PGA Championship – Dr Mo is a team player

Pickens is on site at the Atlanta Athletic Club this week for the PGA Championship.  Dr Mo works with several players in this weeks field including; Nick Watney, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink, Jonathan Byrd and Zach Johnson.  Dr Mo promotes a “team environment” which includes himself, an instructor, the caddy, a physical trainer and often times the players agent.  It is a team that works together to help the golfer play his best golf.  Rick Brown of the Des Moines Register wrote about this team environment in regards to 2007 Masters Champion and Iowa native, Zach Johnson. 

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Mike Bender had no idea who this new student was. He was just a name on his lesson schedule: Zach Johnson.

Back to Back Senior Majors – Damon Green

Zach Johnson was 9-years old when his future PGA Tour caddy, Damon Green turned pro.   Damon pokes fun at himself,  “I’ve played every tour except the LPGA…I gotta figure that one out”.   Green was one of the first pro golfers to appear in a Nike Golf commercial.  He’s made it to the finals of the PGA Tour qualifying tournament twice, once missing by a shot after a bogey on the last hole.  After 2-years playing full status on the Nationwide tour (back when it was called the Nike Tour) and having played a few PGA Tour events over the years, Damon went to the 1998 Q-school for the last time and missed. 

After a divorce that wiped him out financially, Green did some soul searching.  He needed a consistent paycheck to cover child support and rent.  A job in which he didn’t have to sweat out every putt just to pay bills.  With a new outlook on life, the humbled mini tour journeyman began a new and unexpected profession…PGA Tour caddy. 

First for fellow Nationwide Tour competitor and friend, Jimmy Green.  After Jimmy lost his PGA Tour card, Scott Hoch called on Damon to tote his bag.   In the caddy ranks, being the bagman for Scott Hoch was like winning the lottery.  Hoch was known as the, “Human ATM Machine”.  Although it was a good paying job, Hoch had something else that Green needed.  Damon struggled with his course management and Scott Hoch was the expert.  For 4 years, Damon quietly watched Scott get himself in but then out of predicaments on the golf course.  Scott relied on Damon for yardages, occasional club selection and reading greens (Scott had bad eyesight).  Hoch and Green were a good team.  Damon once said, “Scott Hoch is so accurate, I have to do his yardage books in half yards”. 

In 2003, Scott Hoch won his last PGA Tour title and Zach Johnson came on the scene and was named Nationwide Tour player of the year.  Zach and Damon bumped in to each other at a club repair shop near Orlando and Damon congratulated Zach on his fantastic season, offering to help with a few names if Zach needed a good PGA Tour caddy.  The “marriage” between Johnson and Green began there.   But, Damon had to divorce Scott Hoch which was no easy task.   Damon had no intention to leave Scott Hoch…that was, until Zach came along.  Green had always hoped Scott planned to use him the following year on the Champions Tour.  Wrenched with guilt, Damon didn’t want to miss a chance to caddy for Johnson.  He took the gamble and left Hoch, which now looking back was the hardest decision of his life (and one of his best).

Seven PGA Tour victories later (and one Champions Tour win  during a one week caddy gig for Hoch), Damon is still caddying for Zach and always dreamed of returning to competitive golf.  Damon kept his pro status by playing in tournaments on his weeks off from caddying.  His strengths include reading greens and golf course management (thanks to Hoch and Zach).   Green remarried and continued collecting mini tour victories (over 70).  Last year, Green turned 50 and his wife (former Golf Channel News Manager turned stay at home Mom and caddy wife) mailed in his Champions Tour entry form where he finished T17. 

Associate Member status on the Champions Tour, allows Damon to skip the pre-qualifier and go straight to the Monday qualifiers.  In 2011 Green spends his weeks off playing in various qualifiers.   Many Sundays, taking a red eye flight after caddying 3 weeks in a row for Zach, showing up without a practice round and missing the 80+ field 4 spot qualifiers by a shot or two.  But this July, things changed.  Damon qualified for both the Senior British Open Championship and the US Senior Open…both Senior majors and two weeks Zach had already planned to take off.   Damon is a story about perseverance and not giving up the dream.  Good luck to Damon, let’s hope it turns out to be a good story.  Either way, Zach will meet you Tuesday on the range at the WGC event at Firestone.

