Firstly GLGL tomorrow Ship. Great stories too. My shock when I met Faldo was how big/athletic he was. He might have only hit it 240 but he is an ATHLETE.

I was going to post this last night but lost it in a copy and paste fiasco. (I now have clipdairy)

I think the genius of the 10th hole is illustrated by the fact that when you stand on the tee you think you should go for the green every time. It's very inviting. 311 yd, downhill par 4 to a very wide and visible green. However when you view the hole from the back of the green to the tee you wonder why you would ever go for it.

I will also being interested to hear what thinking goes into #6. Short par 3 with a island bunker in the middle of the green. Would be a famous hole if it was on the back 9.

Kid eating inside with the players, ship eating outside in the caddy shack. Ship probably wants a hamburger. No, a cheeseburger.

Serious question, who do you think will be more nervous, you or Will?

Regardless, am sure you'll do your job well. Just have a friggin' blast out there!

BO

This is real exciting, Ship. Wondering if there is any 'certification' process or whatever for you to caddy in a Tour Event? I know you're a former player and stuff, but there must be some sort of check to make sure you're not just some clown off the street?

Anyway, good luck, the kid sounds like he's ready to go. Great story on Faldo and Holmes.

Birdie on his first ever PGA Tour tournament hole! Let's gogogogogo

on pace for -72

look out Tiger Rory

aaaaand it's gone, still even thru 3

Nice up and down on 4 for par

GLGL Ship and Will!!

Seems to be striking it well...had a 12 footer for birdie on 6 (200 yard par 3) and now has a 6 footer for bird on 7.

and 3 putted!! ouch!!

Zach Cabra is a boss

Tough one. He hit it well first 11 but didn't score at all. Had a three putt from 6' on 7 and from 50' on 11. Had 3 plugged lies in the sand and 5 fairways the he missed by less than 5' which was a pretty big penalty on decent shots. Overall had a bad attitude starting on about 9 and just didn't have it. Too high of expectations led to a letdown that cost him on the back nine. Great learning experience.

It's just so easy on a course like this to bogey almost every hole. If you miss any shot you will pay the price, there isn't a simple hole after #1.

Amazing to see 10 playing with a 4.2 so far. 280 to the front edge and the hole is playing with the same average as a 460 yard hole. Crazy.

More later....thanks for the well wishes!

Thanks for keeping us updated Ship. Ice water in that boy to birdie his 1st hole on the tour nonetheless

yeah i agree that course is super tough to go low on, but ive seen some in the zone puring it

Starting on 10 today he birded to get it to +4. +2 is the projected cut so he still has a shot at playing on the weekend.

If Happy learns how to putt he's gonna be scary

Sky Sports just did a quick piece on him about how he qualified and showed his recent career stats and so on.

ugh three putt double on 16 was not pretty. Cut will be +3, but that's pretty close to GG.

Back in it, birdied 18 and 1, one time!

needs to gain 3 strokes with 7 to play.
i boldly predict he will gain 4 strokes.

E round was very strong today, can't wait for trip report

He scored better than a lot of VERY good players.

Great effort guys. Excellent number today. That course is just beastly right now.

Birdieing 18 on TV was awesome!

This. Great stuff Will and ship.

What a cool experience. Most of the guys were great, but some weren’t. Furyk came up to Will on Monday and said some really nice things to him. JB of course went out of his way to say hi. Gary Woodland was super cool in the valet line one day. Jhonny Vegas is simply one of the nicest guys on the planet. Bill Haas and Webb were really nice to be around. Chad Campbell is great.

There were some bad guys too, but since this is kind of my new office I won’t elaborate other than to say Bubba is such a *****. Get over yourself man.

As for Will and his game, he simply needs to get better across the board, but the game he has right now is good enough to keep his card. He desperately needs more experience is the main thing for when he’s by himself. I’m taking an extremely nitty and critical look here to help him, so here it goes.

He is terrible at club selection. There are a few reasons for this, first and foremost is lack of experience. It takes time to learn how to read lies, judge what the reaction will be once it lands, picking the shot and shape. He tries to work it both ways too much. This leads to a paradox of choice to a certain extent so not only does he need to figure out the distance to hit it and what target to hit at, but he also has to go through the myriad of shots he can hit. This extreme range of shots also has the effect of giving him a massive range of distances he can hit any club. I think this makes it hard on him to be as consistent as he could be. I’m not sure if this is something I would say to stop doing or just be patient and wait out the learning curve. I do think it will serve him long term, but it also might be something he winds up changing if/when he realizes it is hurting him.

