Hi all,
I am John Catlin, sharing my story with the readers of Golf Digest India, thanks to the team for getting it out there.
For those of who don’t know me, I am a professional golfer from Sacramento, California, USA, currently playing on the European Tour and who shifted his base from there to Thailand to play on the Asian Development Tour and after clinching my breakthrough win at Combiphar Golf Invitational in 2016 I moved up to the Asian Tour where I won thrice in 2018 alone, i.e., Asia-Pacific Classic, Sarawak Championship and Yeangder TPC.
I have spent the past four seasons playing on the Asian Tour and this 2019 calendar season I will be focusing my efforts on the European Tour and trying to earn a full card on the PGA Tour for the 2019-2020 season.
I am sharing the inside scoop on my past two weeks on the European Tour that started in Texas and ended in Belgium.
It all started with a very early morning flight out of San Jose to Denver and then to Dallas. I was heading to Dallas to try to qualify for the US Open at Pebble Beach in the middle of June. I made it to Denver without a hitch, however, while in Denver there was a weather delay that would prove to be a massive part of my next few days that caused me to stay in Denver an hour and a half longer than initially planned.
I was supposed to play a practice round at one of the two qualifying courses on Saturday and Sunday. However, because of the intense rains and wind, I was only allowed to walk both courses and not able to play either course before my qualifier on Monday, May 20th.
I played my heart out in the qualifier in 30 mph winds and unfortunately came up a few shots short of the qualifying number at 68-72. I woke up early the next morning for my next journey from Dallas, Texas to Aalborg, Denmark for the first of two European Tour events.
I woke up early for my travel from Dallas, Texas to Aalborg, Denmark for the first of two European Tour events. I left Dallas Tuesday morning at 8.40 am and arrived in Aalborg at 3.30 pm on Wednesday, giving me just enough time to get my stuff and rush to the course and walk the course that evening before the sun went down.
I teed it up the following day in the start in the event and proceeded to have the strongest week that I have ever had on the European Tour finishing in a tie for 12th after rounds of 67-74-70-66! I was very proud of how I handled the long travel, long week, sleepless and jet-lagged nights and nerves from never having played the course before!
The week gave me much confidence knowing under some challenging circumstances I can produce some great results on two different continents having never played either course before I had to compete.
My following week I had an effortless day of travel Monday morning in comparison to my other week to Denmark. I was up at 3 am to leave Aalborg, Denmark, and through Copenhagen, I was able to be on the course in Antwerp, Belgium by Monday afternoon and play 18 holes. I felt ready to compete by the time the tournament came around. However, I missed the cut to match play in Belgium. Over the weekend I continued to work on my game as I am a firm believer that the only way to the top is to work very hard and improve the areas of the game that are not up to par. It gave me an excellent opportunity to tour around the beautiful city of Antwerp Belgium, which I quite I enjoyed.
I am now on my way home for two weeks of preparation for my next European Tour Start in Germany. I am excited to have two weeks off to fine tune my game with my longtime coach Noah Montgomery and come back to Europe and perform at my very best. There were many lessons that I can take away from these weeks that will keep me busy in my pursuit of becoming the best golfer that I can become.