Brian Quackenbush Golf

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.