Big game Hunter
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- August
- 25
When a player goes eight tournaments without making a cut—and has done something similar to that in every one of his five PGA Tour seasons—and suddenly does what Hunter Mahan has done, you wonder “What happened?”
Mahan knows what happened. And the results have been stunning.
While playing in a qualifier for the U.S. Open. His friend and sports psychologist Neale Smith happened to be with him, as his caddie, that week. The story goes that he shot 73, the light went on in his conversations with Smith, and then he shot 63.
“Yeah, I was extremely negative and I just beat myself up usually after every single shot whether it’s good or bad and just felt like whatever I did, a bad thing was going to happen because of it,â€? Mahan said today. “Even if I didn’t make a good swing or hit a good shot, I just felt like I had such a negative attitude about my game and about myself; there’s just no way to succeed. You have to think that you’re going to hit a good shot this time, and no matter what happens, I’m going to find a way to get the ball in the hole.
“The more you think like that, good things are going to happen, no matter how you swing it. If you believe in yourself and what you can do, good things are going to happen.�
Good things have been happening since.
He tied for 13th at the Open, won the Travelers, had three straight top 10s at the AT&T, the British and the Canadian Opens and a top 20 at the PGA, after which he was selected by Jack Nicklaus to play on the U.S. Presidents Cup team.
Nice, huh?
Today the good things kept coming. Mahan shot a course-record-tying 62 in the third round of The Barclays, vaulting himself onto the leaderboard. He trails leader Steve Stricker by two and K.J. Choi by one entering the final round today.
The record (as a par-71 layout) had been set by former local pro Jimmy Wright, then of Fenway Golf Club, in 1976.
I just finished a column about Mahan’s turnaround for The Journal News and LoHud.com tomorrow. He’s a guy worth watching in the final round.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 8:12 pm by Carp.
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Big golf fan and play the game,couldn’t help but laugh at your column written in the Journal News on August 25,2007”Leader is in a giving mood”.Carp ,how much of the lovely Sabbatini kool-aid or maybe martinis were you sipping at Westchester Country Club when you wrote this article!Sure every professional better believe that when he tees it up on Sunday,that he should win the tournament,better yet every hacker(this writer included)better believe that he can win that $10 nassau when he tees it up on Sunday.Yawn… big deal that Rory Sabbatini thinks and says,”Tiger is beatable “and that,”I wish I could play with him in the final group on every Sunday”,that is if he wants to play for second place, or worse! Look at his final score at the Wachovia..74 How about Bridgestone..wow 74!In your article you insinuate that the PGA tour is made up of a bunch of wimps,”Sabatini doesn’t think that way,like the rest of the lambs”.Every golf fan out there loves when Tiger is challenged to the fullest on Sundays, who can forget Bob May going Mano a Mano in the PGA of 2000 at Valhalla which ended with Tiger winning in a playoff, or Rich Beem winning the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, shooting a final round 68 to edge Tiger out by a stroke!Rory should not be celebrated for his guts, when he has not produced on the big stage with his skills,but only with his mouth,please…. spare us the trash talking, and produce when it counts ,now that would be memorable!In your article you mentioned that Sabbatini’s low point publicly,came when, “he stormed away from Crane in the fairway”when he was frustrated with Crane’s slow play.In my opinion that paled in comparison to when he graced a ticket paying fan on Sunday at Bridgestone with a profanity ,and had that fan thrown off the course because the fan made a witty comment,”Hey Rory still think Tiger’s beatable”,this guy thinks he’s a competitor!What.. to come up so small on Sundays against Tiger ,to get what he wants in being paired with Tiger on a Sunday,then having a fan kicked off the course solely for what the fan uttered!Please let’s not celebrate this guy like he’s this big swashbuckling,tough talking competitor let a pro show us by his actions on the course if he is truly worthy, rather than with is big mouth
I don’t compare Sabbatini to Tiger. I just think it’s refreshing that he’s not afraid of him.
Maybe that’s stupidity. There’s no way Sabbatini is in the same stratosphere. It’s just good that he doesn’t follow the footprint of all the other vanilla guys. He says what he thinks, what he feels. There’s something to be said for that kind of honesty.