As Tommy Robinson settled into bed on the night before the first round of the U.S. Senior Open, there was one part of his game he felt confident wouldn't give him nightmares — his driving.
During what was largely an uneventful practice round at Sahalee CC on Wednesday, the superintendent from Ravinia Green CC in Deerfield, Ill. — as far as we know, the only working superintendent to ever qualify to compete in a major professional golf event — found only one part of his game giving him any real cause for concern, and that was his driving. It wasn't terrible, mind you, but after that round, he headed to the range to see if he and his tee shots could come to some sort of mutually beneficial agreement.
It didn't take long for that to happen. After just a few swings and a few minor tweaks, Robinson began to hit laser after laser down the range, one following the other. All told, Robinson figures he hit nearly two dozen consecutive drives exactly the way he wanted to. "Driver, 3-wood, it didn't matter. Everything I hit on the range was long and straight," he says.
Thursday morning before he teed off, he went back to the range to make sure what he had experienced the night before wasn't a fluke. It wasn't — five or six more swings produced five or six more picture-perfect drives. Robinson was ready.
At least he was until his very first swing of the tournament. Settling in on the 10th tee, not the least bit nervous, Robinson swung away much as he had been doing on the range ... and promptly sprayed his first shot into the trees along the left side of the fairway.
"I don't hook the ball much, but that was just way left," Robinson says. "It wasn't even close."
Unfortunately, that one swing would be a precursor of things to come for the 34-year member of GCSAA. All day long, he wrestled with his game off the tee and those errant tee shots are a big reason that Robinson finished round one with a 13-over-par score of 83 and, at best, only a remote chance of making the cut and advancing to the weekend at this championship, his one true goal for the week.
"I don't know," Robinson said with a shrug of the shoulders. "Driving the ball has always been one of my strengths, and I've never seen it disappear like that. I'm really befuddled by the whole thing. It was strange for me and I don't know what to make of it."
As mentioned in an earlier post, the day's statistics certainly bare out the depths of Robinson's struggles on day one. He hit just four of 14 fairways (29 percent), which tied for 146th among the field of 156 players. Largely as a result of that number, he was also near the bottom in greens in regulation, hitting just four out of 18 attempts (22 percent). That was tied for 148th place.
Oddly, though, Robinson's putting — normally the weakest part of his game — was quite good in round one. He needed just 30 putts to make his way around Sahalee, which was good enough to tie him with a host of other competitors, including luminaries like Hale Irwin and Fred Couples, for 43rd overall in that category.
It's somewhat pointless to rehash Robinson's round too much because it takes some of the focus away from what is important to the 2004 champion of the GCSAA National Championship, and that's making the cut. To do that, Robinson will need to finish with a two-day total that places him among the top 60 players and ties, or within at least 10 shots of the lead. Assuming the second-round lead will be around 4- or 5-under-par, Robinson will need a stellar round somewhere in the neighborhood of a 65 or 66 to even entertain the thought of playing on the weekend
And as unlikely as that seems when looking at his play in the first round, Robinson is confident that he has that kind of performance in him ... if he can find some answers off the tee, that is.
"Absolutely," Robinson said when asked if this course could yield a low number. "From the three practice rounds I played, if you take my low score from each of the 18 holes, I know I was well under par. Now, obviously you can't do that and that's making a bit of a leap of how things could go. But I know I can play well out here. I just have to figure out how to get that done."
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