It isn't hard to suffer a crisis of confidence in golf. Kip Puterbaugh, the director of the Aviara Golf Academy, has worked a long time with major championship winners Scott Simpson and Larry Mize, and even players of that caliber find themselves harboring doubt when things get tough.
“Those guys have experienced the ebb and flow,” Puterbaugh said.
But when you are 16 years old, and you've known almost nothing but success your whole life, even the slightest dip on the competitive landscape can shake you. That's where Encinitas' Danielle Frasier was at the beginning of the summer.
One of the top-ranked girls in the country, Frasier was feeling like maybe she didn't belong in the lofty company she was keeping on the national junior circuit. She'd lost her edge a little bit, her swing had been altered by a sore neck, and she fully admits to wondering if she hadn't been more lucky than good.
Puterbaugh saw all of the signs in his pupil of nine years.
“I never worried she was going to get back,” he said. “But to a junior, it's like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the end. I'm never going to be good again.' ”
The beauty is that the feel and the confidence can return just as quickly. Sometimes with a single swing thought or good round, and Frasier's summer of dread has become a dream. One the La Costa Canyon High junior is not keen about letting go just yet.
After a crushing loss in the Callaway Junior World Championships in July, when winner Patcharajutar Kongkraphan birdied three of the last four holes, Frasier has enjoyed a tremendous run, producing her best golf ever.
She played on the winning West team in the American Junior Golf Association's Canon Cup in Connecticut, won San Diego's AJGA event at Carlton Oaks, and then seized the biggest title of her career, taking the Girls Junior PGA Championship in Ohio by a whopping seven shots.
That victory earned Frasier another milestone honor – a position on the U.S. Junior Ryder Cup team that will compete against Europe next week in Bowling Green, Ky. The competition is part of the buildup to the biennial Ryder Cup Matches being held Sept. 19-21 at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky.
“From how things were at the beginning of the summer, to finish the way I have, it feels great. I worked hard and overcame the problems,” said Frasier, who is Golfweek's top-ranked girl in the country for the class of 2010.
Frasier believes she can pinpoint the turnaround. At the Canon Cup, she played alongside boys in the tournament and noticed they had something she was lacking.
“They are so confident out there,” Frasier said. “Some people may call it cockiness. But sometimes you have to have that, to know how good you are. You can't hold back. Even when I'm playing the top girls in the country, I'm there for a reason. I earned my spot.
“I went to Carlton Oaks with a totally different mindset.”
After winning the AJGA event in Santee, the field was more stellar at the Junior PGA. It included Alexis Thompson, the defending Girls PGA champion who had recently won the U.S. Girls Junior.
Thompson would make a strong run at Frasier on the last day, getting to within three shots with six holes to play. But Frasier fired back by canning five birdies on the back nine in a stellar 66. It was a huge step, to blow away the best, considering Frasier previously had, according to Puterbaugh, the mentality of a “chaser,” not a frontrunner.
The Junior Ryder Cup was simply a byproduct of the win, but it figures to be an experience of a lifetime. Seemingly with each new arrival of the mail, Frasier gets another souvenir awash in red, white and blue. The highlight so far is a golf bag with her name on it.
That will come in handy Sept. 18, when the American and European kids play a nine-hole exhibition match at Valhalla, with 40,000 fans on the grounds for the Ryder Cup practice round. If you're going to be out there, you want golf's superstars to know who you are.
“I think the most people I've played in front of is 20,” Frasier said, laughing. “It's definitely going to be different.”
Mid-Amateur update
USD men's golf coach
Tim Mickelson parred the final hole and
Scott Kammann of Banebury, Tenn., made bogey as Mickelson won 1-up in the first round of match play in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Milwaukee Country Club.
Mickelson, the No. 2 seed who reached the quarterfinals last year, plays Michael Stamberger of Plainfield, N.J., today.
In the U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur in Ann Arbor, Mich., two San Diego players lost. Carlsbad's Corey Weworski was defeated 4 and 2 by Claudia Pilot of Austin, Minn., and Rancho Santa Fe's Mickey Burgess lost 5 and 4 to Lisa Smego of Olympia, Wash.
Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858; tod.leonard@uniontrib.com
