Lions' Stinson masters mental game

By Adam Wire

July 03, 2008 11:42 pm

— ANDERSON — Those who play golf frequently will say that the most important area of the game to master is one between one’s ears. It made the difference between a regional flameout and a state finals berth for Alex Stinson this season.
The Liberty Christian junior focused on improving the mental aspects of his game this season. The payoff? A second straight Madison County individual championship, a runner-up finish at the Muncie Central Regional and a corresponding state finals appearance.
Those accomplishments, along with several others, enabled Stinson to be named The Herald Bulletin’s Boys Golf Player of the Year. Stinson was chosen in an informal poll of area coaches and the THB sports staff.
Like most successful youth golfers, the end of the high school season hasn’t meant the end of golf this year for Stinson. He won the 17-year-old division of the Indiana Age Group Championships, which took place at Plymouth’s Indiana National Golf Club, on Wednesday and Thursday. He was runner-up at the Indiana Section of the Junior PGA Championship earlier this summer, and won a Diet Pepsi Masters event Monday in South Bend.
Summer tournaments aside, Stinson said his prep season achievements were pleasing, but he has his eyes on greater achievements.
“This is definitely the best season of my career,” Stinson said Wednesday by phone, shortly after completing his Age Group Championships first round. “I’ve come a long way mentally. The skills have been there, but Coach (Mike) Carey has kind of got me over that mental boundary.”
Carey agreed that Stinson made great strides in his mental game this season, and that player and coach put heavy emphasis on it.
“He’s so much more confident now, and he’s a lot more mentally tough than he was,” said Carey. “Of all the guys that could teach the game of golf, I might be the worst, but I teach the mental game. We changed the way he approached his shots, developed his routine.... It’s a been a process.”
Stinson started the season slowly, according to Carey, who said his No. 1 golfer wasn’t the medalist in a couple of early-season duals, but that he was impressed with Stinson’s approach nonetheless.
“Even on bad days, he grinded it out,” Carey said. “He’s reading all the time, he keeps a notebook and keeps track of his progress. He’s just a tireless worker.”
He won his second straight county title May 3, shooting a 73 at Killbuck Golf Club. He took the third and final individual regional spot, posting a 76 and finishing seventh overall at the Noblesville Sectional, then broke through with his runner-up finish at the Muncie Central Regional.
“That wasn’t my best score of the year, but the conditions were brutal,” Stinson said. “There were 35-mile-per-hour winds the whole day. That was a real mental grind.”
Stinson had advanced to the regional as a freshman and sophomore, but his season ended both years. This time, he advanced to the state meet and handled the first-time pressure well. He posted a 3-over-par 73, leaving him just short of the second-day cut.
Next year, Stinson said, he hopes to become state meet medalist. It’s a lofty goal, but not one that surprises his coach, nor one he believes is out of reach.
“This was a great experience for him,” Carey said of the state meet. “He was playing to win (this year).”
Stinson isn’t done golfing this summer, either. After finishing the Age Group Championships, he plans to play in several more Diet Pepsi Masters events. He also will compete later this month in the American Junior Golf Association Tournament, a prestigious junior golf event that has hosted the likes of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III, among others.
He hopes to land an NCAA Division I scholarship, but said he has sent and received little more than feeler letters at this point. He said college coaches look more at summer tournaments than high school performances, but he hasn’t let that belief lessen his desire to become an IHSAA state meet medalist.
“That’s where it all starts,” Stinson said. “D-1 is the goal, and I’m going to make it my goal to defend the county title, but the biggest goal has got to be the state championship.”