Nick Watney is now a four time – Tour Winner

Dr Mo began working with Nick Watney one year ago.  After his victory at the AT&T National, Watney joins Bubba Watson and Mark Wilson with 2 PGA Tour victories in 2011.  Nick Watney  is currently ranked 10th in the world golf rankings and number one on the PGA Tour Money List. 

(Courtesy:  PGATOUR.COM) 

Never mind that Nick Watney was the highest-ranked player at the AT&T National, or that he won the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship in March. Stepping to the first tee Sunday in a tie for the lead at the AT&T National, he had reason to feel overlooked.

After being announced, one fan called out, “Go, Rickie!” Several other fans in the large gallery wore bright orange shirts and flat-brimmed caps to show their support for Rickie Fowler, a 22-year-old who was tied for the lead and going after that first PGA TOUR win.

“He’s obviously a very popular player. I think his time is definitely coming,” Watney said. “I would say there were probably a few more Fowler fans out there. But it is what it is. Sometimes you play away games or whatever.”

Watney doesn’t have the panache of Fowler, but his game is starting to get plenty of attention.

Playing the weekend at Aronimink in a staggering 12 under, and going the final 27 holes without a bogey, Watney closed with a 4-under 66 for a two-shot victory over K.J. Choi (67) to win for the second time this year and to move to the top in the FedExCup standings.

Watney, whose other win this year was a World Golf Championships event against an elite field at Doral, also put himself atop the PGA TOUR money list for the first time and moved to No. 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

“It’s a very addictive feeling to be out there and under the gun,” said Watney, who had rounds of 62-66 on the weekend. “To be able to hit good shots and putts is why I play, really.”

And to think that with only 27 holes left in the tournament, Watney was trying to keep from getting left behind. Ten birdies, an eagle and no bogeys later, he was posing with the silver trophy of a Liberty Bell and wondering how much better he could get.

Watney finished on 13-under 267, tying the tournament record by Tiger Woods in 2009 when it was played at Congressional. The tournament is scheduled to return to Congressional next year.

Charles Howell III earned quite a consolation prize. He played bogey-free in the final round for a 6-under 66 to tie for third with Adam Scott (68) and Jeff Overton (67). That made him eligible for the British Open in two weeks as the top finisher from the top five who wasn’t already exempt.

Fowler had another learning experience.

He fell out of the hunt early with a double bogey on the second hole when he hit three straight shots without losing his turn. From a tough spot in the bunker, he came up well short of the green, barely got his putt up the slope, then ran his bogey attempt a nervy 3 feet beyond the hole. That became a three-shot swing when Watney made birdie, and Fowler never caught up. He finished with a 74 to tie for 13th.

“I just couldn’t get anything going today,” he said.

Watney didn’t give anyone much of a chance. He took the outright lead with a wedge into 10 feet for birdie on No. 2, and holed a 20-foot birdie putt on the par-5 fifth. Despite leaving himself in a tough spot in the bunker on the par-5 ninth, he blasted out to 2 feet for another birdie.

Even so, his biggest putts were for par.

Watney saved par from bunkers on No. 4 with a 20-foot putt, and from No. 7 with a putt from about 12 feet. His biggest par save might have been the par-3 eighth, which yielded only two birdies in the final round.

Overton had reached 9 under and was making a move, and Choi had birdied the previous to also reach 9 under. Watney’s shot went over the green, and he putted up the slope to 18 feet. He made the par putt to keep his cushion.

“That was big not to drop a shot after hitting a good shot, and keep momentum heading to the back nine,” Watney said.

The final challenge came from Choi, who trailed by four shots at one point. He slowly made up ground, then closed in on Watney after the turn with a bending, downhill birdie putt on the 11th and a pair of long birdie putts on the 12th and 14th holes, the last one tying for the lead.

