fortunately, I had a good lie and hit a great nine-iron to the back of the green where I was able to two-putt for a closing par and a round of one-over par 72.
I walked off the course that day with mixed emotions. I was thrilled to finish with two pars after where I drove the ball the last two holes but frustrated with having shot just about the highest possible score given how I hit the ball. Still, I was right in thick of things … only two shots off the cut line with 36 holes to play. I slept well that night knowing I had every chance of making good things happen the following two days.
Round 2 (73, +3 for the tournament)
Another beautiful fall day in Melbourne brought a lot of sunshine but a bit more wind than the first round.
Our day started on the par-5 ninth hole (it was a two-tee start this week off the first and the ninth). Much like the first round, I got off to a flying start after hitting an awesome pitch shot (my third shot on the par-5) up and over a little mound guarding the back left pin (by far the toughest on the green) and knocking in a five-footer to get back to even par for the tournament. It was exactly what we needed and I thought for sure the momentum had flipped for good.
After a very good approach shot into the difficult tenth, I left my birdie attempt about six inches short for an easy tap in par before stepping up on the 11th tee and smashing a hybrid 270 yards (we had a helping right to left wind) into the greenside bunker on the short par 4. Left with a long bunker shot of about 35 yards, I hit a poor chunk and run that made the green but left me about 50 feet for my birdie. A poor first putt that run well past the hole set up an eight-footer that burned the edge (again turning the opposite direction of what we had expected) and brought me back to even for the round and one-over for the tournament.
I hit the par-5 12th in two shots but three-putted again from very long distance to make par. I made three pars in a row on thirteen (good two-putt from just off the green), fourteen (two good shots, missed fifteen footer), and fifteen (good approach shot that just snuck up onto the top tier of the green and made for a very delicate putt that I had to be cautious with) before reaching the severely downhill par-3 sixteenth hole.
The sixteenth at the Moonah Legends course is honestly a silly hole … or at least a couple of sections of the green are silly. On this day, the hole was ALMOST playing as a dogleg right (reminder that it is a par 3) with the pin barely visible from the back tee box. At 205 yards with a steep drop off behind the hole and a steep slope of green in front, it was a very small target and playing into a decent breeze. We did some math on the tee box and decided that between the wind and the downhill nature of the shot, it equaled something like a 215 yard shot. I hit four-iron just left of the flag and waited ages for the ball to come down on the green. Unfortunately, it landed just beyond pin high and bounced down the slope, leaving me with an awkward uphill pitch shot that I gunned past the hole and missed the 18-footer coming back to make another bogey. The chip and the putt weren’t very good, but I had once again gotten a bit unlucky after hitting what I thought was a terrific tee shot.
Pars on seventeen and eighteen brought us back around to the first hole where I had made birdie the day prior. I pulled my tee shot a bit and missed the speed slot but still had a good chance of reaching the green in two. From about 250 yards into the wind, I pured a 3-wood just right of the hole and watched the ball carry the steep upslope in front of the green (my target) and go up the vertiginous hill behind the green. We had seen ball after ball go up that hill and come back down but my Titleist golf ball refused to cooperate and got hung up in a bit of a weird lie. It wasn’t an impossible up and down but it wasn’t super straightforward either. I hit an okay shot but it ran about ten feet past the hole and I left the birdie putt a couple of roles short dead in the middle. Another frustrating par that easily could have been eagle or birdie at worst if the ball didn’t defy gravity once again …
With a bit of anger still bubbling from the missed birdie chance, I hit driver really hard on the second hole and ended up in a greenside bunker with the steepest face imaginable. My ball was hit so good it rolled all the way up the face and then back down onto the downslope at the back of the bunker leaving me with a very difficult shot to get the ball on the green and keep it there. A few feet left and my drive could have climbed the bank fronting the green and I may have been putting for eagle … but instead I was in a battle to make par. This battle was one I was not going to win on this day unfortunately. I left my first bunker shot in the sand after trying to get a bit too cute with it. I got the second one out but it ended up over the green where I two-putted for my third bogey of the day. Two-over for the round and three-over for the tournament. I was still very much in the mix but knew I needed a few good things to go my way if I wanted to give myself a really good chance in the third and final round. With six holes to play, I was hoping to give myself birdie looks on each and every hole … a goal I ultimately accomplished but without much to show for it.
