Pursuing my Class A PGA Professional Certification, we are required to pass a Player’s Ability Test. Which we have to shoot a certain score for 36 holes…mine was 158. Which makes sense…if you want to work in the industry, you should know enough and play well enough to be legit. And I shared on a few of my podcasts my own journey of passing the test, which has been a gruesome but amazing learning experience. For most of us who have to take the test more than once, we start recognizing each other at the next testing golf course. We get to commiserate together and develop a close bond. It’s sort of like being in the trenches together, trying to survive. After a while, we tell others that instead of playing on the PGA Tour, we play on the PAT Tour. The Player’s Ability Test Tour. That’s funny, right? No?

Well, during this one-day, 36-hole qualifying, you’ll get to experience a lot of drama. We all start out with jittery nerves. I mean, we’ve been practicing and anticipating this day, and when it finally gets here, we are all full of nervous energy. You can sense it while quietly warming up on the driving range and hitting some chips and putts on the practice green for feel. No one is talking, no one is smiling, everyone is just serious, tired because it is early, and anticipating having their best round and passing this thing. And trust me, with this type of energy, anything can happen, and it does. Ask me how many tap-in putts I missed; there are three that I can remember. And I don’t mean like a 2-footer, I mean like a tap-in 2-inch putt that I lean over to tap in and miss. I remember one of the players I was playing with looked over at me and said, “Please don’t do that again.” I think that me doing that made him even more freaked out. Dude, you are freaked out? How do you think I feel?

I can’t forget this one hole, watching one of the guys that I was playing with. Let’s call him Jim. You can tell Jim has game. I mean, we all do in some way; if we’ve never broke 80, we wouldn’t be out here. Anyways, he was a long hitter and had great touch around the greens. I would guess he was probably a 4 or 5 handicap.

On a par 4, 390 yards with a hazard on the left and a hazard on the right…he made an errant shot off the tee. I mean, it wasn’t that bad. It was a pull draw, started off the left of the fairway, and it rolled into the hazard area. We all went over there to look for his ball, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find it. He went back to the tee box to re-tee the shot, now, he’s hitting 3. With this heavy pressure to somehow walk away with a maximum double bogey and a possible bogey, he now pushed-faded his drive to the right. But this time, we found the ball. It was in the weird hazard area surrounded by rocks, loose wood chips, and mostly dirt, but his lie wasn’t horrible. And he had a clear swing with no obstructions on his backswing…but, honestly, it wasn’t an ideal lie or a shot to go for the green, which was about 160 out at this point. I knew what he was thinking though, I need a miracle. I need to get this shot on the green. He took a deep breath and, with all his focus and might, he made a perfect swing. But with a “not so ideal” lie off the dirt, it stayed low and off to the right of the fairway, in the dirt again. And this is where he came unglued. He hit the shot again, and it went like 3 feet in front of him. He hit it again, and another 10 feet, he hit it again, and it flew over the green. To top it off, when he finally made it on the green, he three-putted. He got an 11 on the hole. Seven over par. The hope in his eye dissipated quickly…he leaned forward, bent down, put his hands on his knees, his head down. He stayed in the position for a long time. He knew it was over. He can’t recover an 11 on a hole. We didn’t have that many holes left. And if we did have enough holes, it probably didn’t matter, his spirit was broken. He was broken. We were all broken.

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