Collins: ‘I’m fortunate, for sure’

Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Chad Collins

Cloverdale native refining game, hoping for even better 2016-17 season

At first glance, the 2015-16 season on the PGA tour would seem to have been a great one for Chad Collins.

The Cloverdale native had his third-best season in terms of money winnings, had his best-ever individual tourney finish (third at the Valero Open) and finished 136th in the FedEx Cup standings.

Still, there were some bad weeks.

After finishing in the low 60s in the standings for the first two tour events, Collins missed the cut in the next five outings to begin a streak that included missing the cut in nine of the next 11 tourneys.

Then came Valero, and a memorable week in San Antonio.

“I wasn’t doing that well at all going into that tournament,” Collins recalled last week. “Over the first quarter of the year, I was missing a lot of cuts — and on the cuts I did make finished in the middle or back of the pack. I wasn’t performing as well as I would have liked.”

Chad Collins

In what would become a troublesome bad habit for the entire season, Collins shot a 73 on Thursday in the first round before getting things together.

He shot a 69 in the second round to make the cut, then followed through with a 67 and a 69 to finish 10 strokes under par and place third.

“I’m really not sure why,” Collins said, when asked about the turnaround. “Things just came together, and playing well in that tourney put a different perspective on the rest of the tournaments going forward. It really opened my eyes.”

Collins kept his hot streak going the following weekend in New Orleans at the rain-shortened Zurich Classic.

After another opening round not to his liking with a 72, Collins shot one of his best-ever PGA rounds with a 64 on Friday. He was one of only three golfers to reach that mark during the tourney. He concluded play in the final round with a 71, and finished in a tie for 15th.

Collins missed the cut the next three weeks, then got back in the groove by making four straight cuts. His best finish during that stretch was a tie for 18th in the FedEx St. Jude Classic.

The last four tourneys of the year also ended after Friday for Collins, who finished the year making only 10 cuts out of 26 tourneys

“Really and truly it wasn’t all that great of a year outside of two or three tournaments,” he said. “Obviously Valero kind of jumpstarted me into getting some confidence going into the remainder of the year.

“Fortunately those were big tournaments that allowed me to slip in there and keep my card,” Collins added. “Hopefully this year is a little different.”

There is a long list of ways that PGA golfers can keep their card, which allows them to play in the next year’s events. Most of those are tied to money winnings, while others involve high finishes in one of the four majors.

The top 125 money winners earn their card, and Collins finished exactly 125th with his earnings of $734,538.

Thursday woes

Collins had his worst round of the tournament on the first day in half of his 26 outings, and tied his worst round of the tourney three other times on Thursday.

He feels the problem is more mental than physical, and has been working to try to fix the issue.

“For whatever reason sometimes I’m kind of a slow starter and don’t get things going until later on in the round,” Collins said. “I would play better on Friday, and better on Saturday and then Sunday over the weekend.

“I think on Thursdays I was trying too hard to get off to a smooth start, and I was trying to keep away form making big numbers and get a lot of pars, instead of being more aggressive and firing at more pins.”

Collins felt he played too conservatively last season in the first round but was more aggressive in the second round.

“On Thursday I would usually be around par or one over, and that put a different mindset into my Friday round,” he said. “When you know you have a certain score to shoot at, it forces you to play a different game that day. That’s something my caddies and I have talked about, and hopefully this year it won’t be quite like that — not being behind the eight ball going into Friday and being more comfortable.”

Putting was also a problem for Collins in his opening round.

He ranked 147 on the tour in the first round by averaging 29.62 putts per 18 holes, but in round two he climbed drastically to No. 7 on the entire tour by cutting that number to just 27.81 per round.

Getting better

Collins says the key to continually improving his game is all about consistency and minimizing your misses and your bad shots.

“Typically it would probably be one bad drive for me that caused a problem,” he said. “I kind of struggled with my driver this year, and my long irons, and that’s something I’m doing more work on.

“That will hopefully put me in a position to not be fighting it.”

Collins doesn’t feel the length of his drives is his biggest issue in that area.

“It’s more about fairway accuracy percentage,” he said. “Not necessarily distance.”

Collins is admittedly “not a really big goal-setter,” and thinks with good preparation he can continue to be successful.

“If I’m playing well, the way I look at it is that things are going to fall into place and happen,” he said. “If you’re not playing well, you’re not going to have that good of a week. It’s all preparation.“

The tour grind

Collins has no complaints about his career choice. He has made a lot of money, and is young enough (just turning 38 last month) to have even greater earning potential in the future.

Yet, the job does not come without its drawbacks.

“It definitely is a grind,” he said. “People don’t realize how difficult it is. Think it’s all glamorous, and they see how much money you make every week since that’s kind of public knowledge.”

Other benefits such as deluxe accommodations and courtesy cars further fuel the inaccurate assessment that the golfers lead easy lives.

“That stuff is nice and those are nice perks, but people don’t realize the time you spend in airports every single week,” he said. “The hotel life, different beds every week, going out to eat at restaurants. I have probably eaten at every chain restaurant known to man, and it gets kind of boring.