Those six holes turned out to be very similar to the same stretch on the day prior. Two putt par on the third. Two putt par on the fourth. Ditto on five. Got myself into a little bit of trouble on six after again miscalculating how far I could hit my drive but hit the green with my second from a tricky lie and made a five-footer to save par after a long distance first putt. I gave myself the best look of the day on seven after hitting a wedge shot to about nine feet but hit arguably my worst putt of the tournament, pushing it wide right and walking off with another par. One more good look on the eighth hole (my last of the day) was not good enough for my ball to want to drop … and I tapped in for my fourteenth par of the day and twenty-ninth of the tournament through thirty-six holes.
Having gone out a little earlier on day two, we grabbed some lunch and then hit the short game facility for a bit of bunker practice. I was pretty frustrated with how I handled the shot on the second hole and Dom walked me through what had happened and how we could address a similar situation if it happened again. An hour or so later and I was feeling really good about the shorter shots. We had done a lot of work on it earlier in the week but this post round session helped solidify some of those concepts we had worked through on Monday. I went home and passed out that night knowing it was going to take a good round to qualify (I figured I’d need to shoot 66 or 67) but confident that all facets of my game were in good shape besides the ball going in the hole fast enough.
Round 3 (72, +4 for the tournament)
Teeing off the ninth again on day three and knowing I had three good birdie opportunities in the first four holes had me excited to get things going on Friday morning.
Two good shots on my opening par-5 that morning left me with an awkward 30-yard pitch up the hill to a front left flag tucked over a little mound. My distance with the pitch was good but it kicked a little more right than I hoped and I proceeded to leave the twelve-foot birdie putt about six inches short. The kick in par was nice but not the start I had been hoping to get off to playing a relatively easy hole.
I missed the green on the 195-yard par-3 10th in a bad spot right of the green, but hit an awesome bump and run up the hill (a shot we had practiced quite a bit early in the week) and made the six-footer coming back down the hill for another par to get my round going. I felt like it was a big momentum putt early in the round and I was licking my chops knowing I had two good birdie chances coming up at eleven and twelve.
Those licked chops turned into a bitten tongue (the really really bad kind where you’re swallowing blood for hours no matter how much you rinse your mouth) on eleven after I made the worst swing of the week - a hybrid well right of my target, up the hill, into a bush, with limited options for recovery. Knowing we needed something special, I attempted to knock the ball back into the fairway through a tiny little gap in the bush (in fairness, I really had no other play) but it collided with a thick branch in the bush and squirted out into another well-placed piece of undergrowth. This time around, I had a better chance of getting it out but could only advance it fifteen yards or so where it ended up on a sandy lie about 65 yards from the flag. After a really uncommitted, sh*tty shot, I was then plugged in a greenside bunker, still about forty yards from the hole. I got the ball out of the plugged lie but it trundled down to a chipping area (still short of the green).
At this point, I was heading for a very big number (I had taken five shots to that point) and things were moving fast. Some previous iteration of me would have then hit a poor chip shot, missed the putt, and made eight. I wouldn’t have given up but I certainly would have lost focus and I might have gone on to shoot 80. But as cliche as it sounds, as my game has gotten better these last eight months, so has my mind and my “golf maturity”. I was able to reset enough mentally to hit an awesome chip shot to tap in range to “save” my seven. And when I walked off the green, I was undoubtedly frustrated … but also extremely motivated to make something good happen. I was able to simply ‘let go’ of the disaster that just played out and aimed 100% of my focus on getting those shots back as quickly as possible. Mathematically, that horrible mistake meant I now had to play the last fifteen holes in seven-under par. I have done that before (not in a tournament but at home in club competitions) and there was no reason I couldn’t do it again.
I stepped up on the par-5 twelfth hole and nailed my best drive of the week there before leaving my second shot pin-high right in a little collection area. When Dom asked me if I wanted to putt or chip it, my immediate thought was “what is going to give me the best chance to hole the shot for eagle?”. Just the fact I asked that question without prompting was confidence-inspiring for myself … because again, previous iterations of Colin the golfer would have chosen the shot that would set himself up for the best chance at birdie, not eagle. This time around, I had so much confidence in myself (despite the horrors just one hole earlier) that I chose to pitch the ball and take out the uncertainty of the upslope of fringe between my ball and the hole which could have sent a putt in nearly any direction. As soon as I hit the shot, I knew I had made the correct choice and watched as it pitched exactly where I planned and track toward the flag. A few seconds later, my eyes went wide with excitement as it appeared the ball was going to hit the flag and drop in the hole for an eagle. But in the most literal definition of ‘microcosm’ imaginable, the ball clanked off the dead center of the flag and just stayed out of the hole. Yes, it was an easy tap-in birdie … but the shot absolutely deserved to drop in for a three. Just like four or five or ten more of my really good putts could have dropped for birdies throughout the week. Or my drive on the second hole in round two could have missed the bunker and rolled onto the green for an eagle chance. ‘Could’ve, should’ve’ indeed.
