Former Braves ace John Smoltz thought shooting an even-par 71 at The River Club might be enough to advance him one step closer to playing in the U.S. Open.
He was two gusts of wind away from achieving that mark, and those wisps of evil cost him Tuesday.
Smoltz’s 3-over par 74, which included a double bogey and bogey on his last two holes, saw him fall two shots short of taking one of eight automatic spots into the final round of qualifying. He missed a playoff for one of the two alternate shots by a stroke. Georgia Tech’s Anders Albertson tied for second with a 69, one stroke behind former Georgia State golfer Tobias Rosendahl. Tech teammate Oliver Schniederjans (71), Georgia’s Brian Carter (71) and Mercer’s Mookie DeMoss (72) also advanced.
After his round, Smoltz doubted his score would be good enough with more than half the field still on the course. However, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t happy with his game.
“I’m very pleased with my performance today,” Smoltz said.
Yes, Smoltz, the future baseball Hall of Famer who is more recently known as the golfer who missed the cut at last month’s Nationwide Tour event in Valdosta by 27 strokes, wasn’t that far from teeing it up with his good friend Tiger Woods with a chance to win a major.
Smoltz said he owes this modest bit of success to lessons he learned while toiling away through rain, a bumpy swing and a balky putter at Kinderlou Forest.
The first lesson was he needed to get his clubs reshafted to increase their distance and accuracy. Second, he needed to continue to fine-tune his swing, particularly at impact, and third, he needed to work on improving his patience.
“I learned a lot from my short two-day stay,” said Smoltz, who won 210 games with the Braves and saved 154. “I played great until the last two holes and caught a bad break with a gust of wind.”
He made two birdies, three bogeys and one double bogey Tuesday, which he was still lamenting after his round.
Sitting at even par, he smashed an iron down the right side of the fairway of his 17th hole, the par-4, 426-yard eighth and was in good position to attack the pin on the green’s right side. With winds swirling, he elected to hit an 8-iron from around 140 yards to the middle of the green. He pushed the ball slightly and the wind blew it straight up — “once the wind got it, it was finished,” he said — depositing it into the pond that fronts the green.
He finished with his only double bogey. Cruelly, another gust of wind pushed what looked like a perfect drive 20 yards into a bunker on the left on his last hole, resulting in a bogey.
Even as his playing partners struggled and the pace of the round slowed down, Smoltz kept his focus. He hit eight of 13 fairways, missing two by inches, and hit 13 of 18 greens in regulation. His five missed greens all came on his last nine.
His putting was solid for most of the day, but he missed a short birdie putt on the par-5 seventh that he thought was in, joking that he was already reaching to pick it out of the cup when it skirted by the edge.
“I’m super pleased with the adjustments I made from the last tournament in this wind,” he said.
Albertson, a freshman who enrolled at Tech in January, said the conditions made the course very tough. He had four birdies and two bogeys.
“It was very difficult,” Albertson said. “The wind picked up and you had to really flight your ball, play smart, pick your lines, and I was able to do that today.”
