Invitational Update, Junior Golf & LIV with Karie Dozer
Last week, Karie Dozer attended the White Mountain Country Clubs Invitational in Arizona. Today she joins us in the podcast to tell us about her experience. Later in the podcast, Karie is going to let us know how it is to have a son who is a golfer and his transition from a junior golfer to now a college player. What his fears are and the possible challenges he faces.
White Mountain Country Clubs Invitational
This was a three-and-a-half-day event nine-hole match play format that was an all-women event, no boys allowed. There was an organized practice round of par-3 holes, where you could pick between two shotguns. There was an 11:00 A.M. shotgun where you could play the course as it is, and a 1:00 P.M. shotgun and it was all into par-3s. On the first night, it was all merry, partying, food, and DJ, before the tournament began the following day.
What makes a tournament more fun than others?
It's really all about who you're with, from the moment you board the flight to go to the tournament, to the kind of people you spend time with during the invitational. Karie insists that she prefers to go to places where she wants to play golf. A beautiful place, a cool course that she doesn’t otherwise get an opportunity to play every day. Karie ended up liking the nine-hole matches because most of the people on her flight just like her were playing the nine-hole matches.
Parenting a Junior Golfer
The fruit never falls far away from the tree. Karie has a son who is in his senior year and is a golfer and looking forward to playing golf professionally and also in college. Karie is glad that he plays golf because she likes to watch it. However, high school golf is a bit different from, say, J.G.A. In high school golf, you play nine-hole matches, or nine-hole rounds, because you play after school or on a weekday. Occasionally, on the weekends, they'll play a full tournament, but it's short and they're not tough.
His biggest fear on the golf course
His biggest challenge and fear is putting. Although he has done a lot of golfing at this point, his ball-striking techniques are a bit off and he could miss like three inches. Yeah, he's still putting and practicing but his confidence will make him a much better golfer as time goes by.
The LIV Tour
The LIV is a professional golf tour financed by the PIF and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have offered huge sums of money to PGA tour professionals, and European tour professionals to come to play in Saudi Arabia. It's not popular with the PGA, to say the least, they outright revoked the credentials of the 14 players who said they were going to go play for LIV. Interestingly, these players are not even ranked. Their World Golf rankings are so far down that you've never heard of them, you don't know how to pronounce their names, but they're being paid to appear in Saudi Arabia. It’s sad because it doesn't do anything for golf. It's not good for golf, it's not good for the game, it doesn't make anybody play any better. They are just some guys who are making some money. They have found an opportunity and took it . The whole controversy about the LIV tour is the licensing issues around it. It's something about video rights, licensing of their images, and all this stuff.
The PGA is making a political statement, whether they acknowledge it or not, and they're saying that the government of Saudi Arabia is complicit in international crime, and murder. And this is an obvious effort to, as they call it, sports washing, to change their image worldwide through a sport. The fact that people are still talking about it means that it hasn't worked yet.
What has golf brought to your life?
“If you have issues, life issues, today issues, any kind of issues and you're not quite sure what they are, go out and play golf.”
Karie loves golf because she feels like it’s an issue-solver. If you have issues and you're not quite sure what they are, go out and play golf. Golf is also a good way of meeting people in life and getting to know them. If you want to get to know somebody, if you want to know if you can trust them, if you want to know if you like them, if you want to know if they are honest, hardworking, whatever, go golfing with them.
Resources
Tori:
Instagram: @tori_totlis
TikTok: @tori_totlis
Website: CompeteConfidenceGolf.com
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