Anne Chen won a five-hole playoff to take the Epson Tour Championship Sunday
Anne Chen defeated Sophia Schubert in a five-hole playoff Sunday to win the Epson Tour Championship at Indian Wells
It might have been the best example of how Joanna Bushnell Crist has improved as a golfer this season.
Playing for her La Quinta High School golf team, Bushnell Crist started a round in a match against Xavier Prep with three consecutive bogeys.
“I just kept bogeying and bogeying and I couldn’t putt,” the senior for the Blackhawks said. “The greens, they had scalped them and they were very fast.”
In past years, Bushnell Crist admits she might not have recovered from the poor start. Instead, after a birdie and another bogey, she finished the round with four consecutive birdies on the way to a 1-under 35 that didn’t include a single par. This season, such a bad start does not derail her game.
“I would just focus on it too much and then let it go and go and go and go,” Bushnell Crist said. “And then five holes later I’d still be focusing on that three-foot putt I missed, when the next shot is what I should be focusing on.”
A new mental attitude, coupled with a few extra yards off the tee though some weight training, has Bushnell Crist playing the best golf she has produced for La Quinta. The Desert Empire League individual champion as a freshman and a junior, Crist’s senior year has seen lower and more consistent scores.
In eight DEL matches this year, Bushnell Crist is an aggregate score of 6-under par. That includes a school record 4-under 32 in one match, a 2-under 33 in another match, three rounds of 1-under 35 and three rounds of 1-over 37. During that stretch, Bushnell Crist has recorded two eagles, 19 birdies and just 15 bogeys and a lone double bogey, Bushnell Crist followed up that double bogey on the par-3 eighth hole of the Lake Nine at Bermuda Dunes Country Club Thursday with an eagle on the par-5 ninth hole.
How did she turn around her mental approach? A little summer reading helped, particular a book by sport psychologist Dr. Kevein Sverduk of Long Beach State, “The Performance Mindset.”
“He’s the mental coach at Long Beach State,” Bushnell Crist said. “I went there for a camp and he had a book and recommended it. I don’t care to read, but if it is golf, I will read it. There were some really interesting things in there.”
Specifically, Bushnell Crist took from the book how to move on after a bad shot, something that most young golfers and recreational golfers struggle with at times. So the three straight bogeys to start a recent match could have been disastrous for Bushnell Crist in the past, but not now.
Mark Williams, the head coach for the Blackhawks boys and girls golf teams, believes another key for Bushnell Crist this season was her verbal commitment over the summer to play college golf at Fresno State,
“When you grow up like her playing junior golf all of your life and you finally get to high school and you are a sophomore or a junior, there is so much pressure on you to perform because you are trying to get into a college,” Williams said. “So you have this weight on you every time you go on a golf course, this weight on your shoulders, having to score, having to impress college coaches. And every time you play a hole, you think, I lost my chance.”
“It’s constant pressure for those two years. Play well and give yourself a chance to play college golf, and that is all she wants to do,” Williams added. “So I knew the second she signed somewhere, the weight is lifted off her shoulder and she is able to just play golf, that she would excel. And that is exactly what happened.”
Whether it is just the mental attitude or the certainty of college golf or the physical training before school in the morning — Bushnell Crist can now drive the 285-yard par-4 ninth hole at the Blackhawks’ home course at Big Rock at Indian Springs in Indio — Crist is on a run of dominance in the DEL. Her 32 at Indian Springs, the school record for a nine-hole round, was one of those rounds when everything worked, she said.
“I had no expectations that day. I was just going out there and I just hit the greens. I feel like it all comes down to putting. Whenever I putt good that day, I score well,” she said. “And it definitely seemed like the hole was a basketball hoop, it was so big. And every putt just felt really nice and I was just having fun.”
While trying to stay in the moment of each shot, Bushnell Crist does let herself think about upcoming events like the DEL individual finals, CIF-Southern Section Individual play and team play.
“I’d like to try and make it to state (finals),” she said. “My sophomore year, in the third round, I think I missed it by three shots. I’d like to do better than that this year.”
Read the full article here