Momentum was with Choi, only the South Korean knew better. The par-4 15th played at 503 yards into a slight breeze, following by the par-5 16th that was reachable in two.

“When I tied him on the 14th hole, I knew that there was still a lot of holes to go, and I knew the remaining holes were more favorable to Nick Watney,” Choi said. “I knew the 15th hole would be a turning point. That was a key hole, and I missed it. So I think that was the turning point of the match.”

Choi pulled his shot into the left rough, then tried to hit 5-wood toward the green. The thick grass shut his club and sent the shot into a bunker, some 60 yards from the pin, and so close to the side that his legs were pressed against the edge of the bunker. Choi hit a solid shot, but it took one more hop into the rough, he chipped out to 12 feet and missed the putt.

Watney was just short of the green and lagged his putt from 75 feet to 5 feet, converting yet another important par.

On the next hole, Watney used his power to smash a drive that left him only a 7-iron to the green, and he again hit a good lag for a two-putt birdie. His seventh and final par save came from just behind the 17th green, and his chip stopped 2 feet from the cup.

Watney earned $1.116 million and became the first player this year to top $4 million on TOUR.

“I’m overjoyed to be in here as the winner,” Watney said. “It was a very difficult, long day. K.J. played great golf and he kept coming and coming. And that makes it even more rewarding.”

US Open Week – Dr Morris Pickens Quoted in USA Today

Enjoy reading the USA Today artical By Steve Dimeglio

The time-honored axiom states that the Masters truly doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday. For Rory McIlroy, his journey there came to a crushing end in April.

The 22-year-old from Northern Ireland took a one-stroke lead to the 10th tee before his game unraveled on one of golf’s grandest stages. In line to win his first major championship, all the trappings of sleeping on a four-stroke, 54-hole lead and thoughts of going wire-to-wire among the stately Georgia pines came to a painful head on the back nine.

For three rounds, McIlroy controlled his golf ball, the field and his emotions with skill beyond his years. In 45 minutes, he fell out of his comfort zone and landed in the Twilight Zone.

His maiden voyage as the leader in the final round of a major turned into a survival expedition. He snap-hooked his drive on the 10th and ended up between two white cabins 50 yards left of the fairway. After hitting two trees en route to the putting surface, McIlroy made a triple bogey. Another bogey on the 11th, a four-putt double-bogey on the 12th and a tee shot into Rae’s Creek on the 13th left him doubled over and wanting to hide among the azaleas. Ninety minutes later he finished in a tie for 15th.

McIlroy wasn’t the first to implode under the klieg lights. Some of the game’s biggest stars have succumbed to major heat, including Sam Snead, who made a triple bogey on the final hole when a par would have won him the 1939 U.S. Open; Arnold Palmer, who blew a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play in the 1966 U.S. Open; and Greg Norman, who squandered a six-shot lead with 18 to play in the 1996 Masters.

If recent history holds, the 111th U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club, which begins today, is ripe for another meltdown. In three of the last four majors, an inexperienced member of Generation Next (none over 30) has fallen victim in a first attempt to secure a final-round lead in a major.

First up was Dustin Johnson, 26, who squandered a three-shot lead with an 82 in last year’s U.S. Open. Then Nick Watney, 30, crumbled with an 81 after taking a three-shot lead to the 55th hole of the PGA Championship. And McIlroy’s 80 was the worst round in Masters history by any pro leading after the third round.

There is no blueprint to handling emotions — or the body’s motions, including breathing — when pressure and accompanying media attention, scrutiny and criticism begin to mount and everything, from your swing, your walk and your thoughts, accelerate out of control . Or, as Hall of Famer and nine-time major champion Ben Hogan said, when the narrowest fairway in golf becomes the one between a player’s ears.

“There is a huge difference in taking a 54-hole lead (in a major) vs. a regular PGA Tour event,” says Curtis Strange, who blew a three-shot lead with six holes to play in the 1985 Masters. He went on to win back-to-back U.S. Opens in 1988-89. “It’s hard to put into words the ramped up of nerves of anxiousness, sleeplessness, pressure. It’s like an out-of-body experience.

