Cathryn Bristow

While it is great to play with a touring male player during the Masters pro-Am tournament (I played with Michael Campbell last year), as the game of an amateur golfer is much closer to the game played by LPGA touring females, I humbly asked if I could be paired with Cathryn Bristow (standing next to me in the picture) an LPGA touring pro.

Cathryn 28, a Kiwi, won a golf scholarship to the University of Oregon.  Introduced to the game by her elder brother at the age of 13, by 17 she was playing so well that she gave up her other love, cricket, to focus full time on the game.  She finished college as the best player ever in the history of the University of Oregon. She proceeded to sign up for the Futures Tour, the LPGA feeder tour, where she plied her trade for two years based out of Houston.  Last year, she went to Q-school and qualified to play on the European Tour.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/golf/8096648/Bristow-can-survive-on-LET-ex-pro-McKinnon

Life on the tour can be a blur.  Because of so much travelling, she does not have a place she calls home.  She plans to live the entire year out of a 20kg suitcase.  In it, she has a golf outfit, a pair of jeans, two dresses, running shoes, two golf shoes, and a pair of heels.  Her computer functions as her entertainment centre where she reads, listens to music and communicates with her coach.

Off the tee, we drive about the same distance and with the same consistency - in fact, I think I hit more fairways than she did.  But on shots out of trouble, and in and around the green, she is in a different league.  She told me that half her practice time was always devoted to the short game, and half of that was on putting alone.  She guaranteed me that the winner of any tournament would always be in the top five for the fewest putts in the tournament.  From 100m in, her target was to get the ball up and down.  She knows when to take the penalty if the ball is in thick rough and bump it in and around the green.  She only works on mechanics during off weeks.  Otherwise, it is plainly to hone the strokes and get confident.

I asked if she ever choked at crucial periods in games.  She said no.  The sense of being nervous is always there.  But she knows how to slow things down.  The biggest destroyer of a golf game is a wrong decision under stress.  This is why one needs a good game plan.  Most pros use the practice rounds to do two things.  First, to decide on what club to use off the tee.  The second is to consider all the possible pin positions on the green and decide where you do not want the ball to go.

Cathryn had one great golf story.  She had just missed qualifying for the US Ladies Open 2012 and was the first alternate.  On the morning of the tournament, she received a phone call that a South Korean girl had pulled out and the slot was her's if she could make it to Kohler Wisconsin by noon.  She was in Chicago and had her golf clubs checked in already.  She made it to the tee box just on time - ie doing a Rory.  Suzann Petersen and Jennifer Johnson - her playing partners - were amazed when she turned up on the tee box.  She described the environment as electric, with large crowds, especially since she had Yani Tseng and Na Yeon Choi in front of her.  She shot 83 on the first day.  She did much better to shoot 75 the next day, but missed the cut.

http://www.golfchannel.com/tours/lpga/2012/us-womens-open/

Cathryn goes to LA at the end of May to qualify for the US Open again.

For the record. On Halim South-West, Cathryn shot 75 and Lisa 99 off the whites.  Charles, the other aspiring pro in the picture - a nice young Welsh gentleman, shot 76 while I shot 86 - both of us off the black tournament tees.