Wow its been a long time

Hello everyone, I am going to start blogging again on request from my brother. There has been a lot of things going on in my life since I last posted in April. I have been getting into tournaments on the Hooters Tour, I made a cut posting three straight rounds in the 60's (67,68,69), I have met an amazing girl that has truly changed my life for the better, we had 6 weeks off from the Hooters Tour which I came home for the first three then I went on a mission trip to the Czech Republic for the rest and now am back on the road playing golf tournaments. So like I said a lot is going on. I don't even know where to start there is so much to say, so I will start with the cut that I made. It happened in the 5th tournament that I got into in Miami, Oklahoma. The course had experienced some torrential downpour in the month before we showed up, so as you can imagine the course was saturated to the max. The greens were very soft, but because it was so wet there was no roll in the fairways so the course was playing a little longer but still easier with the soft greens. The first round was one of the best rounds of golf I have ever played shooting 67 (-5) bogey free. When I was finished with the round I was feeling pretty good about my golf game and the gift that God has given me. I was a little nervous the second round to make sure that I followed it up with another good round. In the past if I have shot a good round usually the next round isn't so good, so my track record was not really in my favor. I started out with a par on the first hole and then I made my first bogey in 20 holes on the second hole of my second round. So there goes my brain spiraling down toward bad golf, but I was really focused on not stringing bad holes together. So I stepped back read a Bible verse that I had been memorizing, set my mind right and went forward. I made birdie on that hole and finished the front nine even par. I made the turn and preceded to play very well shooting 4 under par on the back nine for a final round score of 68 (-4). This was by far my best 36 hole score, 135 (-9) Saturday's round got rained out so there was a good possibility that it would only be a 54 hole tournament, but the officials wanted to try and get it all in by playing 36 holes on Sunday. I have to be honest I was hoping that we would only play 54 holes, because I had to drive 7 hours to Memphis, Tn as soon as I was done with the round to make my plane flight the next morning. Needless to say we played all 36 holes, I played well in the morning round with a 69 (-3), but then I lost a lot of momentum getting tired very quickly and finished the last round with a 78 (+6). I finished the tournament at 6 under par (my best tournament ever), but because of my last round I dropped from a top 20 to 69 place (boooo). I know that I didn't finish as well as I would have hoped to, but I am still happy with my performance and I am using that to build confidence for these next few tournaments. It's exciting to me to see God really work in my life strengthening me and changing me to be more like Christ. I will post again tomorrow with more about my trip to the Czech Republic.

Joe

Congrats to Zach Johnson

I just wanted to take a little moment in my busy life to congratulate Zach Johnson on his victory at the Masters this year. I am very proud of the way he handled himself during the final round and also how he represented Christ after he won. I was so excited to see him step up and not back down to Tiger, it is nice to see someone other than Tiger winning especially when Tiger is in the tournament. Zach has been my favorite golfer since I had the opportunity to have dinner with him and his wife, coach, and caddie last year before the Nissan Open. He is a great model of a Christian man playing professional golf. I pray that God would bless him in his golf and in his ministry out there on the PGA Tour and the impact that he has on the nation through his testimony on TV.

The Last Two Weeks

In the past two weeks I have done 4 qualifiers and have missed all four of them. Two of them have been Nationwide Monday qualifiers and the other two were Hooters tour Tuesday qualifiers. I would have the Nationwide qualifier, finish that and then have to drive 3 hours to the next location and play the Hooters tour qualifier the next morning. Lets just say I was making it very hard for me to make it into the Hooters event. Both Nationwide qualifiers I played well in, the first one I shot 71 (-1) but missed making it by a couple of shots. The second Nationwide qualifier I shot 75 (+4), which was a really good score. The weather was terrible that day, the wind was blowing between 35 and 40 mph so my score of 75 was not that bad only missing that one by a couple of shots as well. Both of the Hooters qualifiers I did not play to well. The first one was at a course that I played last year, but because of the Nationwide qualifier I didn't get to play a practice round before my round this year. The course was no different, the greens were a lot better than they were last year but besides that the course was the same. I came out and struggled around the course shooting a 74 (+2) to miss the qualifier by 4 shots. My friend Holt that has been staying with me in the RV the last couple of weeks made it through the qualifier so I ended up caddying for him in the tournament. Then for the second Hooters Tour qualifier I came to the course straight from the Nationwide qualifier not playing a practice round exhausted from the day before and struggled through the front nine shooting 3 over par, I started out the back nine making birdie on 10 and 12 to get it back to 1 over par for the round. I figured that if I was able to come in at even par or better I would make it through the qualifier. The next hole I ended up 3 putting from 65 feet to go back to 2 over, still though I had both par 5's left on the back nine so if I birdied both of them I would finish at even par. The 14th hole is a par 5 dogleg left with hazard all down the left on the inside of the dogleg. I pulled my drive into the hazard and made a double bogey on that hole to fall back to 4 over par. When this happened I knew it was over, I let up just a little bit on my mental game and made a double bogey on the next hole, then I finished the last three making one birdie and one bogey to shot 78 (+6) to miss that qualifier as well. Next on the schedule I am off to McCormick South Carolina to play in the next Monday qualifier for the Hooters Tour. I feel that in my trying to do both the Nationwide qualifiers and the Hooters qualifiers I was making it very difficult on myself to make either one, so from no on I will not be doing any more Nationwide qualifiers until I am exempt into the Hooters events.