“When you’re in a tournament and everything’s great and nice and you make putts, you basically don’t learn a damn thing. It’s during those tough situations and missteps, both physically and mentally, that you really learn how to react, how to prepare, how to hit shots. You have to experience rough times. I learned a great deal from failing.”

Waiting is the hardest part

Being the hunted in a final round is tough enough, especially when the golf course is set up as the toughest test of the week, but the weight of going to sleep with the lead can be a burden . Killing time after waking up isn’t easy, either. With tee times for the leaders so late in the day, those in the final groups have to linger for six or seven hours before hitting the first tee shot.

Again, experience helps. Phil Mickelson played chess with his kids in the morning before winning his third green jacket in the afternoon in 2010. Jack Nicklaus liked to watch the BBC broadcast of the British Open, where he once went 15 consecutive years with a tie for sixth as his worst finish, to see how the course was playing. And Tom Watson, learning to become a pilot, read flight books in 1977 when he won his first Masters.

“The biggest challenge is not the actual playing of the final round. The biggest challenge is the anticipation of the start of the round, the time between finishing Saturday and starting Sunday and how you handle that time,” four-time major champion Mickelson says. “Does holding up the trophy go through your mind? If it does you are going to have a problem.”

That’s what happened to McIlroy.

“It is very hard to keep yourself in the present and not think about winning or putting on that green jacket or walking up the last with a two- or three-shot lead,” says McIlroy, who has finished in ties for third in three majors. “My advice would be to get into a bubble and don’t let outside factors influence anything, whether that be newspaper articles, TV or anything.

“Everyone is going to have bad days. Mine just happened probably on the most important day of my golfing career.”

Managing this type of pressure has led to a cottage industry of sports psychologists who help players examine fears, frustrations and doubts. Through various practices — breathing exercises, slowing a routine, picking a good target and focusing on the little things — the ultimate goal is maintaining a positive outlook when confidence begins to vanish, most likely at the time the heart and head start to pound.

Basically, a golfer has to learn how to be comfortable, says sports psychologist Morris Pickens, when in an uncomfortable situation.

“You are being pulled by your emotions because of what others are saying. Usually by the media which is asking how winning a major would change your life,” says Pickens, who works with, among others, Watney and major champions Lucas Glover, Zach Johnson, Stewart Cink and Davis Love III. “You get ahead of yourself. What I emphasized to Nick was to play the course, play the course, play the course. But he was playing to win the PGA Championship, to win his first major, and to make the Ryder Cup team. Doing those things on Thursday, Friday and Saturday was impossible because they didn’t exist then. So he just played the course.

“But once the clock struck midnight at the day turned to Sunday, his mind changed and he changed. It was a terrible day on the scorecard, but it was a great day for learning.”

Watney says he woke up that fateful Sunday far too early and stared at the clock for far too long. When he got to the course, he tried his best to pass time but said he basically wasted a lot of energy doing too many things. Once the round started he couldn’t slow down no matter what he tried.

“I was going very, very fast, swinging fast, walking fast, thinking way ahead,” says Watney, he has worked with Pickens for many years. “And so I think what I learned is that I’m never going to be able to block out those feelings; I just have to learn how to handle them.

“It was a foreign feeling, but I would love to have it again.”

Not everyone, after all, can be Tiger Woods or Nicklaus. Woods has won 14 of 15 majors when he held at least a share of the lead heading into the final round. Nicklaus was 10-for-12.

“If you don’t learn from (collapsing), then you’re not paying attention,” Nicklaus says. “What do I have to do not to let that happen to me again? How do I control (nerves)? And you try and turn a negative into a positive.”

Nicklaus’ lasting lessons came not only in the 1963 British Open but in the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach the same year. In the Open, he didn’t play conservatively and made bogeys on the final two holes to miss out on a playoff by one shot. At Pebble Beach, needing a birdie on the final hole to win and a par to force a playoff, Nicklaus instead three-putted from 20 feet to lose by one.

“At Pebble Beach I tried to win the tournament, and I ran it by 4 feet and missed it coming back, and I said, ‘Why would I be so stupid?’ The worst I could have done was to get into a playoff,” Nicklaus says. “So I learned. I never three-putted (in a situation like that) again.”

