It feels like a year has passed since the last time I wrote one of these. I guess technically, a year has passed. In the last few months, I finally experienced the dreaded Q-School…FOUR times. “Q School” is short for qualifying school, which is a weeklong tournament that gives players the opportunity to play their way onto a tour, whether it is the Ladies Professional Golf Association or the Duramed Futures Tour (the developmental tour). The LPGA has two stages to get through, with the first stage having two sites. The second site allows for players who don’t advance through the first site to get a “mulligan” at getting through to the final stage. I know it seems complex, but bear with me.
My first Q-school experience took place in September at Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs. It was 110+ degrees of dry heat, and I recall more than a few members suffering from heat exhaustion. I don’t blame the weather, though. I chalk it up to a combination of nerves, fatigue, and plain bad golfing; I had a terrible week, not even sniffing the cut line to get to the final stage in Daytona Beach. I was discouraged at first, maybe even questioning if I had what it took to play at this level, but I remembered John Wooden’s words from the Pyramid of Success on one of our student-athlete handbooks: “Stay the course. When thwarted try again; harder, smarter. Persevere relentlessly.” Who knew that all those student-athlete workshops would be so useful someday? I sat down for the first time since my graduation, and honestly evaluated the way I played the game. I realized that I was getting too technical in my approach to the game, when I had always been more of a “feel” player. I ceased all work on my swing, and focused instead on playing more rounds and having more fun shaping shots around the course.
A few weeks later, I flew to Venice, Florida for my second attempt at making it to the final stage of LPGA Q-school. It was a completely different experience than the week I had one month prior. I had a blast just shaping shots, chasing the ball around the course, and playing the game the way I had always played when I was a kid. I held or tied the lead for the first two rounds; although I slipped toward the end, I still secured a fourth place finish—good enough to go to Daytona Beach for the final stage.
Because of my lackluster performance over the summer in the few Duramed Futures Tour events that I played, I also signed up for the Duramed Futures Tour Q-school, which was in (go figure) Florida. After one week at home in San Diego, I braved the trip across the United States for the third time in four months. Armed with a little bit more confidence, and a lot more Q-school experience, I had another great week. It was extremely windy a few of the days, and since the tournament was five days as opposed to the normal four, fatigue was definitely a factor. Still, my shots were solid, my putts were dropping, and my attitude was positive. I ended up winning the tournament, edging out Canadian Danielle Mills by one shot for the title.
With a little under a month before the final stage of LPGA Q-School in Daytona Beach, there was no rest for the weary. I scrambled to book a condo, flights, and a rental car. Since my older brother, Chris, was preparing for the LSAT exam that was the same week as Q-school, the Joh household was similar to being in a knife shop with a tornado on the way. I arranged for my former teammate and close friend, Jane Park, to carry my bag for the week, and my brother decided to change his testing site to Stetson University, so that he could come with me on my trip.
It was the first time since the Duramed Futures events this summer that I had dealt with so much rain. In fact, there was a delay of play at one point for over a day because of unplayable conditions on the course. It also didn’t help that the nerves I had that week were unlike any dragon I had ever faced. It was the hands-shaking, sweaty-in-all-the-wrong-places, “I think I may be sick” kind of nerves. I triple bogeyed my first hole, and never quite recovered. Needless to say, I didn’t have a good week; but if there is anything that I learned, it is that you just never know with a game like golf. One day it’s your best friend, and the next day it’s your psychotic ex-boyfriend. All you can hope to do is “stay the course.”
Getting School’d
Oh hey guys!
Listen, I just had a kind of okay idea. Not earth shattering; but I noticed that I’m posting a lot of pointless “has nothing really to do with golf” things on my tumblr blog: http://tiffjoh.tumblr.com, which I’m not going to stop doing, because let’s face it, if I didn’t post some of those things, I’d just end up trying to describe things to my friends, and I would just ramble, much like what I’m doing right now, but much more annoying, since it would be via my mouth instead of my fingers, and I’d have to take many breaths, etc. So how about the long wordy posts that I’d normally post on my tumblr, I’ll post right here on blogger. That way, I don’t piss off the people on tumblr who’s dashboards I have been launching a nuclear attack on, and I feel like I have some more freedom to type (cuz let’s face it…my parents don’t even know about this blog! muahahaha) at the same time, most of the pictures, songs, and pointless little reblogs I find funny are still going down over on tumblr, so if you’re into that…
so without further ado-age, I’ll go ahead and take some o’ my posts and migrate them back to the homeland.
WERDPRESS. I’M BACK!!!!!!!!!
Lovingly packing posts in bubble wrap
Just as momma and poppa joh once journeyed to a foreign land in the pursuit of happiness- I, too, have decided to migrate to htpp://tiffjoh.tumblr.com.
I will still post a few videos in the future on this site, but will slowly albeit surely make my way toward tumblr pastures.
BITE ME. Don’t mind if I do.
Field Trip- Take 2
Brace yourself, you may experience an unexpectedly high volume of drool…
Kindred Spirit
Check out this dude who asked me to take a picture of him in the city.
As I snapped the picture he yelled “7-11 BABY!” and I realized I’d made a friend for life.
Love it
I wanted to buy this shirt from the Flea Market today.
But I didn’t, and I will regret it for the rest of my life.
SO SKETCHY…
No guitar, piano or kazoo on the road makes for one unhappy underdog, and clearly I needed another outlet.
So Momma Joh bought me a drawing pad to shut me up on long drives.
So here are my first stabs:
This is what last week felt like in Syracuse, NY.
More doodles to come!
<3 teej
