It’s often said (by Michael Jordan among others) that if you practice hard, playing hard in competition becomes a habit. It’s a notion that springs to mind when listening to English amateur Frank Kennedy discuss his victory at the Portuguese International Amateur Championship earlier this month.
The 16-year-old’s achievement is clearly in a different stratosphere to those of sport’s great and good, and yet there is no denying that, when faced with the pressure of a final-round lead, he has intense training experiences to draw upon.
A member at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, the youngster has played golf with the winner of 18 major championships (Jack Nicklaus), the finest English golfer of the modern era (Sir Nick Faldo), the club owner (the 45th president of the United States) and he also regularly contests money matches with PGA Tour winner Grayson Murray.
With all due respect to the German pair of Finn Kölle and Carl Siemens – Kennedy’s playing partners in the final round at Montado Golf Resort near Lisbon – they had little to no hope of utilising either reputation or stature to intimate the leader. Instead, they were reliant on their golf, and Kennedy bested them in that respect as well. He carded 65-69-64-71 for a 19-under, tournament-record total of 269. It left him four shots clear of the field, clinching the most significant victory of his career.
“Yeah, I’ve got used to playing with a lot of big names,” Kennedy said by telephone last week. “Playing at Jupiter, it’s now almost like I’m going out there, showing them what I can do and just trusting myself.”
Did those experiences – beyond intimidating for most teenagers – have an impact in Portugal?
“Oh yeah, I was so in the flow, I wasn’t feeling nervous,” he said. “I knew I had a big lead so I played to the middle of the greens, made pars. I knew the chasers would have to go really low to catch me.”
Just two years before playing the weekend in the Hero Open at the Home of Golf, Kennedy was hawking autographs from his heroes at the same spot in the Dunhill Links Championship.
Smart golf, then, aided by the nature of his practice and also by his capacity to heed the lessons of previous ventures into the thin air of contention.
“I played the South Beach Amateur in Miami over Christmas,” he explained. “I was in a good spot through three rounds, but I just put too much pressure on myself, hunting stupid pins. I learned right there not to be too aggressive at the wrong time.”
And, before that, another piece of the puzzle had slotted into place. “At the start of December, I was 7 under through nine holes in a local junior event,” Kennedy said. “I totalled 12 under through the two rounds to win by 11, and I noticed something. In the past, my putting has tended to let me down a little. So that front-nine hot streak really revealed what I am capable of. It motivated me. With how good my long game has been lately, I really felt that tightening my putting could make a difference.”
Peel back even further and yet another learning curve reveals itself. Last August, Kennedy birdied the 36th hole to make the cut by one in the European Tour’s Hero Open at Fairmont St Andrews. It was not only a fine debut within the pro ranks, it also made him, at 15, the youngest Englishman to achieve that feat and the third-youngest ever on the circuit.
However, a couple of months later, he failed to repeat the trick in the Mallorca Golf Open. “I put too much pressure on myself to make the cut again,” he admitted.
His rise is precocious and yet Kennedy appears to be taking it all in his stride. Just two years before playing the weekend in the Hero Open at the Home of Golf, Kennedy was hawking autographs from his heroes at the same spot in the Dunhill Links Championship.
“It would have felt like a pretty big deal two years ago,” he says. “But I've been lucky to play with those big names since. Sir Nick, for example, is a very good mentor. He talks about sticking to processes and the value of talking through the shots down the stretch.
“And the money matches with Grayson are important. Just heading out onto the course, that doesn't work. It needs to be realistic and to matter.”
He also plays with compatriot Ben Taylor (of the Korn Ferry Tour), whose deadly putting provides a competitive test Kennedy thrives on, and short-game guru Brad Faxon, with whom he has been working on his own flatstick skills.
“Brad’s a fellow member at Jupiter,” he said. “We work on not overthinking, not staying over the ball too long, and really identifying the line of a putt. We do a lot of drills to improve visualisation and pace work.”
Kennedy is not only literally at home in Florida (his family splits their time between bases there and in the north-west of England), he also is at home competing in the state. He won the Doral-Publix Junior Golf Classic in 2016 and opened 2022 by finishing second in the Abacoa January Classic on the Minor League Golf Tour. He was one shot shy of a playoff, but one shot better than Hayden Buckley, a winner on the Korn Ferry Tour last year and two-time top-10 finisher in his rookie campaign on the PGA Tour this season.
Kennedy’s father, Simon, is a sports agent who has worked with cricket legend Brian Lara, snooker superstar Jimmy White and a host of Premier League soccer players. He’s witnessed first-hand what it takes to succeed at the highest level. More source material for the young man’s education.
There is, too, a strong attachment with those who have coached him. Dan Haughian introduced him to the game and they remain close (indeed Haughian was carrying his bag in Portugal). He now works with both Rob Watts at England Golf and Jim McLean in Florida.
He’s rightly reluctant to peer too far into the future. He explains that he will return to the United States shortly, spend the summer competing in the major amateur events in the U.K., and, off the back of last summer’s Hero Open experience, a handful of DP World and Challenge Tour invitations will be accepted.
And then?
“I’ll think you’ll have to ask me that in 12 months’ time,” he said.
It’s an answer that you suspect the old sages Nicklaus and Faldo would nod their heads at.
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