Gobin all wrapped up for 2009
Brodie Gobin, 15, of St. Claude is taking one last kick at the can this weekend. The Portage Golf Club member originally passed up the Club Championship at his home course to rest up for a junior tournament, but after the PGC tourney was rained out last weekend, he says he’ll be joining his clubmates on the links this weekend for the last tournament of 2009.
Gobin’s season didn’t go the way he had been hoping. Some bad finishes didn’t rain on his parade, though. He said Thursday, “I improved my mental game, because even though I didn’t have the finishes that I wanted, I was able to deal with it better.” He agrees that despite having some tough outings, the challenges he faced over the course of the 2009 season made him stronger.
Collectively on the year, the young man who just golfs for the love of the game, said “even though everything didn’t go right, I still had fun.”
Gobin said his best tournament was one of his more recent ones, the Manitoba Blue Cross Men’s Amateur Rural Championship Aug. 9 and10 at Minnedosa Country Club. This year was Gobin’s first appearance at the Men’s Rural Championship, and he finished tied for fourth.
Spending the summer on the open road, driving to many golf tournaments all over the province, Gobin gets to see a lot of different golf courses. One of the ones he said he’d like to go back to is in Pinawa, where he played at the Men’s Amateur Championship July 20 – 23. “Yeah, I think I’d like to go back there. Pinawa is a nice course,” he mused.
Thursday also marked the first day of Gobin’s off-season from competing. While he did admit to feeling a little sad, he says he’s still going to get out as much as he can. “I golf in Portage, and at another course too, so I try to get out as much as possible, go to the golf dome and hit balls.”
Armed with his new-found mental toughness after overcoming many obstacles in 2009, Gobin is already looking forward to his 2010 season.
With the standard answer of striving to improve all his finishes out of the way, the one tournament Gobin said he really wants to do better in is “The Manitoba Junior Tournament. I want to finish better.”
At his most recent tournament, The National Bank Financial MJT-Manitoba PGA Junior Championship, held at Transcona Golf Club in Winnipeg, Gobin finished tied for tenth on a messy course, muddy and wet after the weekend’s downpour. “The course is easy, but it was in poor condition. It was drenched, muddy ….” There’s nothing anyone can do about the ground being soggy and wet, and Gobin says, “you just have to go out and play the game. It’s the same for everybody.” While mother nature was against all the participants, Gobin says it does get frustrating when trying to play on a wet course. The course was not the major worry on his mind, though. “I couldn’t putt the two days that I was there,” he said, admitting it does stress him out a little when the strongest part of his game isn’t coming together.
Now that the season is over, to curb the boredom, he says he plans to hang out with his friends and hit some balls at the driving range.
The plan for 2010 is already in place — “I’m going to do better,” he said with certainty. “I’m going to have better finishes and just improve overall.” Some other things on his list of goals includes making Team Manitoba, and “going to Nationals. I’m going to try and do that next year, too.”
http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1710946
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