Brian Quackenbush Golf

Good playing…bad break. That sums up the Nationwide qualifier for me on Tuesday in Salt Lake City, UT. I shot 4-under 68 to miss the playoff by one shot. With an 11:30 tee time in the last 1/3 of the field, I was fully involved in both weather delays and the high winds that increased in velocity after each one. It was blowing sustained 30mph for about my last 12 holes. Of the 10 players who shot 67 or better (good enough to make the playoff), 8 of them teed off before 10:00 and none of them teed off after me at 11:30. If you look at the scoring stats for each third of the field, scores stay about the same between the first and second wave, however WD’s go from 6 to 13. So, 7 more players didn’t turn in a card (and presumably played very poorly). From the second to the third wave, WD’s stay the same but scoring average went up by 3 shots. So, the third wave was at a minimum 3 shot disadvantage compared to the first. Unfortunately, I was in that last wave.

Even with the bad draw, I played well enough to have a shot. On the second hole I hit the flagstick with my approach from 92 yards. It was a great shot with the wind howling down and off the left to a front pin tucked over a bunker. The ball landed an inch in front of the flag and caromed about 12 feet right and I just missed the putt. A slightly better bounce and that’s a one or two shot difference right there. On the fourth hole I hit 4-iron from 195 yards into a gale with water short. It flew about 5 yards long (I hit it incredibly well) and bounced into a bad lie where the best I could do was chip to 15 feet. I hit a great putt that lipped out. Those shots were the difference between missing the playoff and shooting the low score (65) of the day.

That’s the nature of these qualifiers. You pay your money and hope for everything to line up and a good round. Fortunately, I’ve improved my level of play this year so that the good rounds are happening frequently, and I just need to have the good breaks. In 10 qualifiers this year I have made it or come close in each one:

I’m following Tiger and Phil’s leads and taking a small break. I feel like I’m just hitting a bit of late-season fatigue and taking a couple weeks will recharge my batteries heading into a very busy Q-School season.

I almost could have gone without a rental car this week. The course for this week’s Nationwide Tour Monday qualifier is adjacent to the airport. I could hit a lob wedge onto one of the main runways from the parking lot. My hotel is on the far side of the course, but adjacent to it and the airport as well.

I’m in Salt Lake City this week. I didn’t realize it was at such altitude (over 4,000 ft). It took me a few holes to get used to the ball flying a few more yards. The course is very firm as well, so the 7,100 yard course for the event plays a lot shorter.

I played a small-tour event last week just to get in a few competitive rounds. It was just up the road in Blythewood, SC so it was easy to commute back and forth each day. I felt like I was a few competitive rounds short in the last month.

I definitely didn’t have my best stuff and finished in 4th place at even par. The event helped me to focus on some of the things I’m working on without the extra cost and stress of traveling.

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.

Storms in the midwest are unbelievable. You see them coming from far away and they can be enormous. Then they’re on top of you in a heartbeat. That’s what happened in today’s practice round. We got to the 6th tee and after several phone calls for people to check radar and give me their appraisal of the situation we called it quits. Lightning was getting close enough to be dangerous, and it started raining sideways 30 minutes later, so it was a good call.

The course was soaked by 2 inches of rain in about an hour so it won’t open up again today. I only got in 6 holes, but have a good yardage book, and the course is right in front of you. The greens are good, and they were handing out hole location sheets for tomorrow’s round in the golf shop. I will be as prepared as possible for tomorrow’s round.

Unfortunately, I probably could have gotten in the entire round if Airtran hadn’t mis-tagged my golf bag. Those are the breaks, and I feel like a good yardage book and advance notice of the hole locations will offset only playing 1/3 of the course.