Brian Quackenbush Golf

To all the Aikenites out there…

My girlfriend, Shawna Harding, will be competing in the dressage show here in Aiken, SC this weekend. As most of you know, Shawna is one of the premier dressage riders in the United States. She and her primary competition horse, Come On III, are arguably the best “developing horse” (7-9 year old) team in the country. Because of inclement weather at her last show she was unable to finish her preparation for the United States Developing Horse Championship in mid-September. So, she shifted her schedule to get in one more competitive weekend at the local Aiken event.

If you’re remotely interested in horses and live in the area, this is a great opportunity to see an international-caliber performance. Shawna will be riding her Intermediare musical freestyle on Come On III on Saturday at 11:29 and her Prix St. Georges on Sunday at 8:58. Most of you will probably appreciate the musical freestyle more. Picture an enormous, powerful horse under precise control of a great rider, riding in sync to music from Joe Cocker, AC/DC and ZZ Top. It’s an amazing sight!

Shawna will also be riding Rigo, a younger horse, on both Saturday and Sunday. Rigo is one of three horses that Shawna has qualified for the 5-state Region Championships in October.

The show is at Buckleigh Farms and is free to the public. The address is 4455 Wagener Rd, Aiken, SC 29805.

I missed the qualifier for the Nationwide Tour event in Bridgeport, WV yesterday by a shot. Exactly 14 guys finished at 5 under 67. I restarted Tuesday on the 4th green with a 6 footer for birdie which I promptly made. I birdied 7, 9 and 17 with no bogies for the round to finish at 4 under par.

It was an unspectacular round. I just didn’t get anything to drop on the greens. Unfortunately, with almost 4 inches of rain the previous night, the grounds crew wasn’t able to cut the greens before we restarted. The reduced green speed was good for some of the very slopey hole locations, but generally bad for making putts.

I’ve played 9 qualifiers this season and have made it through 3. In the other 6, I missed in a playoff once, missed by one shot twice, missed by two shots twice and missed by three shots once. This is the nature of the system. It takes good play AND the right breaks to make it through these qualifiers. As I’ve proven this year, it’s almost more difficult to make it through the qualifier than it is to finish well in the actual tournament.

The Nationwide Tour is off next week, so my next qualifier will be in Utah on Labor Day.

I’m playing the Nationwide Tour qualifier this week in Bridgeport, WV. I started today at 1:40 and got to the third hole before we were called off the course. It rained buckets for about 15 minutes and it took about 2 hours to get restarted. Then, after another 5 shots, we were called off the course again for a developing thunderstorm. They decided to postpone the rest of the round until tomorrow morning and soon thereafter the storm hit. It’s been raining hard for about 2 hours and shows a good chance of keeping up for the night. We are supposed to restart tomorrow morning at 7:30, but I can’t see it happening if it keeps raining like this all night. Some of us even speculated about what they would do if we can’t get the round in before Wednesday night.

Hopefully we get it finished tomorrow. I’m prepared to stay here as long as it takes.

I missed the qualifier in Rochester by 3 shots on Monday. All it took was one bad hole. I made a big number on a very easy par-4 and that was the difference. Aside from that I played relatively well. We got the short end of the stick with an afternoon time. The morning guys definitely had the advantage with much less wind. When I got to the course to warm up around 11:30, winds were pretty calm. About half an hour later it started to howl and didn’t stop while we were on the course.

Some of you may notice that I removed the comments feature from the news articles. Over time I’ve found that people were using comments mostly as a way to email me which can more appropriately be done on my contact page.

I missed by two at this week’s qualifier in Scranton, PA. It was played at Pocono Farms Country Club in Tobyhanna, PA. This is a beautiful place. The members, staff and volunteers were incredibly nice and hospitable. In 5 years I have never seen a more friendly Monday qualifier site. I didn’t pay a dime for my practice rounds. The course set me up with a host family for the weekend (which was a good thing since every hotel was sold out for the NASCAR race). The professional staff was incredibly accommodating. They even had volunteer spotters…unheard of for a Monday qualifier.

Pocono Farms is a short course…I actually took my driver out of the bag and only hit two three woods off tees. You just can’t hit it remotely sideways on any hole or you won’t find it. I executed my plan well, missing only one tee ball and one par three approach shot. Unfortunately, I just didn’t get it done on the greens. I putted well, but since I was the second to last group of a field of 156 players on relatively wet poa annua greens, I really didn’t have much of a chance. The ball was moving around a lot all day. I felt like three putts were right in the center until they hit the “lumpy donut” around the hole. So, I’m not down about how I played because everything was at least acceptable. I just had a serious disadvantage going last in the field.

The other problem I had with the event was that we finished in the dark. The tournament committee really screwed the pooch on this one. After a 30 minute fog delay in the morning, they added another hour delay to the afternoon times because they couldn’t manage the pace of play. One group was reportedly 3.5 holes out of position…in a 5 hour round! Because they couldn’t get the pace of play right, our last 4 holes were played in twilight to darkness. I bogeyed two of these holes.

It’s frustrating because we spend so much time and money on these qualifiers and they mean so much to our season. When an event is mismanaged like this, a percentage of the field is substantially penalized against everybody else. We can tolerate getting a bad draw because of wind or rain, but to be forced to play the last 4 holes in the dark is unacceptable.

So, it’s on to Rochester, NY next week and another shot at monday’ing into a Nationwide event. Like I said before, my game is good and I feel great about getting through the next one.

I let this one get away. I missed by two shots in Monday’s Nationwide Tour qualifier in Wichita. I hit it and putted it well all day and was bogey-free four under going into the 16th hole, a short par 5. It’s a goofy hole which is supposed to be modeled after the road hole at St. Andrews. The only similarity is that there is a pot bunker front left and a sliver of green behind it. That’s where the hole location was with out of bounds long and no good option to get your second shot close. The best option I could find was to hit it in the bunker leaving a relatively easy chance for birdie.

I hit driver and four iron into the bunker as I had planned and had about 10 yards to the flag. Unfortunately this was one of the few bunkers where maintenance had made a hasty attempt at repair, and it was a mess. My ball was sitting on a clump of wet sand about 3 inches above the surrounding area. I had to make more of an upward swing at the ball or it would have gone nowhere. I caught it clean and the ball went out of bounds resulting in a double bogey.

Despite missing the cut I am very encouraged by my game. I hit 14 greens and had 29 putts with a lot of good midrange putts that just missed. I’ve got 3 more qualifiers in the next 3 weeks and am positive about my chances.