Navigating the Korn Ferry Tour: Lessons from the Greens

When we look at the Korn Ferry Tour and getting your Korn Ferry Tour card that first year, what did you learn about yourself in that year and how much you needed to improve? And then COVID kind of comes along. So just kind of talk about that period of time and how challenging it was and just the lessons that you learned about yourself. It was an interesting first year. So I got through Q School, but it was conditional. So I had a conditional card. When I went to final stage, I thought, I've got my Korn Ferry Tour card. I'm going to play a bunch of events. This is great. Ended up finishing like 60, no, 48, I think it was. So one shot out of getting a full card. That's right where I was. I was in the same spot. So you get into a bunch of events early. You should. You should. So COVID happened right in like the third week. So then what happened is when they restarted, everybody was fresh and wanted to play. So that number never actually hit. But I Monday qualified into the first event back, shot 11 under my first ever Monday qualifier to get in. I was like, I didn't know what I was doing. My first ever Monday. I'm like, I'll just go out there and play 11 under. It was at Valencia in Jacksonville. The tournament was at TPC Dia Valley because they had to have all the tournaments at. TPC courses because the only course they're going to let have an event during COVID. So I got through, got in, made the cut, reshuffled and played the rest of the season. And it was a super season because of the there was no Q school that year. So I essentially got two years of experience for one because I was going to lose. I was going to lose my card. Like I just was not mentally, physically, emotionally prepared enough for pro golf to go out there and perform at the level needed to keep your card on the Korn Ferry Tour. So getting those extra 20 events at the end of the second season was huge for me just to learn. Went back to Q school, got my card back, and that year did even worse. I think I made like five cuts, went back to the drawing board, but gained on that experience. And then the next year I went to play Q school over in Europe, got my full DP World Tour card. And that was an unbelievable year of growth for me, being on my own for the first time, really being in different places, speaking different languages, learning how to play golf on different courses, whether I'm in Kenya or Korea or South Africa or Italy, like that was the biggest year of growth for me. So, yeah, to answer your question. That first year was huge, and getting that extra double season was big for me. But again, every year you learn something of this game. Whether you drive it well one year and you work on your putting all year, the next year you're going to be driving it poorly and then putting it great. It's this constant mind battle. It's a yo-yo, man. Professional golf, isn't it? The ups and downs are just... So difficult. It's so hard to just kind of stay even keeled. We all, of course, all just want to be, you know, the Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele type where there's no weaknesses in your game. It's frustrating, right? You know, what I, what I think I noticed the most and probably the least talked about thing about a guy like Scottie Scheffler is the ability to do it every day and to have your worst and somehow be able to scrap out a 70, just kind of talk a little bit about how challenging that is. For not only yourself, but like I experienced it, you see it all the time in professional golf, just to be able to bring it every single day, along with all the travel that it takes and a huge team that's trying to push you along. Yeah, I think so. When I first turned pro, I talked to Morgan Hoffman a lot. I knew him through Grayson and Morgan told me there's going to be everybody telling you to change this or change that or focus on this, focus on that. And he told me, I don't care. You put your blinders on and just do you and continue to get to continue to do you better. Spoke to Luke Donald a couple years ago, he said the exact same thing. I asked him, how did you get to world number one? He said, at first I was chasing distance, I broke my wrist, and that stopped me from chasing distance. I went back, and I focused on my driver, I mean my wedges and my putting. And that was my best part of my game, but I got even better.