Every week on Globalnews.ca Canadian golf stars Graham DeLaet and Adam Hadwin take readers behind the scenes of the PGA Tour, providing insights, perceptions and observations as they battle at the game’s biggest tournaments.
The game I play is all about improving. The improvements could be large or small, but getting better every year is something to take pride in. With the short off-season I had this year, I knew I needed to be focused on things that could take my game to the next level. That was the goal.
I rarely concern myself with my past results, and certainly don’t want to be defined by the great 2014 year I had. When I need to narrow down my focus on what to work on, I always look back on the year as a whole to determine what needs to be improved.
In 2013 I struggled with my results, but felt good about my game. However, I knew I needed to make some major improvements if I was going to move to the PGA Tour. The changes we made paid huge dividends last year and I was able to have my most successful season as a professional golfer.
I look back at that off-season and realize I now have a blueprint on how to handle the conclusion of a year. My goal was to be consistent throughout 2014. I wanted to make cuts and get into a rhythm on tour. Simply put, I wanted to play on the weekends and to give myself opportunities to play for championships, which is tough to do when you go home on Friday as I did in 2013.
Last year was different. I had many events where I limped across the cut line only to play well on the weekend and backdoor a Top 10 finish. There are all sorts of examples, like the El Bosque Mexico Championship or the Cleveland Open on the Web.com Tour, or the Shriners Hospital for Children Open at the start of this PGA Tour season. And this mindset lasted the entire year, which included four Top 10 finishes in my last five events, including a win. That put me at the top of the Web.com Tour money list, and enables me to avoid the reshuffle on the PGA Tour that can really derail a rookie season.
All of this led me to this off-season, which was short considering I played my last PGA Tour tournament in the middle of November. I sat down and took a look at the overall 2014 season to determine what needed to be addressed moving forward. Although my game was better in almost every way last year, there is always room for improvement. Pitching was one of the main aspects that stood out to us. My wedge play had improved greatly from 80 to 100 yards but I needed to get better at the feel shots, the ones you hate to be stuck with on a Sunday afternoon with the tournament on the line. First things first, we needed to improve on contact. Before I could concern myself with distance control, I needed to make sure I was hitting the centre of the clubface each and every swing.
Working with my coach, Brett, we started short, working at 10 to 20 yards, and only moving up in yardage if the contact was maintained. Seeing as though I had limited time to make this happen the time we spent was very focused. I have already seen the results on the course in the first two events in 2015.
I am always searching for ways to get better. It doesn’t matter who the player is—we are all trying to improve something in our game at any given time. A great example of this is Tiger Woods in his prime. Even though he was winning events by 10 shots, he wanted to win by 15 and he was always searching for ways to do that. Unless you are number one in every statistical category on tour, you always have something to work on.
And if you are tops across the course, maybe you should work on having a social life!
A rookie on the PGA Tour, Adam Hadwin is in the field of this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open.
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