Chapter 34: How to Psych Out an Opponent

I couldn’t help it. I was excited! This would be my second start on a professional golf tour. Albeit, it wasn’t the PGA. Still, the Korn Ferry Tour was the next best thing for a kid from Georgia that had dreamed of playing pro golf since my dad first took me to Augusta National when I was thirteen years old.

The Wichita Open is one of four original Korn Ferry tour stops remaining on the current schedule. It started in 1990, at the Reflection Ridge Golf Club. In 1997, it moved to Willowbend Golf Club for four years and then in 2001, it moved to Crestview Country Club’s North Course where it brings in more than 50,000 people to the event each June. This year, I was one of only two amateurs playing.

Our grouping had been posted during the party Tuesday night. My tee time for today’s first round would be at 12:30pm on hole number ten. My normal routine called for me to arrive at the course two hours before my tee time in order to warm up, so I had told Murph and Dad that we would need to leave the house about 10:20am this morning.

The Wichita Open used a tandem start to be able to accommodate the 144 golfers registered for the event. That means that we would go off in threesomes (three golfers in each grouping) at assigned tee times on both the first and tenth holes in order to get all the golfers around the course during daylight hours.

The players are all assigned to their threesome for the first two days (Thursday and Friday) and then assigned their tee times (and which hole they would tee off from). The tee times started at 7:45am and every fifteen minutes thereafter. The order for the groups teeing off would be reversed for Friday, meaning that whichever groups teed off first on Thursday, would tee off last on Friday. They also reversed the starting tees as well. So if a group teed off at 7:45am on Thursday on number One, then on Friday, they would tee off at 1:30pm on number Ten.

This was done for a variety of reasons, but mostly to promote a sense of fairness because it is generally acknowledged that the morning rounds produce lower scores. That is because the course is often wet in the mornings which makes it play slower. Then as the sun dries the greens and warms the fairways, and the winds pick up, the greens and fairways become harder and faster. Of course, this doesn’t account for variations in the weather, such as rain, high winds, and storms. But, in general, the playing conditions are better early, hence, flipping the tee times.

On Friday night, there would be a cut, where any golfer shooting a score that was outside the Tour’s parameters, would go home and the remaining golfers would be re-shuffled in order of their scores. The golfers that survived the cut were said to be ‘in the money’, with each receiving a percentage of the purse, based on their final scores on Sunday.

At my first tournament, The Bahama’s Invitational in Nassau, back in December, I had simply been overwhelmed by everything and also by the fact that the government was trying to arrest me and someone else was trying to kidnap or kill me. There was so much chaos surrounding me, I don’t know how I did as good as I did. I went into Sunday leading by a stroke, but ended up tied for sixth. I believe I could have done better, but I botched number fifteen and number sixteen because Isabella, who was my caddy that day, pointed out that it would be dangerous for me to win and have to stay for the interviews.

It was the best decision at the time, but still, it bothers me that I hadn’t been free to pursue the win. So that was another reason I was excited about today.

The other thing that had me concerned was the question my mom had asked me last night after dinner. She asked me if the lightning had unfairly enhanced my ability to play golf. I never got around to answering her, but I thought about it all night. I suspected that the lightning strike was probably NOT an actual lightning strike, but more like a vehicle that the pink planet used to deliver their gifts. However, it still seemed to have changed the electromagnetic field surrounding my body, which somehow caused my skin to better resist damage and injuries and my autoimmune system to repel sickness and diseases. It also created my ability to stay underwater without breathing which I have found no logical reason for.

That’s all in addition to the healing, the ability to teleport, and the manipulation of electricity, which the pink planet has admitted to, but not really explained how or why.

But except for what I was calling an increase in my fine motor control, i.e. my dancing skills, my golfing skills, and even my lovemaking; I hadn’t detected or discovered any other hidden talents. I mean, the lightning strike didn’t teach me to play golf or how to dance. And it didn’t teach me how to sail. I had been golfing for nine years and I took dancing lessons some four years ago. The sailing had all been in the last year. And I had been very fortunate to have both the opportunity to sail and three very experienced teachers.

So my personal conclusion was that while the lightning strike may have given me certain gifts or unusual abilities, those gifts or abilities had not directly enabled me to dance, or play golf, or sail a large yacht, but had, in some way, increased my ability to concentrate and do better at things I already knew how to do.

Did that give me an unfair advantage?

I decided it didn’t. Not any more than any other talented golfer had over others that were less talented.

Dad and I showed up and picked up my clubs. While I completed the required paperwork, my dad went to a brief caddies orientation concerning situations specific to Creekview Country Club, such as the split start and the out of bounds on nine and eighteen. Then we headed for the practice tees and I began my routine.

Within ten minutes, I was surrounded by reporters, but I just ignored them and stuck to my warm up routine while they talked to my dad. I could feel myself getting into a rhythm with my shots and lost all awareness of what was going on around me. Sometime later, dad led me to the practice putting green. I was glad he was watching the time. Finally, I followed him to the tenth green where I met my playing partners.