Finding solace

The good news for McIlroy, Watney and Johnson is that they have not been scarred for life. McIlroy, ranked No. 8 in the world, has three top-10s in five starts since the Masters.

Watney, No. 14,Mik has seven top-10s in 11 starts this season, including a win in the WGC-Cadillac Championship. In his only major since the meltdown, the Masters, he finished 46th.

Johnson, No. 9, won the 2010 BMW Championship and nearly won the PGA Championship, drawing on his experience in the U.S. Open. After the U.S. meltdown, he found solace in a boat on the waters near his home. He says he was bothered by the final round for about 36 hours. He, however, did not forget it and figured out what he did when things went so wrong.

“It’s a funny game,” Johnson says. “I knew what I needed to do to succeed at the PGA. It definitely helped me, failing at the U.S. Open. Everything started to speed up at the U.S. Open and I couldn’t slow anything down. I forced myself to slow down at the PGA. It definitely was a learning curve.”

Johnson, however, didn’t win. All he needed was a par at the final hole to win, or a bogey to get into a playoff with Bubba Watson and eventual winner Martin Kaymer. He double-bogeyed 18.

“At the PGA … everybody remembers the 18th hole, but they forget about I birdied 16 and 17 to get a one-shot lead going into 18,” says Johnson, who was assessed a two-stroke penalty for grounding his club in a fairway bunker on the 72nd hole that he didn’t think was a bunker.

Handling that type of situation is another story.

Copyright 2011 USA TODAY

Zach Johnson’s caddie will tee off at Principal Charity Classic. Damon Green consults with Dr Morris Pickens

Courtesy, Rick Brown of the Des Moines Register

New Mental Approach – Zach Johnson Defends Crown Plaza Colonial

Zach’s results soar after mental check

Dr Mo’s players Go Head to Head – Glover Wins Wells Fargo Championship

Four of Dr Mo’s players had busy final rounds Sunday, all four with top 10 finishes at the 2011 Wells Fargo Championship.  Top honors went to Lucas Glover who won on the first play-off hole against long-time friend and fellow Clemson Tiger, Jonathan Byrd.  Glover even figured out he has played more than 100 rounds of golf with Byrd.  The 100 rounds include their time together playing  junior golf, their collegiate years asClemson teammates and the last ten years on the PGA Tour.  Zach Johnson (T6) and Stewart Cink (T9) registered their first top-10 finishes of the 2011 PGA Tour season.

Wells Fargo Champion Lucas Glover wound up the winner by making a par on the first extra hole, ending a drought of 41 tournaments that stretched nearly two years back to his U.S. Open win at Bethpage Black in 2009. He moved into the top 30 in the FedExCup standings after being outside the top 100 coming into the week.

Masters Wrap Up

Exciting finish – wow!! As far as my guys go, nobody quit or “packed it in”, but a couple (Lucas and Stewart) just got too far behind to make up ground.   All 5 had stretches of good play, but each also had stretches somewhat sloppy play. I will give each guy time to reflect on “what went wrong” and then we will process those thoughts at Hilton Head where I will make notes for us to use next year in preparation.  Four of my players (Lucas Glover, Jonathan Byrd, Zach Johnson and Nick Watney) are taking a well deserved week off.  Stewart Cink was a late entry into the Texas Open field, and had good finishes in Tampa and Orlando.

The tools of my trade…

My five must haves today at Augusta….notebook & pen with player notes, credential, ticket, chap-stick and a cash holder.

Masters Week

Dr Mo is at Augusta National for the first major of 2011, working with five of his PGA Tour players.    Zach Johnson, a past champion in 2007 is making his 5th appearance, Stewart Cink is making is 14th appearance with a best finish of T3 in 2008, Lucas Glover is making his 4th appearance with a best finish T20 in 2007, Jonathan Byrd is also making his 4th appearance with a best finish of T8 in 2003 and Nick Watney is making his 4th appearance after finishing 7th in 2010.

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