Category: Archive

‘Better but not quite good enough’ pretty much summarizes my 2010 season. I made good progress by advancing to Stage 2 of qualifying for both the PGA and European tours and came within 1 stroke of advancing to final stage in Europe. In addition, I improved to 17th on the Canadian Tour’s order or merit and had my best finish ever in the season’s biggest event; a 2nd place at the Tour Championship in September. All in all, this season re-affirmed that I do have the talent and ability to make it to the big show! It bolstered my confidence and I am now more determined than ever. The great thing about improving and making progress is that it confirms I am on the right track. I definitely have more work to do BUT I know the things I need to work on. I will be spending my off-season working hard to address my weaknesses while continuing to develop my strengths. I will also be working on next year’s schedule and will post it as soon as it’s complete. Quite frankly, with the progress I made this year I can’t wait for next season to start! To all my supporters, sponsors and fans, I want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2011. Thank you for all you do for me; it’s very much appreciated. Mitch

2^nd stage of PGA Tour qualifying didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Unfortunately a very close friend of mine had passed away suddenly just as the event began. His name was Ako. As hard as I tried to put Ako’s passing behind me, it was difficult to keep him out of my thoughts. During the 4th round I decided it best to withdraw, return to Phoenix and prepare to go to Spain for the 2nd stage of European Qualifying. I want everyone to know that I’m not injured and I’m coming to grips with what happened. One thing Ako stressed was to always be positive and strive to achieve life’s goals. So that is exactly what I intend to do in Cadiz, Spain. In my next blog, I plan to be letting you know that I’m going to the final stage of European Q School! Mitch

I continued my strong play this week at the 1st Stage of PGA Tour Qualifying. I finished in 3rd place and advanced to Stage 2 which begins the 17th of November in Murrieta, California. I shot rounds of 75, 69, 68, 72 to finish at 4 under par. Round one was all about survival! Winds were howling at about 40 KM/H and the course, Oak Valley GC, sported very small undulating greens that were hard to hit with winds that strong. And chipping it close was very challenging as well with pins tucked near fringes and just over ridges. I opened the tournament with a birdie on my first hole, hole 10, and played very solid through hole 15 to remain at one under par. Then I let a swing get away from me on the tee shot on 16 that rattled off some roof tops of houses neighboring the fairway leading to a triple bogey. I bogeyed two more holes on my second 9 before making a bird on my 17th and closing a par on 18 to shoot 75. I was tied for 19th with the top 22 players advancing to 2nd Stage. Round two was still windy but not nearly as bad as round one! I played a solid front 9 with no 5’s on my card. I birdied both par 5’s and parred the rest. I misjudged a chip on 11 and hit a bad lag putt on 12, both leading to bogey and slipped back to level par. A temporary lapse in focus that I will work on eliminating moving forward… I regained my focus and birdied 4 of my last 6 holes to shoot 69 and leaped all the way up to 4th place. My first 9 holes of round 3 was the best 9 holes I played all year. Again, no 5’s on my card. I hit 8 greens and 1 fringe and converted 4 birdies with no bogeys. But then I gave 2 back with bogeys on 10 and 11. Another slight decline in focus mid-round. I fought back hard and followed up with an immediate birdie on 12 and birdied 17 and 18 to shoot 68. I finished round 3 in a tie for 2nd and was 2 shots off the lead. Although winning the stage would offer me no more benefit than finishing 2nd with no prize money being offered, I still wanted to win. I was putting great all week, so my game plan was to hit as many fairways and greens as possible and try and putt my way to the top of the leader board. All went as planned at the beginning of my round. I rolled in a 15 footer for birdie on 3, a 25 footer on 4, and left myself a tap in for birdie on 5. Three under through 5 and I had a one shot lead. I hit a poor long iron on 7 that lead to bogey and made the turn at minus 2. I was playing good but wasn’t hitting it quite as crisp as I would have liked. The winds began to swirl heading into the back 9 and standing on the par three 11th hole, I was really confused by the wind direction and had a hard time getting comfortable. The hole is about 200 yards long into a very narrow green with a high-side bunker left and water right of the green. I sent my ball for a swim in the lake and made double, then missed and up and down on 12 leading to bogey. Lost 3 shots just like that. After 12, I decided to just hit to middle of greens to get a solid feel back in my hands for good contact and make boring pars. I did just that the rest of the way in and rolled in one birdie on 17 to get myself back to even par for the day and finish the tournament at 4 under par. The best part of my week was the number of great shots that I hit along with great putting! I lead the field in birdies for the week with 20. What I will sharpen up moving forward will be to keep my focus for the entire round, which was a bit more difficult this week because each round took 6 hours! All in all… Success in Stage 1!!!! Looking forward to Stage 2!!! Cheers M

