August 8, 2007

MIND OVER MATTER
Hunter Mahan gets his head on straight — and now he’s hitting it straight, too, as the PGA Championship begins.
BY MARK WHICKER
The Orange County Register

TULSA, Okla. - Show up Thursday, stay late Sunday. Hunter Mahan has lived two months of that life. He’s getting used to it.

Beginning with Memphis in mid-June, Mahan has played 28 rounds in seven tournaments. He has broken 70 in 12 of those rounds, including a Thursday 62 at Hartford.

His finishes: 17th at Memphis, 13th in the U.S. Open, first at Hartford for his first PGA Tour victory, eighth at Washington, sixth at the British Open, fifth in Canada and 22nd last week at Firestone. That’s a $2.01 million run that jumped Mahan to 13th in tour money.

"It’s just nice to feel I’ve got a chance to be in there every week," Mahan said the other day, walking to the clubhouse door after a 100-degree practice round at Southern Hills.

He is one of the hot tickets for the PGA Championship that starts today. But when the summer began he was just another name in microscopic type, filling out the standings on Sunday, provided he could stay that long.

The roll began at a 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier, when Mahan’s inner child once again rose through the volcano cone.

"It was in the morning, and I’d just turned a 68 into a 73," he said. "I was hot."

So was Neale Smith. He was caddying for Mahan, but he’s also his sports psychologist, a former pro golfer and a student of Dr. Ken Ravizza, who has counseled many Angels and Cal State Fullerton baseball Titans.

"He told me I was being ridiculous," Mahan remembered.

"I had just worked with the Stanford golf team that had won the NCAAs," Smith said. "To go from them to what Hunter was doing was quite a difference. He was hypercritical of his bad shots and didn’t react to his good ones. At one point he said he wasn’t going to play the afternoon round. Then he decided to, and that’s when we had a pretty frank discussion."

But hadn’t Smith said the same things to Mahan a couple of hundred times in the past?

"Not with the same venom or velocity," Smith said.

Mahan then shot 63 in the afternoon and qualified for the Open and hasn’t stopped since.

"At dinner, I told him he could either be like he was in the morning and be miserable, or he could be like he was in the afternoon and enjoy himself," Smith said. "It could be either A or B. I recommended B.

"Sure, it’s a tough game. But that’s all the more reason to give yourself credit. Tiger Woods gets upset with himself, but he celebrates his good moments just as hard. He gets it all out of his system."

Is that how sports shrinks make their bucks?

"I don’t know," Mahan said, laughing. "Sometimes you need another voice to tell you what you know already."

Mahan could have fizzled into a pity puddle when Jay Williamson came from behind to catch him at Hartford. Instead he jammed iron shots inside Williamson’s on both the 18th hole and in the playoff and made both birdie putts.

"He’s as talented as anyone we’ve had," said Mike Holder, Mahan’s Oklahoma State coach and now the athletic director. "But he needed to grow up."

Mahan’s father, Monte, who worked for instructor Hank Haney, jokingly called Hunter "the bubble boy" because his life at Oklahoma State was hermetically sealed from reality.

"I think one reason he transferred from USC was that we have our own course," Holder said. "It’s hard to get on courses in L.A. You’re everybody’s guest. At our place, everyone else is the guest."

Mahan finished second to Ricky Barnes in the 2003 U.S. Amateur, which earned him a Masters invitation, and he finished 28th at Augusta. He was third in the NCAAs and was a U.S. Junior Am champ.

But before the family moved from Orange to Dallas when he was 13, Mahan was a star for the junior teams at Alta Vista Country Club.

"His family used to drop him off in the morning and he’d play and practice all day," said assistant pro Henry Templeton. "He didn’t hit the ball very far, but he’d wear out those 3-woods from 150 yards. One time he holed one out from 175 yards to win a match. When he was 9 he was playing against 13-year-olds. I figured he’d be a good player when he got bigger, because he had the rest of the game."

He did. Then he had to learn how to play. Particularly when he lost his tour card in 2004 and had to re-visit Q School.

It’s no disgrace. The can’t-miss Barnes is still plugging away on the Nationwide Tour.

"The margin for error is so small," Mahan said. "Last Sunday at Firestone, I didn’t play bad (76) but I just didn’t get anything going good. There’s lots of days like that. Camilo (Villegas) came out here and started succeeding right away. It takes a little longer for some of us."

Mahan was wearing a black and white shirt and black pants, shrugging at the heat. Just then a cart stopped, carrying Villegas and Chris DiMarco.

"Keeping cool?" Villegas called out.

"Yeah," Mahan replied. "I’m very cool."