Brian Quackenbush Golf

After two even par rounds in the Tarheel Tour event at Cabarrus, I’m heading home early. I made my share of birdies - 10 over the two rounds. But, I also hit some really bad shots that gave me no opportunity to save par. What this says is that my putting is solid enough to make birdies when I give myself a chance. I’m very happy about this. I think hitting it poorly could not have come at a better time. I’ve got just under a month before Q-School starts and I’m due for a lesson with Jack Lumpkin anyway. Perfect timing to get my swing solid.

The Tarheel Tour event at Columbia was rain-shortened to 36 holes. I made the cut on the number and finished 23rd. I was one of the early tee times in the final round and actually played 12 holes before it was called for the day. It was one of the wettest rounds of golf I’ve ever played. After 8 holes we all gave up trying to stay dry and trusted in the FootJoy raingloves to keep a grip on the club. When the event was called, I was even par for the day.

As I mentioned in my last post, the greens were punched at Columbia. Unfortunately, when we run into greens that are in poor condition, I feel like one of my strengths is weakened. The good thing about this is I’ve come to think of my putting as a dominant strength again.

It was a small payday because of the mini tour payout flaw that I wrote about back on June 20th. I still feel that when a mini tour doesn’t give a player a chance to move up after the cut (because the event is shortened due to weather), the purse breakdown should be modified. Last place players should not be penalized if they don’t have the opportunity to move up.

I had a very good week last week on the Tarheel Tour. We played an event at Stonebridge GC. I finished 3rd with rounds of 66-68-66.

What was remarkable about the week was my putting. It’s really come around since Jack Lumpkin and I began working on some setup fundamentals. I had 25, 27 and 24 putts in the three tournament rounds. However, what is more important is that my putting just felt good all week. It’s felt better and more solid each week for the last month, and now I have a lot of confidence.

We’re at Columbia CC this week, a great layout in Columbia, SC. Course conditioning is excellent with the glaring exception of recently punched greens. They began aerification 3 weeks ago to the day which means they probably completed the process about 19 days ago. I can’t understand why a professional tour would schedule an event so close to aerification. It’s… unprofessional. It would be a simple series of questions for the tour to ask a potential host course: “When are your aerification dates? Can you guarantee that your aerification dates will not slip to within 4 weeks of our event?” No matter what anybody tells you about aerification or overseeding, it always takes at least 4 weeks until the greens are consistently smooth across most of the putting surfaces. Why this isn’t a priority to a professional tour is absolutely beyond me.

It seems to me that a tour should have a “procedures” sheet that they give to each golf course when they negotiate a contract. The sheet should include:

• Our players need to be able to play a practice round the day before the event.
• We will run out of water on the golf course unless you constantly restock.
• We will run out of range balls unless you constantly restock.
• Our event must not be scheduled within 4 weeks after completion of aerification or overseeding.

These few simple things are not consistently taken care of at every event and they absolutely should be. I’m convinced that no mini tour addresses these issues with a course before an event.

So, today we putted on fast, punched bermuda greens. It was…challenging. I still felt like I was hitting solid putts, but had a lot of trouble getting them to roll true.

72 today and scores were higher than normal.