A Matter of Doubt: Karsten Creek delivers 'wake-up call' for Tiger golfers

Describing his team's humbling experience at The Preview as a 'wake-up call,' Clemson golf coach Larry Penley says the Tigers now know exactly they stand as they continue to work their way through the fall season.

“It was pretty eye-opening to me – I really didn't think we were capable of playing that bad, but we were,” said Penley after the Tigers struggled to a 13th-place finish in a field of the nation's top 15 teams and posted a 68-over-par three-day score at Karsten Creek in Stillwater, OK.

“It was a wake-up call for us, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I liked having that kind of experience in those kind of conditions. Because if you had weaknesses in your game, they were exposed. If you had doubt, it was exposed. If you didn't feel like you belonged, it was exposed.

“That's what we've been working on, that's what we have to fix. I knew we were going to have to do that. You can't put band-aids on this. There's no quick-fix to developing trust and commitment and confidence. You can talk about it all day every day. But it's something that takes time. Some will get it quicker than others.”

Penley called Karsten Creek, where the 2003 Tigers won the NCAA championship, a difficult, but fair, test of golf.

“It was good,” he said. “It's hard, it's fair and you have to play. I think it was harder in 2003. There was more rough in 2003, and the greens were firmer. But there was no wind. I would have hated to have seen what the scores would have been in 2003 had the wind blown.

“It wasn't the golf course as much as it was the conditions. We didn't handle the wind very well at all. Certainly they've played in wind, but maybe not wind like that. We didn't adapt. We got lulled because the practice round was perfect – 82 degrees and not a breath of breeze – and everybody played great and it almost like we were looking around saying 'what's so hard about this?'”

Overnight, before the Tigers teed off first in the morning, the weather changed.

“A front blew in and it went to 50 degrees and the wind was blowing 20-25, and we had no clue,” said Penley. “We hit the wrong clubs off the tees. We weren't committed to the shots we were hitting off the tee. We were unsure about the clubs we were hitting off the tee. And that's pretty much what it amounted to – it was all tee-ball.

“We hit it everywhere. We re-teed and re-teed and re-teed. If you hit it out of the fairway, it was lost. And if it wasn't in a hazard, it was stroke and distance. That's where all the big numbers came from.”

During the three-day tournament, Clemson's five players combined for 24 double bogeys, five triple bogeys, two quadruple bogeys, and one six-over score.

Penley said that when the Tigers weren't searching for lost balls in waist-deep grass, they played pretty well.

“McCuen (Elmore) never seemed to get the pace of the greens down, so some of his doubles were four-putts, but for the most part, once we got the ball in play, we actually played well,” Penley said. “That was certainly Crawford Reeves' deal. He hit enough good shots to play well, but it was that all his boo-boos were out of play.

“If you missed the fairway literally 5-8 yards, you weren't going to find it. The spotters could hear it, or even see where it went in But unless you got in there and stepped on it, you weren't going to find it.

“We actually did a pretty good job the last two days, considering the exaggerated number of big numbers we made, to shoot 15-over and 17-over. That wasn't that bad. If we do that the first day (instead of 36-over), we finish ninth or 10th, and that's OK because that's kind of where we are.”

Penley said that Corbin Mills and David Dannelly made corrections on the fly, while Reeves showed some glimpses, as well.

“Corbin and Dannelly did not make a double the last two days, and that's really all we were focused on: get it in play off the tee and find a way to make a bogey,” Penley said. “Bogeys don't kill you. You could make enough birdies on that golf course to overcome bogeys. But you couldn't overcome doubles or triples or higher.”

“Crawford played good enough the last two days to shoot even-par or better – it was double, par-par-par, birdie, double, par-par-par, double. He made four doubles the last day and shot four-over, which means he played 14 holes in four-under.

“There was really a lot of good stuff there.”

The Tigers will continue their fall season on Friday in the Brickyard Collegiate at Macon, GA.