Ou est ce je devrai commencer avec cette blog??? I mean… where should I start with this blog??? I guess the end is a good place because that is all that really matters, I qualified. Second stage will take place in Spain during the last week of November followed directly after by the Third and Final Stage the first week of December. Now, onto how it all happened … I arrived in France three and a half days before the tournament began. I figured this would give me enough time to map out course in detail and let my body recover from the jet lag. I didn’t hit the course the day I arrived but got right to work first thing the next morning. After only playing two holes, I was shocked about how much work was going to be needed in creating a plan for the course. Hands down it’s the craziest course I’ve ever played! During my first practice round, after reaching the green on several holes, I literally had to turn around and walk back to the tee to play it again because the way I tried it the first time was flat out not the right thing to do in a tournament. Also, I quickly realized there could be 5 or more pin locations on a single hole that required totally different approach locations and yardages for shots into the greens. And on top of that, wind direction would throw another variable into each approach and could change where you need to place your ball in order to have a chance to hit the right part of the green. There were a couple of holes however where I decided to hit my ball to the exact same location on the green no matter where the pin was. For example, the par 3 4th hole had a back pin location that I was not willing to chase no matter what. I planned to lay up to the front of the green which would leave me with a 45 foot putt up and over a 6 foot ridge that runs away off the back of the green after it reaches the peak of the ridge. I figured I would have about a 50/50 chance of 2 putting. This seemed like good odds when looking at what could happen if I chased the pin on top of this ridge where the green width was about 10 yards with a 100 foot cliff to the left of the green down into the bush, and the right dropped off to the opening of the tunnel that we had to walk through to get to the green from the tee. If you missed the green to the right, your ball would enter the tunnel and run 100 yards back down towards the tee. Crazy right?! So on this hole I chose to lay my ball up short of the tunnel opening, which would give me an extremely difficult putt, but at least I would be on the green! My strategy worked out great in the tournament. I hit an amazing first lag putt to about 5 feet and dropped my par putt! Anyways, I think you get the picture… My practice rounds were a lot of work but at the end of it all I had a good game plan. And it was to make a lot of pars and hope to roll in the odd long birdie! Round 1: I executed my game plan very well! Low risk, and made 4 birdies and 2 bogies to shoot 70. In 8th place after day one. Round 2: In come the winds gusting about 50 Km/hr. I played awesome and managed to make 3 birdies and only give 2 back to shoot 1 under 71. I moved into 3rd place. Round 3: More windy than day 2 believe it or not! And I played great to make the turn at even par. The back nine was a different story. I struggled judging the wind and before I knew it, I was on the bogey train. I was 4 over par through 4 holes on the back side. As my round wore on, instead of just realizing that the conditions were ridiculously tough on an extremely hard golf course and accepting some bogies, I got away from my game plan and tried to make up for my lost shots. Not smart! For example, I chased a tucked left pin on 14 and my ball over turned and trickled down into a bunker that literally sat at leased 15 feet below the green (3 times the depth of the “ROAD HOLE BUNKER” at St. Andrews). First swing, didn’t get it out. Second swing, cleared by inches. Then I rolled in a 40 foot putt for bogey. I stuffed a wedge on the 16th to 8 feet and wanted redemption! Instead, I aggressively blew my first putt through the break and missed the 5 foot comebacker, bogey. Holy Snowball Batman! And it’s not even over yet… The par 5 17th has a series of 3 lakes. The first lake is cleared on your drive, then you need to clear the second for your lay-up while staying short of the third that sits in front of the green. I measured I had 290 yards to the front of the green, the cover yardage on the second lake sat 88 yards from the green and the 3rd lake started 40 yards from the green. This is very basic math and is usually done with ease in normal conditions but being in the snowball I was in, I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. My thought process was to give a safe buffer to carry the second lake so I said to myself “pretend the lake ends 100 yards from the green rather than 88”. So my carry yardage was 190, I normally hit my 5 iron 200 and that will cover the second lake by 10 yards and keep me short of the 3rd lake. Hit my 5 iron perfect and admired the flight of my ball until it came down short and rattled around in the rocks of the lake shore. I couldn’t believe it! Just as I reached for my yardage book to double check my numbers, I realized I went the wrong direction with my yardage buffer. The actual cover on the lake was 202. I mistakenly pretended the lake was 12 yards closer, not further away. Oooops. So I go find my ball and its wedged in a pile of rocks. I tried to think logically here, if I go back and drop on the other side of the lake where I hit my last shot, it would basically cost me 2 strokes (one penalty, and one for distance back). I thought, if I can just get it out, I can reach the green on my next shot, and that will “save” me a stroke. So I took a full blast at my ball with an open blade like a bunker shot thinking it would pop out nicely. Instead, it ricocheted off a rock, flew straight up and cracked me in the nose! Now my eyes are watering, nose bleeding a bit, I just got a one-stroke penalty for hitting myself with my ball, and my ball came to rest in another pile of rocks after deflecting off my nose. But this pile of rocks looked much less intimidating so I took another swing and got it out, then got it up and down for a 7. When it was all over I had shot 9 over on the back 9! I slipped to 16th place, one shot out of the top 15 that advance. Round 4: It did take me most of day after my third round to get over the 81 and falling outside the qualifying number. Later that night I had a re-assuring conversation with my Mom and Brian. They told me to forget the back back nine, have confidence in my abilities and stick to the game plan had served me well for the first 45 holes. They were right. I had worked hard to create a game plan that would let me get around the course with very low risk and with some good putting, would put me a few shots in the red. Being only one shot out going into the final round, my original game plan would be perfect. I didn’t have to change anything to try to make up for lost stokes the round before. I started my round with 5 straight pars before rolling in a bomb on the 6th for birdie. I parred the rest of the front side to turn at one under, right on schedule. I made a 15 footer for birdie on the par 5 12th then stuffed a wedge to 3 feet and converted on the 14th. I hit another wedge to 3 feet on the par 5 17th after calculating my math properly this time. So far a flawless round of golf and all because I stayed focused on my plan. The 18th is a flat out hard par 3, 225 yards, small elevated green with OB left and long. I fanned my shot short right and didn’t get it up and down. One small blemish on a great round of golf, 69. I pulled myself up to 11th place and earned my way to Second Stage. Up next are some mini tour events in Phoenix to stay sharp for PGA Stage 1 in California the last week in October… Cheers