Second Monday Qualifier

Sorry for the late post, but last week was the second Monday qualifier for the Hooters Tour in Lake Mary, Florida. I arrived at the course a couple of days early to play some practice rounds and get to know the greens the best that I could before the tournament. I have been working very hard on my game in the last couple of weeks really trying to make it through one of these Monday's. I felt really good about my game going into the round on Monday, confident with my swing and stroking the putter well. I hit the ball very well, making 6 birdies on the round, but making 2 bad swings on two separate holes that led to double bogie's on those holes. In the end I shot even par 72, could have been a lot better but I am happy with the result none the less. Not really thinking that i was going to have a chance since I thought the course was playing very easy, I came into the scoring tent and realized that I was tied for the tenth spot (they take 10 guys from the Monday into the tournament). I was pretty excited about that although I realized that i was tied with 11 other guys for the very last spot. That meant that we were going to have a playoff, 11 guys for 1 spot. Not that great of odds, but I was feeling good about how I was hitting the ball and felt that I could win this playoff. So we all piled into carts and the took us to a hole that was unoccupied and we started playing. The first group of 3 then the second group of 4 and lastly the third group of 4. The way that they do it is after playing the first hole the groups would wait at the end and whatever was the lowest score won and if there was a tie for the lowest score they would play the next hole until one person would win. I was in the second group, the first group went off looking very nervous none of them hit very good tee shots, but we couldn't see what their scores were. Our group was next, I stepped up and hit a great tee shot down the right side of the fairway, the longest in my group. Two of the guys in my group really struggled off the tee and were going to have a tough time making par on the first hole. The other guy in the group stepped up and hit a great iron shot into the green that looked like it was inside 5 feet, but it was hard to tell. After that I told myself that these guys are not just going to lay down and give this to me. Now it is my turn and I approached the shot with confidence and hit a great shot, the ball must have landed a foot from the hole, but proceeded to roll out about 8 feet past the hole. I have to say that I was very impressed with myself to be able to hit that shot after the guy in front of me hit it that close in a playoff. Then comes the putt, I had a downhill left to right putt. I felt I had a good read on it and stepped up and hit it. I hit the putt just the way that I wanted to, but ended up misreading the putt and the ball slid past the hole on the low side. The other guy in the group was closer than I and on the other side of the hole, he got up and nailed his putt right in the center. No one else out of the 11 guys made birdie and the playoff was over after one hole. I really learned a lot about myself in the playoff, and after the round before I found out what was going on I was just hoping that I would have a chance to get in and I got that chance. I didn't win, but it was a great experience to learn from. We have this week off, but next week I am playing in a Nationwide Monday Qualifier in Valdosta, Georgia. The qualifier for the Hooters Tour is on Tuesday to accommodate those who want to try the Nationwide event. Please continue to keep me in your prayers as I will start to do a lot of traveling in the next week and from then on . Thank you for your support and I will be updating this next Monday night.

Joe

First Monday Qualifier

On the road again, back out living out of the old RV. The first qualifier was tough, I had just finished driving across the United States (not hitting a golf ball for 5 days) and then try to step up with two days practice and play good. Well that's not what happened, it is a tough course playing at 7,400 yards with a 25 mph wind the entire day. I played pretty good on the front nine making bogey on the 9th hole to shoot one over, but hit a bad streak on 10,11, and 12 going bogey, double bogey, and bogey. That was really tough on me mentally being even par after the 8th hole and then after the 12th hole I was 5 over par. That is pretty close to where I finished up, 78, but it really helped me to get back in the swing of things. I am getting ready for the next Monday qualifier, which is tomorrow, feeling very confident with where my mental game is and my swing. I feel like I have gotten a lot of the rust off and now am ready to play some golf to the standard that I hold myself to. Please keep me in your prayers, for safe travel and that I would play to my best abilities, but also that God would continue to use me to impact the lives of other golfers out here. I really feel like God has put me in a position in a lot of peoples lives to share the gospel with them and let Him change their lives for his glory.

