We didn't get into the field for Bay Hill so we had the week off leading up to San Antonio. I had a great week off after three weeks on the road. I was able to take the family to Chapel Hill and watch a good friend coach our local High School to a win in the NC State 3A Championship with a last second game winning shot, do some spring cleaning yard work, watch the kids soccer games, and play a little golf with the kids. It definitely recharged the batteries and I was ready to get back to work.
Although the drive to San Antonio is 18 hours from Morganton, I made the decision to cut expenses and make the drive. I left early Sunday morning, drove 14 hours, stopped for the night and rolled into San Antonio around lunch time on Monday. Kevin was not flying in until Monday night so I was planned to head out to the course for some course work. Unfortunately, shortly after I arrived, an afternoon thunderstorm hit the area and shut things down for the rest of the day.
I met Kevin Tuesday morning for some range work. He has been struggling the last few weeks with his irons hitting into the wind. The ball has been spinning too much so the ball "steps up" and falls out of the sky when hitting into the wind. He spent the week off with his instructor, John Tillery, on trackman testing and recording ball spin, launch angles, etc. When we arrived on Tuesday, we worked with the TaylorMade Tour staff and they build him a new set of irons with different shafts to help improve his "numbers". Kevin loved the feel of the shafts and we saw an immediate improvement in the ball flight. We went out and played an afternoon practice round with Bo Van Pelt, Scott Brown and Robert Allenby. A weather system moved in Wednesday morning and the temps struggled to get above 50 with a wind chill hanging around the lower 40's. We spent a few hours in the morning chipping and putting before it started raining and it got too bad to continue. The rain stopped around lunch time and we headed back out for some more practice.
Thursday's round was delayed 2.5 hours due to fog. When we finally teed off, Kevin felt great and we were looking forward to a great week. After two solid pars to start the round, we missed the green from 120 yards and couldn't get it up and down. Another missed up and down on the next put us two over early and clawing our way back. Unfortunately, we couldn't gain any momentum as we didn't make a birdie all day and the longest putt we made was 6'8" according to shotlink. It was a very frustrating day and patience was wearing thin. We had now played 47 holes in competition without a birdie. After the round, we spent the rest of the afternoon working on putting. Missing most of the putts right, Kevin and JT worked on keeping his stroke more square on the backswing.
Because of the delay on Thursday, Friday's tee time was pushed back until 3:00pm. We met at 12:00 for some short game work before lunch and starting our normal warmup. Kevin once again had a very solid ball striking round. We were able to make three birdies but two of those birdies came from putts inside 2 feet. According to shotlink, we only made one putt outside 15 feet for the entire week. Unfortunately, it really doesn't matter how good the ball striking is if you can not make a putt. It's also the putter that effects the attitude the most. For us this week, it kept us from focusing on the positives, trying to be perfect, and put too much pressure on the rest of the game. Confidence is so important in this game and when you don't have it, it is almost impossible to play it well. You start beating yourself up along with everyone and everything else around you. We need to find a way to turn that around.
This week is Houston. As of Friday, we were not in the field and was third alternate. We decided to stay in San Antonio Saturday and Kevin went out for a mid morning practice session and workout. On Sunday morning, Kevin drove over to Houston with me and we went out to the tournament course and played a few holes with Hudson Swafford. Our tee time today for the Monday qualifier is 1:39. We moved to second alternate early this morning and while I was writing this post, Kevin text me and said we moved up to first alternate. He said he still wants to play the qualifier today because we can not play the tournament course. We need to keep playing so we can start seeing putts dropping. We are going to keep banging it out and it will turn around.
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