 |
 |
Inside the ropes at the Mizuno CJGA National Golf Championship
A junior's perspective
By Dan Plouffe
Dan.plouffe@cjga.com
 The Mizuno CJGA National Golf Championship recently took place, from Aug. 15-18 at National Pines Golf Club, a highly challenging golf course in Barrie, Ont. One hundred and seventeen juniors competed for the titles in their respective divisions. We followed one junior day-to-day to get a feeling of what it's like to play in a national championship tournament.
Adam McCauley, a 19-year-old originally from Duncan, B.C. who now lives in Oakville, Ont., has two CJGA Junior Tour victories to his name in 2005 and was the 2004 recipient of the Mizuno All-Canadian Award. He was ranked third in the nation on the Cleveland Golf Order of Merit entering the tournament. Here's what he experienced through each day of the event:
PRE-TOURNAMENT
Playing in his sixth career national championship, McCauley was certainly no stranger to the competition. This year he took a different approach to the event than in previous years; he took two weeks off before tournament and didn't even touch a club for the first week — something he hasn't done in years.
"You can easily put too much pressure on yourself when the big tournaments come around and then the pressure you put on yourself to perform in these sort of events goes the other way most times," he explains, adding that burnout is also a concern for most juniors since they've been going non-stop since April or May. "Especially with July being as busy as it normally is in junior golf, you have to take some time off and just sort of relax before you reach out for something else."
McCauley didn't have any specific goals in mind going into the tournament. "If I have four days of good golf and at the end of the week I feel like I've played well, regardless of finish, that's all you're looking for," he said. "There's only so much you can do."
But in the moments leading up to the 7:30 a.m. shotgun start, it was more the first round that was on his mind then. "I haven't played in two-and-a-half weeks, so the first day is going to be the challenge."
AFTER ROUND ONE
McCauley was right in his assessment that the first day would be the challenge, as he posted what would turn out to be his highest score of the tournament, although the 78 still kept him within four shots of the leaders.
"With my two weeks off, I did feel a little rusty out here today, which is normal, and it kind of showed in the first seven holes, just getting back in the groove," McCauley said after the round.
The low point of that stretch came on the fourth hole, when his first two drives went into water hazards, resulting in an eventual quadruple-bogey eight.
"It's been awhile since I made one, but that's what golf's good for," he said. "The minute you think you've got it tamed, it comes up and bites you."
McCauley said that when something like that happens, it's important not to get overly aggressive trying to gain the strokes back. "The fairways aren't too wide – there's not a lot of room outside of them — so the worst thing you can do is to compound the error."
Another challenge that the juniors faced was occasional long waits on tees — something for which McCauley said it is necessary to be prepared for with shotgun starts.
"Especially like with the wait we had on 9 today, which was the better part of half an hour, you try and get as far away from thinking about golf as you can, because you only have so much concentration with you for one round of golf."
In a tie for 12th place, McCauley said his game-plan would remain unchanged going into the second round. "Day 2 of a four-day tournament — it's too early to press," he explained. "If I put up a round around 74 or below tomorrow – I don't really want to put a number on it – but around there and you're looking fairly solid coming in."
AFTER ROUND TWO
McCauley came close to the 74 he wanted, firing a 75 on a day where the course played harder than the previous day, but he was still unsatisfied with his play. "I was a little more frustrated with my round today. Obviously it didn't have the huge numbers that were there yesterday — which made it a worse score at the end — but there's a bunch of little stuff that kind of got to me," McCauley said.
Particularly frustrating for McCauley was that he never found consistency in his round on a day where he said he would have gladly taken 18 pars with the winds. An example of this was on the ninth hole, where he made a textbook birdie, but followed it up with a double-bogey on the 10th because of a lost ball off the tee.
"There's just no even keel, so you spend the whole day trying to find a balance," McCauley said.
McCauley's round did inch him up the leaderboard a bit, putting him in a tie for ninth, still four shots back of the leader, as he easily survived the cut after Day 2.
AFTER ROUND THREE
The same frustrations McCauley experienced in Round 2 came back to irritate him again in the third round, as an up-and-down day left him with only three pars through 14 holes. "It was tough – I'd say this was probably the most frustrating of the three rounds," McCauley said.
"It's one of those things that you hit a couple good shots, then make a bad swing, and you're kind of thrown off and you have to work back into it, and it just takes a toll. Mentally, it's exhausting because you're just grinding from start to finish. The swing wasn't there today – I hit some OK shots, but I hit some terrible shots too."
Also annoying McCauley was that he hadn't made much of a move on what is traditionally deemed "moving day" — originally hoping that he would get within a shot or two of those in front of him before the final round.
"Today I was in position to shoot even-par or better," he said. McCauley's 76 did move him up further into a tie for sixth, as the course dried out and made trouble outside the fairways even easier to find.
"The score itself – take it for what it's worth against what comes in today," McCauley said, "but it's definitely four or five shots higher than I thought I would have been today."
AFTER ROUND FOUR
McCauley stormed out of the gates in the final round, but a charge all the way to the top of the leaderboard just wasn't meant to be.
"[The round] wasn't pleasing – again. It was good through eight holes, then I hit a snag on 9 where I made a big number – I made an eight there," McCauley explained. "Then I went on and bogeyed 10, so it was kind of the stretch that took the wind out of me."
McCauley fought back and finished with a 75, although that wouldn't be good enough to challenge Ryan Corbin, whose red-hot play earned him an eight-stroke victory over his nearest competitor.
"With where I was sitting in the pack today, I needed to be 70 or below and it's disappointing that I had the ability to put it there when I started," McCauley said.
Asked what he thought of his play over the course of the tournament, McCauley answered, "I would hate to say lacklustre, but I would think so. It lacked a lot of the polish that I think I've had most of the year."
McCauley explained his approach of taking time off before the tournament backfired, and that was the reason he didn't meet his expectations.
"When you don't play every day or week-to-week tournament-wise, you kind of fall out of it a bit. And it's just one or two holes a round that can make that difference, and if you're just unprepared for one of them, then it kind of makes the rest of the round — those other 17 holes — that much more important."
McCauley ended up in a tie for fifth place among juniors in Canada, and for him, that was the silver lining. "Knowing that I played the way I did, and finishing where I did, at least I can take some confidence from that."
|
|
|