Thank You,
Joe

Travel in Guatemala

Because I missed the cut at the Guatemala International Open, I was given the opportunity to travel around the country and see some amazing things. First on Saturday me and some friends woke up early and decided to go on a hike up one of the vocano's, don't worry with a guide of course. (because that makes it much better) What doesn't make anything sound better was that we decided to hike the most active of all of Guatemala's Volcano's, which I latter read that they have more than 15 around the counrty. Our guide, who spoke english, ( not much) told us about the history of Guatemala and its people as we were hiking up the mountain and many other things about the natural landscape and the trees and plants that were native to Guate. After about an hour and a half into the hike we came to a sign that warned us that if we go past this point we are putting ourselves in danger of gases and lava. Just what we were looking for, some excitement to get our minds off golf. Enough talking I will let my pictures do that. Next we took a taxi ride up to the Quaint and beautiful town of Anitgua. We had a lot of fun going to all the different shops in the town, just about every door way is a new shop with different things to look at. After the sun set and the street lights came on we wondered the streets for a little more had some dinner and then took the hour long taxi ride home for a fun filled day in the sun. Then on Sunday we had some big plans that fell through, we were trying to fly up to Tikal where the Mayan ruins are for the day and then fly home, but it just didn't work out. This didn't stop us, we had back up plans, now we are going to go on a jungle canopy tour- using zip lines to go from tree to tree. This could have been one of the most fun things I have done in a long time. I really enjoyed this. This bottom picture is of my friend Ron flying down the zip line. After the nearly 1000 meters of zip line through the jungle we rode by horse back to the place where we started. Over all I had a blast doing all of these things over the weekend, and it definatly helped ease the pain of missing the cut. Oh yeah and I did all of this with less than a 100 dollars.

Golf in Guatemala

Hello everyone, now that I am back on the road again I will be posting more regularly. Right now I would like to let you know how my trip went down in Guatemala. I was so excited about my trip to Guate (that's what I will call Guatemala from now on) that I started brushing up on my Spanish by listening to a free podcast from iTunes. In the end the trip did not let me down, although the golf side of things could have gone much better I really enjoyed my time there and would do it all over again even if the outcome was the same. I started off the week on not such a great note, but I was up for anything. The only flights that they have from LAX to GUA are red eyes, this is not good for me since it is very hard for me to fall asleep on planes. But once I arrived to Guate everything was fine, I was tired but it worked out okay. For the first couple of days things were very routine, wake up early get down to the lobby wait for the shuttle go to the golf course play a round of golf with some practice before and after. Come back to the hotel from the golf course and have some dinner that the tour had set up for us somewhere in town.

Things were going good I felt confident about my game all around, I even hired a caddie for the week that was at some of my practice rounds so i could get to know him before the tournament. I felt prepared. The first round of the tournament I had an early draw, my first tee time was at 8:20, I get to the course with plenty of time to spare and realized that it was already windy. Usually, here at this course it is calm in the mornings and in the afternoons the wind picks up. I still felt confident about my game and my ability to play in windy conditions, but I made a couple of mistakes early underestimating the wind, and all of a sudden my confidence is shattered, not because I started out bogey, bogey, but because I had gone long on my approach shots on both hole 1 and 2. Doubt started to creep in my mind, but I tried to stay strong. I fought hard all day, but just wasn't hitting the ball very well, relying very heavy on my short game to save me, which it did but not enough. I shot a 77 on the first day, which sounds pretty bad, but under the circumstances I was only one shot of the cut line. I figured that if on the second day I could go out and shoot a couple over par I would make the cut. Well my intentions were good, but I was not able to execute my plan the way I wanted to. In the second round I hit the ball better than the first round but putted and chipped much worse, not getting up and down one time all day. That makes for a very long and frustrating day. In the end I shot a 81 the second day for a total of 158 and the cut was 152. I really felt like a good opportunity was lost to make a cut there, but there were some important lessons I learned there that week.

