WGA Evans Scholars Magazine, Winter 2018

of the year If you can make it you know youve really accomplished something Just a lot of fun memories along the way for me a lot of it was being able to play in the Western Open for a number of years after in my professional days and I felt like I had a lot of support from the WGA and different people from the area playing at Cog Hill Golf and Country Club Its been really fun these last couple days those memories have come flooding back Talk about your amateur career and what it meant to you To me its the purest form of golf because youre simply playing for yourself Youre playing to challenge yourself and to learn more about how you perform and how you can improve in the game And so when I look back on my amateur career I think about the joy I played with Its a game where youre constantly learning but at that level and at that age it seemed like the more I played the better I played the more I had to learn to keep improving and getting better and taking it to the next level People out there probably look at you and say Wow young guy still in great shape Why TV now and not the PGA TOUR anymore The game has changed a lot especially in the last five years Part of that is due to the equipment There are guys playing on the TOUR who have never hit a Persimmon driver Theyve never hit a Balata golf ball The athletic ability of players on the PGA TOUR now is higher than its ever been ever played of its kind the most wellconditioned and manicured golf course Id ever played The format is 18 18 then 36 thats stroke play Then were going to have a fun dinner then youre going to play four matches So I was like Thats going to be impossible Well thats OK Ill never make it that far The first year I find myself in the finals with Phil I wasnt quite ready for that stage yet but that catapulted me just getting that position I think the reason I was able to win a couple times was because when I played match play like that I just figured Im going to not make any mistakes and Im just going to wear an opponent down At a course like Point OWoods if youre on your game its pretty easy to do that You can win a lot of holes with pars and thats what I did and made it to that Sweet 16 dinner Beyond maybe Easter Sunday Thanksgiving and Christmas thats probably the fourth greatest dinner hill and then I start to back up so I can see the angle of the putt and if it wouldnt have hit the hole it would have gone five or six feet by but the thing dove in and then I find my buddy in the red shirt and the rest is history Moving on to the Western Amateur I thought Point OWoods was the hardest golf course Id ever seen and that test of golf was the most grueling I could imagine Talk a little bit about the role the Amateur played in helping spark your career and your memories of Point OWoods I remember when I first saw the golf course I wasnt sure how I was ever going to play the second hole because it was a par 5 But guys were reaching it in two and Ive got to figure out a way to lay up and once I got through that second hole I thought Im the only person that can fit through some of these corridors off these trees It was the first course Id Amateur golf is the purest form of golf because youre simply playing for yourself Youre playing to challenge yourself and to learn more about how you perform and how you can improve in the game Q Justin Leonard with featured Scholar speaker Lauren Farhat and then WGA Chairman David Robinson at the WGA Green Coat Gala Q Q 10 The WGA Evans Scholars Magazine