He simply chooses a club quickly and then never really thinks the entire problem through all the way. He wants to go with his first gut instinct and then stops thinking about the choices. Like on 16 yesterday. He was 167 hole and on Monday he hit an 8 iron that carried 171. He had 175 back edge and was into a breeze. His initial thought was nine and that was what he was going with, period. I still went through the motions of thinking it through even though I knew there was no chance I would get him to go with eight, it is what I would have had him hit for sure. I did think he could get a nine to the front middle of the green so I let him go with it. He just put a poor swing on it and left it right and short of the green, plugged in the bunker. This was a constant theme last summer and he did it again this week, but was better. He just makes decisions quickly and doesn’t think about enough potential options. Experience.

His putting is drastically improved and for the week his being -2.5 Strokes Gained Putting is actually pretty good in my opinion. He had four 3 putts which is obviously not good, but they were very fixable. The three putt from 6’ putt on seven the first round was a quick putt, but he *tried* to make it. He simply tried to force it in the hole and gunned it 5’ by, no reason for that, he’s better than that. Patience of just letting the hole get in the way like he did the entire back nine Friday is the way to make putts. Pick a line, put good pace on it and let the hole just get in the way of the ball. On greens that fast you simply can’t try to make it…if that makes sense. Obviously you are trying to make it, but you just have to hit it with the correct speed and let what happens, happen. Trusting that you barely have to hit it AND that it will get there is vital. He just didn’t want to leave it short so he made sure he hit it.

The three putt on 11 first round was a 57’ putt that you will three putt often, whatever. Yesterday on 13 he wanted to play the second putt from 2.5’ left lip and that is just too short of a putt to break that much. It’s fine to play it there, but you better barely touch it so it will take the break. He likely just doesn’t quite have that touch yet. I said to him “that line if fine with the right speed”. I should have said “inside left or left center and hit your putt”. Oops. Next was the three putt for double on 16. After hitting a great shot out of the plugged lie he had about 12’ coming straight down the hill that he literally just needed to touch and it would get to the hole. I think same thing as on seven, he just didn’t want to leave it short and it’s just hard to trust that you literally just have to get that ball started and it will get there.

He needs to choke down on the shaft more often to take a little distance of shots. I never asked him if he ever chokes down on the shaft because there is zero chance I would tell him to try it so why even ask the question. It was simply something I noticed out there this week that there were a number of shots that I thought that would have helped. I tried to look at his grip to see if he was or not but couldn’t quite tell, my belief is that he wasn’t.

Chipping in general was pretty good. I was actually pretty impressed with a few shots he hit. He will keep improving and adding shots to his game. He wasn’t really ever in any funky spots where he needed to hit the “wow” shot. Both of our playing partners were in some strange spots where they hit some impressive shots, Will simply never had to even try anything outside the box. That’s good ball striking and course management.

I think he might have a little too much curve on his tee shots. He was in the rough by about 5’ or less probably 6 times in two days. Some of those were from the ball turning too much and running out into the rough. I’m kind of conflicted on this one. You are going to miss fairways, but you don’t want to hit a good shot that just runs out into the rough. That for sure happened three time which is a pretty big value loss considering they were good shots.

Attitude in general. This was a problem last summer too. He gets to pissy out there. He does control his emotions and doesn’t get outwardly mad which is a good thing. However, he does just get a little sad or down too much. First round after the three putt on seven he was visibly mad and I get that, trust me. But the problem is when the next unforced error comes (and it will come) you are already prone to overdoing the reaction and starting the downward spiral. So just a couple holes later when he two hops it long on #10 and it plugs in back bunker he is already mad-ish. That poor bogey was followed by the three putt from 57’ and off we go down that sad path.

From there he bogeyed 4 of the next five holes. On a course this hard you simply can’t “fake it” around. He’s likely never seen anything quite like that before. At other courses he can probably check out and get away with it, not out here, and not on that course. I feel this problem is likely what was keeping him from playing to his potential prior to last summer as much as anything. Sure his putting and course management has improved, but he still gets too frustrated. This leads to poor decisions and just a flat effort level.

About to land in Dallas so that’s about all I’ve got for now….I know it’s a wall of text so I shouldn’t say “that’s all I got”.

Here’s a cool article the wrote on us this week. They have been trying to find the right spot since last summer to write this and obviously this week was the perfect time.

http://www.pgatour.com/news/2015/02/...t-fawcett.html

This X 1,000,000.

He really putted great on the back nine yesterday. He only had 11 putts on the back nine and all were strong 4-8 foot putts to keep his chances alive. Really impressive stuff.

I can’t wait to get home and check out the coverage!