The floodgates opened (relative to the rest of the week at least) for a few holes after that. I made another birdie on thirteen after finally making a putt outside of fifteen feet and then watched two more birdie putts JUST slide past the hole on fourteen and fifteen. I left another birdie putt just short on sixteen but drained my third birdie of the day on seventeen after hitting a wedge to about twelve feet. In six holes, I had made up for the triple bogey on eleven and gave myself a fighting chance going into the final nine holes of the day. Three birdies in six holes meant I could pull off four in nine … right?
Sadly, the hot putter only lasted six holes. Pars on eighteen and one (we again watched a putt break a direction that seemed physically impossible) left me needing four birdies in the last seven. The challenge got even more difficult after three-putting from just off the green on the second hole after I gunned a wedge a bit too hard from 95 yards from the middle of the fairway.
I hit arguably the best iron shot of the day on the par-3 third in a tough wind to a really hard hole location but couldn’t manage to make the putt from fifteen feet. I only managed pars over the next three holes and it was pretty clear teeing off on seven that my chances were done. I did manage to convince myself that maybe the cut would move to even par and if I could just hole out for eagle on the final two holes, I might still have a chance … but my pitching wedge approach on seven carried a bit too far and my tournament was over when the ball bounced just over the green. I got up and down for par there and again on eight to finish my one-over par round of 72 … a pretty respectable number after giving away three shots on my third hole of the day.
Walking down the final two holes of Q-school knowing I had missed my chance at getting status for next year was pretty emotional. The only thing holding me back from full-on crying in the moment was the fact there were people around. I had put so much effort and work into preparing for this week … and it was over. I had failed to achieve the result I was looking for and that failure came about in a kind of a gut-wrenching ‘death by a thousand missed birdie putts’ sorta way. Yeah I made a big number in the third round, but that was only a small part of the problem.
When I got home that afternoon, I collected Kaylie and the kids and we went to get ice cream (ice cream fixes everything right?). While my kids know I play a lot of golf and that is a big reason why we moved halfway around the world, they are still a bit too young to understand everything I’m trying to achieve. So when I broke down in tears at the table sitting there waiting for my ice cream, my son was naturally curious why daddy was crying. I assured him it wasn’t because my chocolate milkshake hadn’t come yet and simplified things as best as I could in the moment.
“Sometimes you can work really really hard for something and things just don’t go your way …. and that can give us some pretty big feelings” I told him, leaving out the part about the triple bogey and not making any putts (I can assure you he would have ZERO sympathy for the missed putts).
He nodded his head like he understood and went back to his vanilla shake … nothing profound or super memorable, but it seemed like he took a second to at least think about what I had articulated. I then looked over at our daughter and she had her nose buried in the chocolate ice cream sitting in front of her without a single care in the world (which is exactly what a two year old should be doing). And finally I snuck a peek at Kaylie who was waiting for me to make eye contact so she could remind me how proud she was of me … because of course she did … because she is the best. It was that moment where any anger or frustration I had for ‘failing’ (apostrophes used very intentionally there) melted away and cleared space for me to get to a place of pride for how hard I competed over the previous three days, and for how far I’ve come these past eight months.
I’ll continue to reflect on the season and will eventually write about the progress I’ve made this year. It’s a bit harder to illustrate that growth given the tournament scores I’ve produced don’t show some kind of crazy exponential improvement … but I’ll do my best to paint that picture and quantify it with some statistics.
One thing I don’t need any more time to reflect on is my desire to keep going. I’ve never been more motivated to work even harder, get better, get smarter, and do whatever it takes to finally split the rock. Despite ‘failing’ essentially every step of the way this year (defined only by the scores I shot), I am still enjoying the grind of getting better. And every time I step on that first tee of a tournament, I remain hopeful that the round ahead of me is THE round where everything clicks.
Good things are ahead, I truly believe that … and I can hold my head as high as anyone for the approach I’ve taken to this journey. The only true, capital “F”, failure right now would be giving up. And with the support of Kaylie, my family, Dom, Laura, and this community, I’ve never been positioned better to accomplish something really f*cking cool.
I’ll be back at some point with a recap of the year and specific plans for the next few months. Thanks again to everyone who has reached out over the past few weeks and months. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter.
Keep climbing y’all.
In the immortal words ( with his heavy Portuguese accent ) of George at International Marine.. "It ain't eaaazy"! I'll be sure to have your chocolate shake ready.... ;)