Pepsi tour @ Wood Ranch CC

In the meantime, while the Hooters Tour is not in season, I have been playing in some smaller tour events around southern California. Just this last Monday Feb. 12th, I played in a Pepsi tour event at Wood Ranch in Simi Valley. This was a last minute decision to where I just showed up that morning hoping they had room for me to play, which they did. I wasn't expecting much because I haven't been hitting my driver or irons to well, but I have been spending a lot of time working on my putting and wedges. Well all I can say is that the putting practice I have been doing has paid off. I had the best putting round of my life only putting the ball 22 times, this is amazing never before have I done this. So now your asking well how did you play? Well even though i didn't hit the ball great my putting made up for it. I shot 69 (-3) on a very difficult golf course only hitting half of the fairways and only 8 greens. I shot even par 36 on the front nine and then make the turn and shoot (-3) 33 on the back nine. My group was the last group of Professionals so when we came in I didn't have to wait for anyone more scores to come in. I come to find out that I tied for first place and I am going to be in a play off. The last time I was in a playoff was when i played on this summer tour during college and I lost after the second hole, this time it was different. We skipped over the first hole because there were people playing on it and we went to the second hole, a short par 5 that requires you to lay up off the tee. I hit three wood into the left rough and my opponent hit driver in the left rough as well. I am a little behind him and further to the left, I am first to go with 235 yards to the hole. I hit a three iron just short of the green side bunkers leaving me about 40 yards to the pin. My opponent has to hit a cut shot around a tree, which he did not execute the way he wanted to and the ball hooked on him and went into a hazard up by the green. He had to take a drop from the hazard then chipped it onto the green having a 15 footer for par. Now it is my turn to go and I hit a great pitch shot out of the rough that ended up just behind his ball, leaving me to putt first for birdie. I stepped up thinking that I am just going to make this putt and not even give him a chance to tie me. A little more than 15 feet with about 3 inches of break moving from the right to the left, I had a good read on this putt and I trusted it. Boom!! I nailed it right in the center of the hole, one hole and the playoff was over, I was victorious for the first time in a playoff and for the first time as a professional.

Thanks for all your prayer and support, I will be playing another Pepsi tour event this weekend on Sunday and Monday down in Temecula. The results are on the Pepsi tour website and www.pepsitour.com then click on the results hyperlink and you can find it there.

Joe

Results from Ranking school a month later

I just have to say that since I have come home from Ranking School I have been very busy working on my game and on my motor home and other things to get ready to leave for the tour. I promise that once I am back on the road I will be much more diligent about posting. Anyways, back to the results from Ranking school. I could write about a ten page paper on the hole by hole analysis of each round, but for time and for the sake of my readers enjoyment I have decided not to, but to give you a synopsis of each round. For the first round I was nervous, but just wanting to get off to a good start. What I mean by a good start is one the doesn't put me in a hole for the rest of the week. According to those standards I succeeded, I had a good solid round shooting even par 72 only missing one fairway all day. The rest of the stats were good to hitting 10 greens (okay), but only having 29 putts (good). Happy with how I play the first round, but could see much room for improvement, came into the second round ready to go. Things did not get off to a good start for the second round. I started off the second round par, double, triple. Lets just say i was pretty devastated after that, although I was able to realize that this is a 72 hole tournament so there is a lot more holes to be played I came back on the next hole and made birdie. That was just about the last good thing for this round. Shooting 44 (+8) on the front nine, I was trying to do anything I could to keep myself in the game to finish out this round without making a fool of myself. I didn't do much on the back except make a birdie on the last hole to shoot 39 (+3) on the back nine for a 83 total. This round was very frustrating not only because of the obvious, the score, but I had the two worst bunker lies of my life in the same round, during a qualifier none the less. These two bunker lies cost me about 5 strokes alone, which still doesn't explain for all of the high score, but they were both on the front nine making it hard to keep my mental edge sharp. The third and fourth rounds were very respectable shooting 73 (+1) and 70 (-2). The third round I hit the ball well, but I just couldn't make any birdie putts. I only made one birdie through the whole round, but that also means that I only made two bogie's in the round. The last round was great, it could have been one of the best ball striking days I have ever had. I hit 15 greens in regulation (great) and had 31 putts (so so), but more than anything I was proud of myself for how I came back after the second round. My total score for the four rounds was 298 (+10), yeah I know I was +11 just in the second round. What I would give to get that day back, but that is what it is and I know that God has a plan for me and this is obviously in it because it already happened. So now the first tournament is in Guatemala Feb. 26th through Mar. 5th. I will be playing some small tour events between now and then to keep my game sharp. I will keep you updated.

Joe

Been a long time since I posted

The last time I posted was in October!!!! I apolagize for the lack of effort on my part, but I am ready to get back in the swing of things posting a couple times a week. Well lets get started by filling you in on my offseason at home in California. It was a much needed rest from the non stop tournaments and traveling. Once I took a short break it was back to some hard work on the golf course, but also in the gym. I have hit the gym hard working between 3 - 5 times a week. I've also been trying to keep my tournament experience up by playing some smaller events. Playing the Golden state tour, Pepsi tour, and the Califonia Players tour all around southern California. Now I am getting ready for the start of the new year on the Hooters tour. I am now down in Orlando, Florida getting ready for the Hooters Tour Ranking school, which goes from the 16th-19th. I will be home on the 20th practicing hard getting ready for the first tourney of the year, which is in Guatemala in late Feb. I will keep you updated this week on the ranking school.

Joe