How blessed was it?
He made three cuts in 11 events on the Canadian Professional Golf Tour. He earned $1,327, 156th on the Canadian money list, and lost his exempt status.
He struggled to hit the ball straight, which put pressure on his short game, and when his putting went bad ...
He struggled.
So, how you doing, John?
“Things are going well, real well,” the Yelm native said last week. “It’s funny with golf. Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back before you get better.”
He’s upbeat today, eager to get back out and play tournaments. How bad did it get last year?
It got bad.
He started hitting the ball to the right which, for most average schmucks, is a fact of golf life. For Cassidy, 28, and never a schmuck at any level, it was a first.
“Since I had never struggled with missing the ball to the right,” he said, “when it started happening I didn’t know what was going on.
“I was trying everything I knew how to do. It just wasn‘t working.”
More than once in our conversation, Cassidy said, “Golf is confidence.” He’d lost his.
“The physical stuff leads into the mental stuff,” he said. “I was hitting the ball so bad, I didn’t put the time in on the mental side.”
In golf, when it does go bad, and it will, and when you’re playing for pay, a guy has to have some tools to fix himself up.
Cassidy was at a loss. And he’s happy about it.
“I really look at last year as a fluke,” he said. “If I had to struggle to be where I am right now, that’s part of how it goes, because I know I’m better now than I was.
“If I hadn’t struggled I wouldn’t have gone to see Jeff.”
“Jeff” is Jeff Coston, a legend as a player in the Pacific Northwest and maybe, to hear Cassidy tell it, an even better teacher.
Cassidy had seen some progress in his friend Zack Shriver, a fellow Washingtonian and Canadian Tour player – and a Coston student for several years.
“I noticed that Zack had a really good understanding of his golf swing,” Cassidy said. “I wanted that.”
Cassidy had worked a little bit with Coston in the past, but after last season he cast his lot 100 percent with the Blaine pro.
Coston offered a different take on Cassidy’s swing mechanics. Specifically, Cassidy’s body was getting ahead of the club.
“I couldn’t get caught up, so everything was going right.”
Cassidy said his golf swing is better than it’s ever been, but more important, he said, is the way Coston helped his student place the swing in a meaningful context.
“He’s an entire teacher ,” Cassidy said. “He doesn’t just teach the swing. He teaches how to play golf.
“Mental-wise, he’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s stuff I already knew, but it gets put on the back burner when you’re out there playing.”
Cassidy has his confidence back, and he’d like to win a couple Canadian events and keep his career path moving upward. He’s got to get through qualifying school to earn back his Canadian Tour card – but the way he’s feeling now, he almost sees it as a formality.
In the nearer term, he’s living in Yelm (his adopted hometown is Cave Creek, Ariz.) and working out five days a week in Olympia with a personal trainer. His goal is to get in the best physical shape of his life.
And yesterday, he had a game with Shriver and Coston at Loomis Trail, one of the two courses in Blaine connected to the Jeff Coston Teaching Academy at Semiahmoo. It’s another chance to watch the tough old pro at work.
“He doesn’t make mental mistakes,” Cassidy said of Coston. “It’s why he beats all the club pros around here. It’s neat to watch. It’s neat to learn from him.”
Coston, 54, still has a ton of game.
“I’m getting better with age,” said Coston, who won the Pacific Northwest PGA Professional Championship (for club pros) for a sixth time last August at Avalon Golf Club in Burlington.
“I told John to bring plenty of money.”
“Jeff calls it ‘sparring,’ ” Cassidy said. “It’s nice to have good players to go out and compete with and have something on the line. He’s got so much knowledge of the game – it’s really tough not to learn from him, even when he’s not teaching you.”
King Coston
When Cassidy came to him, Coston saw a talented player he could teach to win golf tournaments. He speaks from experience – recent experience.
Besides his title in the club pros’ championship at Avalon, Coston won his fourth straight Senior PGA Championship last summer at the Tumble Creek Club in Roslyn. For good measure, he won the Senior Oregon Open Invitational in August at Wildhorse Resort in Pendleton.
The 11-time Pacific Northwest Player of the Year has won on the Nationwide Tour. He’s won the Washington Open three times, the Oregon Open twice and the Northwest Open twice. That’s just the short list.
He’s playing in the TaylorMade Pro-Am at Pebble Beach in two weeks. He’s looking forward to the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee this summer.
“I talk about how you approach a golf tournament, how to play well when you’re so nervous you can’t swallow a BB,” Coston said. “I just know from experience, from playing tournaments, from being in the hunt myself. I know what questions to ask, I know what people are going through.”
Coston said the theory “the harder I try the better I’ll do” maybe works in football. It doesn’t work in golf.
“John, Zack, Jeff Coston ... the more we can get out of our own way, the better we’ll play.”
Freelance writer Bart Potter can be reached at greygoatee06@comcast.net