WOW. That was fun! I was looking forward to this event the entire season. The course, St. Catharines Country Club is AWESOME. It is normally a par 72 for the members, but we play two of the par 5’s as par 4’s for the Championship (numbers 8 and 10). It’s the style of course that really rewards good shots and you make a lot of putts if you are rolling the ball well because the greens are pure! It also allows you to recover from small misses and “sometimes” gives you one side of a hole or a green to miss on and be able to recover. It is a tree lined course, but most of the trees have high limbs that you can play creative shot out of and get your ball around the green one way or another and grind it in for par. Last year, I shot 8 under par at the Tour Championship and finished 8th. This year, I made a plan about how to attack the course and my week in general. I took Monday off to rest, as I like to do. I usually use my Monday’s to do laundry and sort out all my gear for the week ahead. Mondays are great days to fit in a full workout as well because I take the day off the course all together. What I did on Tuesday I tried the prior week in Seaforth and it felt great; I woke up at 5:30 am and was the first guy to arrive at the course to play a full 18 with nobody ahead of me! I played fast and got a lot of work done. Then I went back to the hotel for an hour nap around Noon and returned for a 4-hour practice session from 2-6. This was great because I got about 2 days of work done in 1 day and felt fresh for both sessions! Wednesday I like to take it easy, so I volunteered to coach a 1-hour junior clinic in the morning then played 9 holes afterwards. I sharpened up the short game a bit after my round and was done for the day. Caught a movie and was rested and ready for round one in the morning! My game plan for the course was to simply hit whatever club would put me in the wide part of the fairway, and shoot for the wide part of every green. This way I would play stress free, assuming I am hitting it relatively good. From there, my score would be determined by how many putts I made. And as I turned out my putter was hot! Even better was the fact that it didn’t cool down at all during my four rounds. Even thought I had a solid stress free strategy, I did hit some shots in to some unfavorable positions, which led to a few bogeys every round. But my hot putter saved a few key pars for and converted on 4-5 birdie putts every round. The biggest thing for me this week was the fact that I played with the game I brought to the course. I have heard Tiger, Jack, and many others repeat over the years that you need to “Dance with who you brung”. All year, I have been working on hitting a small fade, which is my preferred shot. And when my fade comes with me to the course, all is well. But more times than not, a draw shows up and I had been fighting it rather than embracing it and using it to my advantage. At the Tour Championship, I had been hitting more draws than fades when taking raw swings. Rather than fighting and trying to force my face, I just aimed right and let the draw happen. And most times, I hit good shots. Lesson RE-LEARNED! My putting feels as good as ever! My ball striking is solid! My short game feels sharp. And my mental game is very focused! A good recipe going into European Qualifying. Please follow at www. Europeantour.com and follow the links: Qualifying, Barbaroux.