OPENING SHOT
By Brett Cyrgalis
Here’s the thing about being the first tournament on the schedule every spring – all the competitors spend the offseason thinking about it.
For the Long Island Golf Association, that tournament is the Richardson Memorial Invitational, held since 2019 at Wheatley Hills Country Club in East Williston. The tournament dates to 1948, formerly held every year at the Seawane Club and named after former New York Times sportswriter William D. Richardson – and doesn’t that make my ink-stained blood pick up a beat. Previous winners include such luminaries as Frank Strafaci, Dick Siderowf, Jerry Courville, and George Burns III. It is regularly scheduled to end on the first Saturday in May, just in time for the winner to grab a mint julep and go catch post time for the Kentucky Derby.
For those who play a similar tournament schedule to me, we see the final putt drop in the Gene Sarazen Invitational at Fresh Meadow in late-October, leaving the grounds battered and mentally bruised, scar tissue on top of scar tissue, needing a rest. But soon thereafter – probably sooner than most of us would like to admit – the dreams start dancing in our heads of spring, new beginnings, and the lure of the Richardson. It carries us through winter workouts, though cold hands during a February range session – if you’re lucky enough to get one – and even through the occasional trip south, when putts on Bermuda grass are thought of in the context of how the aeration holes might have healed at Wheatley in May.
Most of us golf sickos have some version of the same dream, colored by green grass and soundtracked by crisply hit irons. It sustains our golfing souls through the frozen doldrums of the Northeast winter. We think about how much better we’re going to get, maybe a new tweak of technique, or a new club, or a refreshed mindset and rejuvenated perspective. We’re not going to make the same foolish mistakes we made last year. No sir, no way.
But here is where it gets interesting.
It is always good to set goals, in golf and in life. It is normally right around the Tour Championship when Justin Thomas reveals his list of goals for the PGA Tour season that has just been completed. Like a guy who was born in 1993, he keeps the list on the “Notes” app on his phone, and he puts a little green checkmark next to each one he accomplished and a red “X” next to each one he did not. Before Rory McIlroy won his second straight Masters this spring, he spoke about a goal number for career majors – although he did not share that number, rumor has it pegged at 10 (five more). And famously, Tiger Woods had the number of Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major championships as his guiding light, just as Nicklaus had the goal of Bobby Jones’ 13 majors (which includes the U.S. and British Amateur championships, as well.)
But let the dean of all sports psychologists explain exactly why it is far more important to set a process for how to achieve those goals rather than just setting the goals themselves.
The way the Richardson works is that about 100 guys play 18 holes of stroke play to get into a 16-person match-play bracket. (There is also a senior division.) I had birdied the final three holes in qualifying to go from outside the cut line to the eventual 7-seed. Then I was 4-up through five holes in my first-round match, still 4-up through nine, when the process started to waver and my thoughts drifted to outcomes. I started thinking about the match in front of me, how I would play one of my two good friends, both extremely accomplished players, and what a fun challenge the afternoon was going to be. Then I unapologetically choked like a dog, my competitor Jackson Weisbrot taking it to me to win in 20 holes.
So, the Richardson has come and gone, likely just the same for your first golfing checkpoint of the season. Whether you succeeded or failed, green checkmark or red “X,” the process of how to reach the goal is what remains the most important. Because, thankfully, the weather is still warming up and there is more golf to played.
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