Blessing In Disguise: U.S. Open Day 2 Blog By Coach Reehoorn
June 12, 2012
Oregon State junior men's golfer Nick Sherwood qualified for the 112th U.S. Open Championship by defeating Daniel Miernicki of Oregon in a sudden-death playoff at a sectional qualifier. Head coach Jon Reehoorn will be with Sherwood at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif., through Wednesday and provide a daily blog leading up to the U.S. Open, which begins on Thursday. For more information, follow @BeaversMGolf, @JonReehoorn and @NSherwood14 on Twitter.
Check out the video at the end of this blog of Nick Sherwood (golfer) and Jonnie Motomochi (caddie) on how they made it through the U.S. Open local and sectional qualifiers.
After Nick found out his attempt to play with Tiger Woods was thwarted by either the USGA or Tiger himself, he seemed a bit disappointed, but the alternative, the opportunity to play with Masters champion Bubba Watson, had him pretty excited as well.
I arrived at the course just a few minutes after Nick and his parents Monday morning and met him for a quick warm-up on the range. As Nick crossed the player bridge from the clubhouse to the practice area, he crossed paths with Tiger who was headed to the ninth tee. Tiger played the back nine by himself.
For those not following on Twitter, Nick tweeted this when we left the course, which I got a good laugh from: "Saw Tiger today. It was cool to know I am a little taller. `How do you measure yourself against other golfers...By height' #caddyshack lol."
Nick was interviewed by Golfweek writer Sean Martin Monday afternoon for a piece he wrote about the six amateurs in the field for golfweek.com. As I write this blog, I see via Twitter that Brandt Snedeker has withdrawn due to an injury, and Jordan Spieth is in, which means there are now seven amateurs in the field and Sean will have to update his article. It also gave Nick an answer for the disappointment on the first hole. I will get back to that shortly.
Sean's first question for Nick was "what is the most unique thing about Nick Sherwood?" Nick didn't really have an answer at the time and neither did I. Then I read Nick's tweet about Tiger and it hit me. Nick likes to think he is pretty funny, but most of the time he laughs at his jokes more than anyone else. And about half the time he laughs about five seconds after everyone else does. We (his teammates and I) often wonder what goes on this kids' mind. It isn't often a day goes by that Nick says something or does something that evokes this explanation from his teammates: "that is just Shick being Shick." Shick is Nick's nickname, which stuck for good a year-and-a-half ago on our annual trip to Waikoloa. But Nick in "Shick Mode" is also why his teammates love him so much.
Back to the golf and Nick's disappointment on the first tee. As Nick headed to the tee at 7:15 a.m., there was no sign of Bubba or Brandt Snedeker. Nick tried to wait it out and hit a few extra putts to delay his start, and the USGA official on the first tee even tried to track them down via radio, but no sign of either of them. At 7:25 a.m. Nick striped a tee ball right down the middle of #1 and we were off as a single. He joked with his dad and me as we walked up the first hole, "man, no love for the amateurs." He was disappointed, but by the end of the day we all felt like playing as a single might have been the best thing that could have happened.
After a shaky start on holes 1-3, with bogeys on all three of them, we entered the day with the goal of playing for score and then working on short game on each of the greens. After his tee shot on #4 found the left rough, I had him hit another ball moving just a bit to the left on the tee and changing his angle just slightly to allow him to feel like he could hit more of a draw and not be worried about the trees on the left. Not sure how much it helped, but he striped it and from then on he didn't miss another fairway until the 17th hole. From tee to green he looks as good as I've seen him all year. On holes 10-18 Nick really didn't miss a shot.
The highlight for Nick came when a youngster named Michael ran up and asked for his autograph. The young kid said he was a huge Beaver fan. Come to find out, he had followed Nick around at The Meadow Club earlier this year during the Alister MacKenzie Invitational. As he walked a couple of holes with Nick's family, his mom told the story of how the kid asked where he could find Nick Sherwood. The individual he asked thought he was talking about Tiger Woods as he just heard `Wood' at the end. After being told where to find Tiger Woods, Michael replied "I'm not here to see Tiger; I just want to see Nick Sherwood."
For me, it is the time between shots that has really been a lot of fun to spend with Nick and his family the last two days and figure out what is going on in the mind of Shick. As we walked together from the 13th green to 14th tee, Nick looked at the large USGA tee marker and said "419, thank goodness." Then as we made our way from the 15th green to the 16th hole, the longest par-5 in US Open history at 670 yards, I asked him "if you were saying thank goodness when it said 419, what are you saying when it says 670?" His response, "I'll keep that one to myself."
Nick is scheduled to play with Rickie Fowler and Ben Crane on Tuesday. I'm pretty confident Rickie and Ben will both be there as Rickie tweeted on Monday: "If ur looking to come out 4 the practice rounds I will b playing 9-18 tomorrow @ 12:30."
I know Nick will be on the ninth tee at 12:30 p.m. so we will see Rickie there. The only question will be how many times will the black and orange OS gear Nick and I will be sporting be confused for Rickie's Oklahoma State? It happened once on Monday and Rickie was nowhere in sight, so I'm guessing it happens a lot in 10 holes on Tuesday.
Go Beavs!
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