“The travel part of this lifestyle is not glamorous by any means,” Collins added. “Everybody doesn’t like certain parts of their job, and that’s one part of my job that I dislike.”

Collins will tee off at 7:20 a.m. (local time) on Thursday in the Safeway Open at Napa, Calif., in the first event of the 2016-17 season.

Ten events are scheduled prior to Christmas, with the schedule resuming Jan. 5 after a break for the holidays.

Should Collins play every week over the rest of this calendar year, he would tee off in no less than five different countries. Besides events on U.S. soil at Naples, Fla., Sea Island, Ga., Jackson, Miss., and Las Vegas, Nev., other PGA events are scheduled in Australia, Kuala Lampur, Mexico and the Bahamas.

“Once I get where I’m going and get settled in, it’s fine,” he said of the nomadic lifestyle. “Then it’s to the course and working to do the things I have to do through Sunday. Then it’s laundry and packing for the next tournament.”

Collins offered an interesting viewpoint on whether his sport’s lifestyle is easier than the NBA, where players normally only stay in a city for a day or two and may take as many as four plane trips in a single week.

“It would be different in the NBA,” he said. “There you have a team, and everything would be a little more private [with chartered group flights]. There are things that are similar and things that are different with being in an individual sport.”

Fulfilling the dream

Steven Collins, Chad’s dad, started him playing golf at a young age.

“Basically as soon as I could walk, I had a club in my hand,” Chad said. “My dad was a good player, and I was always with him. I was passionate about it, and I loved it.”

Collins recalls slowly improving at the game as he played more, and made a career choice earlier than most youngsters.

“When I got to be around seven or eight, I got to the point where I felt like this was something I wanted to do for a living,” he said, noting his career progressed from local tournaments to those at the state, regional and national levels.

Collins has several years left on the tour, and admits that planning for his post-golf career is “a little bit too far down the road.”

He is an avid bow hunter, and loves to fish.

“I have bought a couple of pieces of property north of where I live now [Cloverdale] that are near Veedersburg,” he said. “That keeps me busy. I spend a lot of time on my tractor planting my food plots.

“After golf, I will be spending time on the farms and just enjoying the things that I don’t have the opportunity to do now because of the time and the schedule I do on the tour,” Collins added. “There will more relaxation.”

Collins said his father is busy doing things at his property, and while he used to be a constant presence at Chad’s tournaments he no longer goes to them.

“He realizes the pressure and everything that goes into what I do,” Chad said. “He used to caddy for me a little bit when I was a junior and after I turned pro. He’s been there and done that, and realizes what it’s all about.

“He does his own thing and stays out of my way,” he added. “He doesn’t want to put any added pressure on me by being there. That’s fine with me.”

Collins had a standout career at Cloverdale before joining the program at Methodist College in North Carolina.

While at Methodist, he won the NCAA Division III Championship as an individual three times (1998, 1999 and 2001) and as part of the team twice (1998 and 1999).

He was a four-time, first-team Division III All-American and four-time first-team All-USA South Athletic Conference selection. He won the USA South Athletic Conference championship in 1999 and was the co-champion in 2001.

“Even before I got to college, when I was in high school, I knew that was what I wanted to do and that I had the talent and ability,” he said. “Just like anything, you have goals and dreams of becoming what you want to be.”

Not really goals, but...

Collins has a few hopes for the upcoming season that he would like to see become regular habits.

“I would like to make every cut,” he said. “That’s sort of a goal every week — to make each one that you play in. Obviously I’d like to win a PGA event; I’ve never won.

“I’ve been in a position to win two or three times, and I never have. That’s what you’re trying to do every week.”

Collins would also like to play his way into some invitationals that he’s not already exempt for, and also to improve his standing enough to be able to compete in the major tournaments.

“Those are standards that I have every year,” he said. “I’m just going to work on doing the right things to prepare, and looking more at the big picture of stats and where I need to improve upon things.

“I also need to work on time management.”

Collins said the best way to continue past successes and to improve for the future is to keep challenging yourself.

“Before I made it on the PGA tour, I was on the Web.com tour and the Nationwide tour,” he said. “Each time you get to move up you’re excited to make that jump to the next level.

“Once you have achieved it like I have, it’s kind of like ‘What’s next?’ and ‘Where do you go from here?’ You have to set new standards and work toward them. It gets difficult, but it’s part of the job.”

Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?

Collins admits there are times he has to pinch himself to make sure that his career outcome is a reality.

“It’s hard to believe you can achieve the goals and dreams you have, and I’m fortunate for sure,” he said. “It comes with hard work and preparation just like anything. It’s kind of amazing.”

Whether on a long, boring plane ride to locations around the world or alone in a hotel room, Collins has plenty of chances for reflection.

“I’m sure one day I’ll look back on it and relive a lot of the memories of the things that went on and how I got there,” he said. “I do that a little anyway, to keep things in perspective. Time flies... this will be my eighth year on the PGA tour and 15th or 16th professionally.

“It’s hard to believe it has been that long.”

Source: PGA.com
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