A lot of you seem interested in hearing more about my time in college and in particular about the golf coach I had there. I’m gonna try my best to tell some stories and give a hint of how our golf was over there at Oklahoma State University (OSU).

Team’s schedule on a normal day:

6.30-7.30: Workout (4 times a week plus individually on weekends)

8.30-12.00: School classes

13.30-18.30: Golf practice

Our Coach’s schedule:

6.00-7.30: Workout (7 days a week)

8.00-12.00: Work 

13.00-until last player leaves practice: Golf coaching

As you can see, we all worked pretty hard. But, I think our coach worked harder than us players. 

The first year was very tough. Everything was new and I felt a little out of place. We were 10 players on the team but only 5 play each tournament so the competition was very good. I struggled with an injury during the first semester (fall) but got to play in the spring but didn’t manage many top results. My game got better each year and I improved in the rankings and also improved my poition within the team.

Our coach’s main goal was to win NCAA (National Collegiate Athlete’s Association) titles, but he also wanted to prepare us for professional golf. He was the most competetive person I’ve ever met and I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone more competetive either. He has been very successful over his 30 years of coaching at OSU. To sum up what he believed in:

1. Never have any excuses, nobody cares about hearing them anyway.

2. Always tell your score and nothing else, nobody cares how you did it.

3. Always perform to your full potential, if you don’t you choose not to do it.

4. You should be able to shoot low in any kind of weather.

5. Never give up.

To make us learn these things, he trained us hard all day, every day.

We usually had 4 rounds of team qualification before each tournament to decide which 5 players get to play. If the weather was too good at a qualifying day, he usually changed it to a day when the weather was supposed to be bad. He loved it when it rained really hard and the win was strong. He thought golf was to easy when it was calm and sunny.

Our college course (karstencreek.com) was a brutal test of golf. I remember after playing my first qualifying round we all gathered in a ring and coach pointed his finger to each player asking for the scores. 71, 75, 69, and so on. Then to me, 80. He looked at me and just sighed. He then glanced away onto the next player. I felt very low and I understood where I have gotten. I had to get better. I did get better but I recorded many more rounds in the 80’s during my 4 years of qualifying. 

If anybody would add one single word after telling his score when coach asked him, he was given a lesson by coach saying that ”nobody cares how you played. Just tell your score and nothing more”. If you kept making excuses or saying you finished well after a bad start you were given a punishment workout which was not pleasant. We all learned very quickly. 

Coach thought you should perform to your maximum potential in every area of life. The three main areas for us players during our college years were in most important order (to coach), school, golf and then workout. I peferred playing golf over studying though and got benched during a great stretch of tournaments including Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Las Vegas because he thought I could have done better in school the previous semester. The same for golf. He tought a player underperforming chooses to underperform. Most teachers and coaches will tell a player who just had a bad round to forget it and wish him/her better luck next time. Not our coach. 

If he saw someone slacking during a workout, he gave him a lesson to always try your hardest or go to another college where they allow slacking off. He was very direct. You always knew what was going on, which I thought was great. 

One thing that he did sticks out the most when I think back to college. He had just heard of a game called ”worse ball” (you play 2 shots  and pick the worst one) and described it to us before we all were going out to play a casual round. We thought it sounded like a game that would improve our golf so we were up for it. Then he added, we play this game and it counts as a double qualifying round. So now, we were going to play worse ball at one of the world’s most difficult golf courses during a qualifying round which counts as two rounds. Now he got our harts pumping. Coach didn’t think much of a friendly round of golf. He wanted to make us feel the nerves shaking to prepare us for the worst. We sucked at worse ball in the beginning, recording scores in the 80′ and 90’s but we got it down to mid 70’s by the the time we left. 

Coach did so many things to make us feel the pressure both from ourselves and from all the others who wanted us to perform well. If he thought a player on the team looked nervous, he made him feel even more nervous. Coach described himself as being our conciousness and expressing our doubts and nervousness clearly so if we could overcome and disregard his voice, we could overcome our own voice. As another example, I usually scored really bad at the tough 17th hole at Karsten Creek. I rarely made par and double-bogeys were common for me there. He knew I hated the whole and that it made me nervous playing it, so he always told me and everybody else how I never play good there. He used to tell about my latest triple-bogey there over lunch and so on. Then, at the NCAA final tournament at just Karsten Creek in 2003 I made a triple-bogey on the 17th. Do you think I got to hear the end of that? It still echoes in my head. Maybe I didn’t overcome either his exaggurated words or my inner voice this time but I did on a lot fo other occasions.    

I remember one time when I performed better than coach thought I would. One time we got to choose our own date when we wanted to play a qualifying round at Stillwater Country Club. The only rules were that we had to play with at least one more teammate and you had to announce that you were playing the round as a qualifying round at the first tee box. The first day we went up there to play, my friend Dayton announced his roundas a qualifying round but for some reason I didn’t so I just played it as a casual round. I shot 63 (-8) that day. ”Too bad you didn’t announce it on the first tee that you were playing it as a qualifying round. Now you will not even sniff that when you do announce it”, said coach when he heard about my round. The next time I went upp there to play I felt ready and announced it and boom, I sho

t a 61 (-10)! It was the sweatest thing seeing coach’s face when he found out.

The more I play this game and the older I get, the more thankful I am for all the lessons he gave us. I couldn’t have read these things in a book. No way!  

Time to hit the swiss ball:)

See you later!