By his own admission, Tegan Andrews isn’t much of a reader – outside of the greens he reads during his day job as the current No. 1 player on the Cal State Fullerton men’s golf team. But this – this book was the closest thing to a page-turner.
And the closest thing to a game-changer.
When we last left Andrews, right around this time last year, he was just emerging from a long sentence as a prisoner of his own head. It wasn’t a good place to be, a golf prodigy held captive by his own mental demons – demons that derailed him every time he blinked on a golf course.
“Tegan’s always had a really high ceiling,” CSF’s director of golf and head men’s golf coach Jason Drotter said. “Physically, he’s always had incredible gifts and talents, but mentally, he’s always struggled with maintaining midline emotions and staying with hitting one shot at a time. His problem has been when he gets down and gets upset with himself.”
Andrews knew he needed help with more than his wedges, the one on-course area that lags the rest in his considerable game. As Drotter said earlier this year, you could put Andrews on a range with PGA Tour pros and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and tour players in the sound of his ball-striking, the ball-flight – all of it. Yes, his ceiling is that high.
Unfortunately, Andrews knew his mental game was that low. One errant drive, one pushed iron shot or clanked wedge and Andrews went into a mental tailspin on the course. His ability to reconcile the inevitable calamities that befall every golfer didn’t exist. Without that ability to stay in the moment and put bad shots behind you, Andrews’ game would never reach its true ceiling.
It took Brian Kane about five minutes to get Andrews out of his mental prison. A former student of Ken Ravizza, the legendary mental coach and CSF Athletic Hall of Fame member, Kane recommended Andrews read Jon Sherman’s “The Four Foundations of Golf.” Given Sherman’s background as a one-time golf prodigy who burned himself out over unreachable expectations, it was like Kane handed Andrews the Holy Grail.
Sherman spent 420 pages and more than 90,000 words addressing four areas: strategy, practice, the mental game and – the key to Andrews’ mental prison – expectation management. Make no mistake; Andrews didn’t read all 420 pages.
“I read about 20 pages, and that’s all I needed. I had the concept down when I realized golf was all about managing expectations,” he said. “It’s all about not getting bent out of shape about things you can’t control. I only got a few pages in, but I got enough out of it to help me.
“The story I remembered the most was he (Sherman) got so angry that he threw his driver and almost decapitated his father. He decapitated his dad’s driver. What I started doing at that point was mentally having the picture that the people I care about were watching me. What would you do if your family was around and you did that? It made me disciplined to the point where I wouldn’t be throwing clubs or cussing.”
Andrews may not be a scratch golfer of a reader, but he’s a Masters champion when it comes to comprehension. He took those lessons and parlayed them into being the Big West Golfer of the Year, the capstone on one of the best seasons in program history.
Andrews went from sitting out the 2022-23 season to winning the Big West Conference title, one he punctuated with a record-tying, opening-round 63 on a La Quinta Country Club course that sees tour players every January in the American Express. He won three tournaments this season and racked up six top-10 finishes in 11 events.
“I knew going into that tournament, I was in that position,” he said about the Big West Championships. “I knew no matter where I was, I was the mentally strongest person out there. In that first round, I’m 8-under (par) through 11 holes. If I had done that in the past, holy hell, get the cameras out. Now, it’s me. This is what I’m capable of at this point of my career. I was grateful at how I played, but I expect this of myself now.
“That was the biggest thing in the turnaround of my mental game and the work I had done behind the scenes with my wedges. And the rest of my game fell into place.”
Andrews may not join any book clubs, but he’s a quick study with a healthy dose of self-awareness. He’s always been one of the best ball-strikers in program history, someone who can split fairways with 330-yard drives, hit pure irons and drain more than his share of putts. It was his wedge game that lagged.
And he knew it. Drotter told the story about an early-morning meeting he had with CSF athletic director Jim Donovan. Drotter arrives at campus around 6:30 a.m. and is greeted with the sight of Andrews at the practice facility, hitting wedges.
He’s still an open book. Two weeks ago, Andrews was in Ohio for sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open. It was the second consecutive year he survived local qualifying and reached the 36-hole sectionals that funnel nonexempt players into the U.S. Open. To get there, Andrews had to survive a seven-player-for-three-spot local qualifier at a brutally difficult and windy La Purisima in Lompoc. He did so by draining a 15-foot putt, then – two holes later – getting up-and-down for par.
So yes, Andrews can handle pressure. But when he was in Ohio, finishing 1-over on the Ohio State Scarlet Course, where 68 players competed for five spots, Andrews started applying some of the wedge game tips he learned from playing a U.S. Open qualifier with tour pro Eric Cole last year. Andrews marveled at the sight of Cole getting upset whenever he hit a wedge outside of 10 feet.
That sight and Andrews’ natural curiosity around the course stayed with him. Like his awareness about his mental game, Andrews talked to whomever he could about the array of shots you can hit with wedges. Every tip he got went to use somewhere during his game-changing season.
And all of it was made possible by what he did with the 15th club in the bag – the one between his ears.
“He recognized it,” Drotter said. “That is nine-tenths of the battle, accepting that you’re mentally weak. Not weak in the sense that he can’t handle pressure, but weak in the sense that he can’t handle his own adversity. The fact he recognized that and attacked it is the biggest reason he’s having success.”
Again, we did mention Andrews’ penchant for self-awareness. He understands so much more about the game – and himself. Perhaps a book is in his future? With his name on it as the author?
“Who am I doing this for? I’m playing this game and grinding over it because I love it,” he said. “If it makes me that frustrated, that’s OK. But to react like I had been isn’t conducive of loving the game. Not being results-driven reminds me of who I am. This game is my job, but it’s not who I am.
“This is what I do, and I’m trying to be really, really good at what I do, but it doesn’t define me. That was a big thing that I realized at the end of the day, and it helps me control the things I can control.”
