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"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
online golf column
by
Chris Dortch
August 13, 2008
The Tennessee Golf
Foundation ought to just go ahead and start preparing a plaque for
Derek Rende. At 21 years old, he’s all but earned a spot in the
Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame.
It’s easy to make that statement after last
week, when Rende, a junior on UTC’s nationally ranked golf team,
won the
Tennessee Amateur at Ridgeway
Country Club in Memphis. Rende, who hasn’t shot higher than 69 in
six competitive rounds since giving himself a little putting pep
talk, has joined some fast company. The amateur victory gives him
a rare double when coupled with his win in the 2007 Tennessee
Open.
Only 12 players in history have won both
tournaments. Mason Rudolph and Tim Jackson, both members of the
Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame, have done it. Even the great
Chattanooga amateur Lew Oehmig and his long-time running mate, Ira
Templeton, never won both tournaments. Oehmig racked up eight
amateurs in his career, but never the Open. And Templeton won the
Open—in 1951, when it was played at Signal Mountain—but never the
amateur.
“It’s truly a blessing,” Rende said after
bagging the amateur by holding off a fast-charging Joe David with
a birdie on the first playoff hole. Both men shot 14 under. “When
I won the Open, it was surprising. To win the Amateur, too, when I
hadn’t been playing well this summer … it’s pretty awesome.”
Rende has always been a solid ball striker,
long off the tee and accurate with his irons. But this summer, his
strengths had been going for naught, because his putter abandoned
him. After playing poorly in the North-South Amateur and the
Southern Amateur, Rende sat down and assessed the state of his
putting.
“I didn’t really try anything new,” Rende
said. “I practiced with a belly putter for like an hour. I quickly
found out I didn’t like it.”
What Rende eventually decided was that his
putting woes had nothing to do with the putter he was using, or
the stroke he put on it.
“It was just a confidence thing,” he said. “I
think I got to the point where I was afraid to three-putt.”
With that revelation, Rende suddenly started
worrying less about the line of his putts and more about the
speed. More specifically, he realized a putt would never go in if
it wasn’t hit hard enough to get to the hole. No longer worried
about three-foot come backers for par, Rende started rolling
everything at the hole, and with plenty of pace.
Lo and behold, putts started dropping. It’s
amazing how this stuff works, isn’t it?
Rende’s scores began to reflect his newfound
confidence on the greens. At a 36-hole U.S. Amateur qualifier, he
shot 65-68. Surprisingly, all that earned him was first alternate
for the tournament, which will be played at Pinehurst. As
disappointing as that was, Rende was still uplifted by his putting
and filled with confidence when the Tennessee Amateur began.
Once again, Rende took it deep in the first
round, shooting a 6-under-par 65. He followed that with a pair of
68s and was ahead of David by four shots heading into the final
day.
David, who’s from Nashville, made a furious
comeback with a final-round 65, good enough to tie Rende and force
the tournament into extra holes.
Somehow it was fitting that Rende stood over
a two-foot birdie putt to win the tournament at the first playoff
hole, the par-5 18th.
“It was a tough little short putt, a real
swinger for a two-footer,” Rende said. “But I felt pretty good
standing over it.”
Rende, who keeps a notebook of ideas that
have helped him on the golf course, won’t soon forget the lesson
he put to good use in Memphis. And the confidence he draws from
winning Tennessee’s two most significant championships will stay
with him a while, too.
“There are a whole lot of guys, including me,
who would love to have Derek’s golfing resume,” UTC coach Mark
Guhne said. “But I don’t think he’s got any idea of what he’s
accomplished.
“He has improved so much in the last two
years, it’s incredible. He’s come from the point where the biggest
thing he played in was the state high school tournament, and now
he’s one of the top amateurs in the entire country. It’s been a
lot of fun to watch.”
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