Edmonton's Jarosch, Saskatchewan's DeLaet try to focus on getting lowest scores possible, not on next paycheque
Lee Trevino, the gregarious, Merry Mex and a winner of six PGA majors, said it. But every just-starting-out professional golfer knows what he meant.
"Without question the hardest thing about turning pro is the pressure of making money," said Saskatchewan PGA player Graham DeLaet, who will make his return from back surgery at the Nationwide Tour's Melwood Prince George's County Open June 2-5.
"You have to try to put the money factor out of your head and yet it's there all the time. If you're thinking about making enough money to get from one tournament to another or where you are going to eat or sleep that night it's almost impossible to play."
Despite a herniated, lumbosacraljoint disc in his back that had to be shaved down over the winter that caused him "almost indescribable pain," DeLaet won $954,011 last year on the PGA circuit -three top-10 finishes, a third in the Houston Open -by not thinking about making any money.
His buddy, Edmonton's Barrett Jarosch, made $48,193 on the Nationwide Tour, ending the year forced to think too much about it.
"It's really hard not to (think about the money)," said Jarosch, at home in Edmonton practising hours on end in the howling winds at the Windermere Golf & Country Club.
"And anyone who tells you otherwise is BSing you.
"You go from playing for gift certificates and pride to having the money you make on a golf course being your sole source of income," said Jarosch, who went up and down the road with DeLaet and Calgary's James Love for three years after they both turned pro in 2007.
"It's a tough transition. Yet you can't be focused on the money at all. Your only focus has to be the lowest score you can possibly shoot."
But when things go bad, doubt starts to creep in. Then the tension builds.
"You go from trying to make birdies to trying not to make a bogey," said Jarosch, who played with DeLaet on the 2005 Four Nations Cup team.
"Everybody knows it's a big no-no. But it happens. If you start thinking, 'I better change my game plan because I have to make a cheque' you are in a world of hurt.
"Instead of making confident aggressive swings at the target, you find yourself just trying to hit a fairway. You just can't play golf that way, but because of the money it happens."
DeLaet finished 100th on the PGA money list to maintain his PGA status while Jarosch finished 100th on the Nationwide standings which cost him his full-time Nationwide status.
Now, Jarosch is forced back to playing the Canadian Tour and trying to Monday qualify for Nationwide events or until his number comes up and he can get into a Nationwide event.
Jarosch hasn't played in a pro event since last Halloween. Instead, he has been working on a revamped swing -new grip, new ball flight and a new flatter swing -with his Windermere coach Cam Martens.
Jarosch wouldn't have been able to even afford thinking about taking that much time off from actual competition without the two endorsement deals he has from Edmonton businessman Nizar Somji. One is from Somji's Jaffer Group of Companies; the other was through Matrikon, an industrial performance monitoring solutions company Somji sold to Honeywell which continues to honour the endorsement. He also has a monetary contract with Titleist and product deals from clothier Sub-Seventy and Oakley sunglasses.
But if it wasn't for Somji, Jarosch said he would probably be installing sheet metal flashing while working for his dad's roofing company.
"Freezing my buns off or getting blown off roofs," said Jarosch.
"If you don't have the backing, you can't do it," he said of the time needed to make swing changes. "And if you don't do it, you can't make it.
After using Band-Aids to cover up Jarosch's upright swing and weak grip -which would result in a leftto-right fade or cut -Jarosch knew a big change was a must.
"It got to the point where, on the East Coast, the air was so much thicker I couldn't play with the cut; sea level affects the ball so much more," said Jarosch.
"It also got to the point where, when there was a left to right wind, I was terrified. The ball was spinning too much and a 20-m.p.h. wind at sea level eats it right up."
Instead of a 300-yard drive and being left with a scoring club in his hands, the cut would turn into a slice and leave Jarosch needing a five iron or six iron to get home.
"Now, I've strengthened the grip, flattened out the swing and I'm coming in shallower and more from the inside," said Jarosch, who will join the Canadian Tour for the Times Colonist Open the same weekend that DeLaet makes his 2011 debut on the Nationwide.
"I had to give myself a chance." DeLaet is no different. If he didn't have sponsors when he was starting out, he said: "I would probably be teaching phys-ed somewhere."
He now has myriad sponsorship deals -RBC, J. Lindeberg, Titleist, Transitions Optical, Oakley and Tim Hortons.
But it wasn't long ago that he was in an even tougher spot than Jarosch. Then Mark Hedge, a friend of his college coach at Boise State in Idaho, came along.
"It takes a special person to do that for you. If it wasn't for Mark, I know I wouldn't be where I am today," said DeLaet.
Hedge gave DeLaet his cushion just the way Somji did for Jarosch.
When people find out what Jarosch does for a living the first reaction is that he must be some kind of golf course club professional.
"When they find out that I play golf for money the reaction is, 'Oh my God, wow.' And for the top-50 guys you see on TV on Sunday it is very wow.
"People think that once you turn pro that there are all these millions of dollars waiting for you," said Jarosch. "They don't realize that only an extremely small percentage of golfers get the endorsements that Phil Mickelson, Tiger or Rickie Fowler get. But to get there is not a very glamorous road," said Jarosch.
DeLaet knows that too because they both travelled the Canadian Tour together for three years.
"It was Graham, James Love and myself," said Jarosch.
"There were lots of times we'd play rock, paper, scissors to see who had to sleep on the floor. We weren't eating at Ruths Chris. We were eating McDonalds or Subway."
"And if you have a wife and kids and aren't winning it's a constant battle. Is this worth my time? Do I find a real job or keep doing this?" In golf, like rodeo, there are no salaries. If you don't perform well, you don't get paid.
But the expenses don't change.
"You see a lot amateur players decline when they turn pro because of the pressures they put on themselves," said De-Laet, who lost 25 pounds from his normal weight of 165 after the surgery and who could barely walk prior to the operation.
"When they turn pro the goal should be to play golf just like when you are an amateur, but it's one of the hardest things to do," said DeLaet, who first met Jarosch at a college tournament at BYU when DeLaet was playing for Boise State and Jarosch for the University of Denver.
"It wears on you mentally when your pocketbook gets too thin.
"You shouldn't be thinking about the cheque situation. The goal is to play golf. Not to win money. Not to make the cut. Just play golf.
"It's tough when you are trying to win money as opposed to trying to win golf tournaments.
"But it's easier said than done." It's also easier when you win nearly $1 million in your rookie year, that n when, like Jarosch, whom he texts, tweets or calls every day, makes less than $50,000.
Minus, of course, expenses. "Last year I was playing for so much more money than I ever played for in my life," said DeLaet. "But it's still all about winning and being contention. After all, that's what got you there in the first place."
Source http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
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