Sometimes you gotta dig through the dirt to find the gold!
I usually just scroll through and look for Scott’s posts. He is pretty good at replying with the quotes
This line from someone on there in 2011 is particularly true this week
“I’m sure there are a few scratch players who can putt as well as sergio, but there are no scratch players who can hit it as well.”
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He hit some beauties last week coming down the stretch
I’ve gone sufficiently down the rabbit hole. Interesting how I think Scott says back then something to the effect of “I’m not sure driving is more important than putting” as he started looking into the data, but now I think he’d say driving (distance) is definitely more important than putting.
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https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/93/golf/advanced-golf-strategy-course-management-thread-1179781/
^^^ quite a bit of this ends up being DECADE
My favorite stuff is the 1) tour stories and 2) him mentoring Zalatoris.
The fact that he and Zalatoris went on a run in US junior golf (Scott caddied for him in a few tournaments) while they were experimenting with all of this stuff is awesome. Scott basically journaled the entire journey on the forum, and put quite a bit of effort into it (his writing is pretty darn clear on a pretty difficult subject to cover with text).
I always played baseball and picked up the game in college so it is really fun for me to live vicariously through these threads.
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One last thing 
Fawcett was playing to +6 or +7 handicap and talks about how you need luck to get through q school
Truly humbling to know that a guy who is spotting a scratch golfer 3 per side is going to need his A game and some luck to qualify for the tour
ANYONE who has finished q school or made some cuts on the tour has played golf at a level that’s honestly pretty difficult for the avg. recreational golfer to grasp
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Have a friend who played KFT (nationwide/web) for a while & PGA for a year. To have seen how good he was (won KFT event) and know he could only get to tour for a year is crazy. It’s not a ritzy lifestyle unless you’re in the top 100ish consistently. These guys are really good and grinding like crazy.
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Definitely. I got to spend some time with a younger guy who had PGA Tour status last year but lost it. Sounds like best case scenario for KFT is that you break even, but most of these guys are losing money when you factor in traveling, caddie, and coaching expenses. BRUTAL lifestyle. I think there really are only about 200-300 golfers who are making a “good living” worldwide playing golf professionally at most. But he says he will literally play forever even if he ends up on mini tours because he loves it so much!
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Does he have kids and wife?
Some people have a burning desire to chase a goal. I found out professionally that some of the “juice” I thought I had really changed when my kids were born.
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nope, I think just a GF. It’s the perfect time in his life to do it, and he’s good enough to make it (won this year on KFT).
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Winning helps keep that “juice” going
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I think the mental side, both in desire and stress management, are the big differentiator. There might be thousands of people with the skill level to play and win on the PGA tour, but only a small percentage with the mental makeup to accomplish that (let alone do it consistently).
I always think of the head pro at a goat track muni I worked at a few times during university. He was in his mid-forties by the time I met him, still built like Nicklaus in his prime, bashed it over 300 with ease and had every shot in the bag. He qualified for a handful of PGA championships as a club pro, made a Monday qualifier or two, and had shot multiple sub 60 rounds at the course he “ran”. Problem is that he seemed to have zero motivation for anything (that included in running the golf business at the course) and would melt down mentally in any sort of real competition. At that point he seemed just sort of resigned to being the best golfer in the area, but just one who never really did anything with it.
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This is probably very underestimated. I play a lot of golf with a guy who tried to make it as a professional player for about 10+ years. His ball striking was good enough to make it on tour, but putting always seemed to elude him. I was having lunch with him and he also confessed that he didn’t really have the same drive as the top players.
Towards the end of his career he worked out at Joey D fitness, and got to spend some time around guys like Fowler and JT as they were coming up. He said they were animals in terms of their work ethic. After playing and practicing in the morning at the same club as them he said he be perfectly content having a few cocktails at lunch and blowing the rest of the day off, but these guys went back out and worked for hours. Talent can only get you so far!
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I’m very late to the party, have read almost all of these threads by Scott Fawcett, and have been amazed and entertained. He tells quite the story! And to take the data and create Decade with it, brilliant.
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I’m a scratch player and the only thing I can do better than Sergio is not throw tantrums in bunkers, though occasionally I want to!
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It is great content and in the words of Azinger, Scott has gotten “validation on steroids”!
Fun to see where all this stuff was born and the great story with zalatoris.
This is really what separates these guys. My stepbrother played a couple mini tours for a while. He dominated locally, but could hardly make a cut on the Tight Lies Tour. There’s a ton of talent out there, but the work and dedication it takes to get to the highest level is the great separator. Not many people have that drive or focus, especially in their youth.
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Agree - know someone who got through q school once to the PGA, played other mini tours, won a web.com event, and could never make it back to the PGA. Such a rough life for all those guys chasing it. If you’re not in the top ~150 in the world, it’s a struggle
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One other main differentiator (unfortunately) is money. When you’re playing a Monday Qualifier and it cost you $1500 to get there, and there’s not much left in the bank, it’s way harder to play well.
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