Entry 25.46

This week has been full of highs and lows. I took five Methodist University PGA Golf Management students down to Milton, Georgia to compete in the PGA University Championship at Atlanta National Golf Club. On our way down the weather was great. Sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid-seventies and only a few clouds in the sky. Only negative was the few wind gusts that would push the van enough for me to have to compensate by steering against it to stay in my lane. By the time we went to dinner, it was chilly and the wind had picked up. But the sun had gone down and it’s November so not unexpected. Walking out of the hotel to head over to the club for the practice round was a different story. It wasn’t windy; it was blustery. Sustained winds a little under twenty miles per hour with gusts getting up to thirty. The sun was hidden behind a ceiling of clouds painted in different shades of grey. The temperature? Thirty-six was the high for the day. Less than half of what we had experienced the day before. The real feel was even worse. Twenty-two degrees. The guys were troopers though. The practice round had been moved to a shotgun start and we had been put on the fourth hole. On the sixteenth tee, one of the guys exclaimed, "IT’S SNOWING!” It wasn’t heavy but it was snow. As one of the other guys said, “That wasn’t on my bingo card this week.” On the eighteenth hole I gave them the option to just ride the next three holes. It was obvious that they were all freezing. My group was from all over. Massachusetts and Wisconsin in the north and Florida in the south with the other two from states in between. Wisconsin looked like the coldest and most miserable of us all. Their answer to my offer? “We’re playing all the holes.” They were there to win and weren’t going to let some cold, wind and snow get in the way. On our last hole, we got hit with snow again. Not the few flakes from earlier. If it had continued at that rate, we would’ve had accumulation before we got back to the clubhouse. Thankfully, it stopped before we finished the hole.

The next morning the sun was back, the wind was down, and the temperature was up. Well, kind of. When we drove into the parking lot, the temperature had already met the high of the day prior. Made for a chilly warmup, but the guys looked good while warming up. I was excited. My brother Andrew lives on the south-side of Atlanta and made the trip up to watch us play. I was excited for him to watch some good golf. He just started playing so getting to watch good players play in person was a fantastic learning opportunity for him. There’s only a couple of events that I coach teams every year and even though I don’t want to do it full-time, I do enjoy these events. One of my players started on hole #17 which has an island green. I headed there to help him decide on a club if he needed it. He didn’t need me. He made the right call based on the distance, wind and cold but pulled his shot into the drink. I waited for my next player who started on #16. Again, he didn’t need my help. He just hit the big ball before the little ball and his ball also found the bottom of the water. Not a good start. I cut up to hole #3 to catch up with my other players and checked the live scoring for the first time. Through 2 holes we were already eleven over par as a team, the number I expected to be near at the end of the day. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to do. How do I stop the bleeding? Which player do I put my focus on? Which holes will they need the most help with? How do I keep them focused on the fastest way to get the ball in the hole and not on how bad the start was? Was this caused by bad breaks, bad decisions, bad swings, or a combination of all three? Those are all questions that could have been and maybe should have been swirling around my mind. But they weren’t. Years and years of training made sure of that. As a State Trooper you don’t have the time to sit there and answer all the questions that could be asked. You just have to make a decision. On the battlefield, you don’t have the time to think out all the possibilities, you just have to act. So that’s what I did. I had built a game plan of how to move around the course as my guys played. A monkey wrench had seemingly been thrown into that plan but again, my years of training and experience came in handy. I didn’t just make one plan. I had twenty-four plans. In the military, we used the acronym PACE when planning. Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency. I had one of each type of plan for the team and for one for each individual player. Maybe I way overthought this. I probably did. I tend to do that. It wasn’t a conscious decision on which plan to move to. It just happened. I shifted and moved on. What else was I supposed to do? Start crying boohoo?

I’m a fighter and so that’s what I did. All day I fought to keep my guys focused, their spirits lifted and their decisions smart. Another curveball came when my first player hit the twelfth hole. His cart was dying so I swapped out with him and his partner and called for a new cart. That call was responded to but the cart never came. I floated between the green on #11 and teeing area on #13 for approximately forty-five minutes until I had to move on. I felt right at home as I left the dead cart on the side of the path halfway down #12, put my bag on my back and headed out on foot. I marched across several holes and dropped down the hill to #14 green and #15 tee and moved back and forth between groups as my guys finished up their last few holes. While they were completing scoring, I checked out the practice facility to see what my options were to work on where each guy struggled. The practice facilities had been shut down due to the weather. As the guys started exiting scoring, I checked where we stood. It wasn’t good. Fifty-two over par. Two guys in the nineties. Two guys in the eighties. One was only one shot back of the lead. That parlay wasn’t on my bingo card. It crossed my mind briefly to load them in the van, drive to the Top Golf we had passed on our way down and get things straightened out. Not to work on swings but to get them playing the game again. That’s one of the good things about Top Golf. There are options for target-oriented games. That’s what golf is. A target-oriented game. Instead, we loaded up in the van, headed back to the hotel and warmed up for a bit until dinner. A decade ago I would’ve been hot. I would’ve been tearing into the four guys who didn’t play up to snuff. Instead, we debriefed the round with laughter. Coaches reading this may not approve, but I think it was the best thing we could’ve done. I didn’t lower my expectations. I just approached it differently. I let them lead the conversation. It involved a lot of expression of bewildered frustration with themselves, players ribbing each other for how bad they had played, and laughter. Lots of laughter. These kids became a team that night. They all took responsibility individually and collectively and made plans on how to spend their preparatory time the next morning. Later, back in my room alone, I PACE planned again.

The heavy frost message came a lot later than we expected. We had already loaded up the van and were getting ready to head to the golf course for round two when I got it. So, we shifted. Well, to be fair, I shifted. I had forty-five more minutes to kill so I did it by stopping to get coffee. I know. Shocker. While there, a few of kids got a message from their resident assistant telling them not to leave their rooms. My brain immediately went to the worst-case scenario: active shooter on campus. More messages followed about a fire truck and ambulance being out front. I had taught active shooter response as part of the Tactical Services Unit when I was a State Trooper, so I knew my first thought was wrong. Sounded like a student was having a medical emergency so I started making calls to our staff. More messages followed and I knew something was very wrong. But there was nothing I could do. We headed to the golf course and by that time, based on the information the kids were receiving, I had a good idea of what was going on, but I wasn’t 100% sure. I didn’t have any concrete evidence. I don’t know if the kids were able to connect the dots or not, but I heard some comments that told me they had. I knew that the focus they had on playing better was in imminent danger of being shattered. Information like that is not easy to deal with, especially when you don’t have for sure answers. When we arrived, I gave them the option. Do you want to play golf, or do you want to load up in the van and head back to MU? “We want to play golf.”

I didn’t expect that answer. What do you tell kids to get them to focus when news about one of their classmates didn’t sound good? I took a deep breath and just started to talk. “Guys, I honestly have no clue what to tell you right now. I’ve never had so many questions going on in my head and then had to play competitive golf. What I can tell you is that I’ve put comrades on helicopters after they were hurt in combat. We didn’t have the option to have a bunch of questions floating around in our heads. We focused on the task at hand, and we got to work. Incidents like that made us better than we were before. We were sharper, more precise and faster as we finished the mission. We dealt with the questions later. If you want to play golf, then put your phone down so you aren’t distracted, focus in on the task at hand, and let’s get to work.” That was gist of the conversation at least. I had zero idea how they were going to react to my words. These kids aren’t Rangers. Hell, they aren’t even soldiers. In my eyes they were kids. They didn’t have the training I did. But what they did is what Rangers do. They put their bags on their backs and got to work. All my PACE planning was once again thrown out the window. This wasn’t about golf anymore. I could give two shits about that tournament anymore. This was about the five men that I knew needed more than a golf coach right then and there. I put my bag on my back and got to work.

The guys had a good preparation session. Each one moved to work on the area of their game that had failed them the day before. I moved back and forth between them watching for any indication that they weren’t in a state to play. Any inkling that their concentration was split. All I saw were men getting ready to do what they had set their minds to do. While on the range one of them made the comment that the range session was going too well and that whenever the range session went well, they played poorly. It wasn’t the chink in the armor I was looking for, just a conversation to be had. Why does that happen? A lot of people will tell you it’s because people just hit balls and don’t use targets or their routine. The list of reasons goes on and on. I’ve had the same thing happen to me and I’ve been investigating why. I think I found the answer. We focus on one thing on the range and another on the golf course. On the range, even preparing to play, we tend to focus on the important things. On the golf course, we tend to focus on next most important things in what I believe the hierarchy should be. Golf studies will tell you that you should be focused externally on the target. That’s when they say you will play your best. Here comes my hubris again, but I think they are dead wrong. On the range we tend to focus in on the the golf club and ourselves. Then we transition to the course and focus on the target, the lie and where the miss is. That’s what we are told to do and yes, those things are important. But that doesn’t mean you can start ignoring the most important things. Everything you do in the golf swing should be to influence where the face is, where it’s pointed and how fast it’s moving. That means focusing in on the golf club and yourself. I gave them my thoughts, and we went to tee off. Based on the events transpiring four hundred miles away, I set my expectations for the day low.

We improved by twenty-six shots on day two which absolutely blew me away. They made a decision, focused on the task at hand, and executed. Only when it was over did I give them the news I had received while they were playing. One of their classmates had passed away. They absorbed the news; then we loaded up the van and head back to MU. Not what I had on my bingo card. Their task may be over, but mine isn’t. I stopped being their coach when the final putt dropped, but my task to help them through this difficult time will go on. People handle grief differently. Some take more time to process. No matter how long it takes, or what they go through on their journey, I hope they know that even though I am technically no longer their coach, I’m still here for them. That will never stop.