English Golfer Greg Eason Displays Immense Resilience

Post by Sports Writer Derek Clements

WE ALL know how frustrating golf can be. Spare a thought then for Greg Eason, the 24-year-old Englishman missed the cut in his first Web.com Tour start of the year after rounds of 91 and 95. As if that were not bad enough, he opened with a 90 in the first round of the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic, a round of golf that was capped by a nightmarish 15 on his final hole.

“I had no chance, to be honest,” he said. “It was petrifying to stand on the tee and not know where it’s going.” After a week of practice at home in Orlando with his swing coach Bryce Wallor, Eason had arrived in the Bahamas looking for an improvement in his form. Things couldn't get much worse, after all.

But they did. Eason was eight over for the day when he came to the 18^th, a 572-yard par five that had been one of the easiest holes on the coursefor his fellow competitors.  Eason hit five drives, none of them good. He found his third provisional, which was unfortunate. From the hazard he took a few hacks, and a few more drops, and his score piled up. Live scoring has been unreliable, so initially there was some doubt as to his score on the hole. But then it was confirmed: Two weeks after losing a mind-boggling 32 golf balls in two days, Eason had run up a 15.

“An absolute nightmare,” he said. “I can’t even remember making a 10 before.”

It's just a game. ??

Remember @GregEasonGolf the next time you make a big number.

Don't take golf too seriously. pic.twitter.com/2VdqG5U0N6

— Web.com Tour (@WebDotComTour) January 27, 2017

It would have been all too easy, but the thought never entered Eason's mind. He headed to the range with fellow competitor Rhein Gibson, who noticed that Eason's downswing was far too steep. He made the fix and was soon hitting the ball as well as he ever had - and that was pretty good. We are talking about somebody who was ranked the third-best amateur in the world before turning professional in 2014. He was also a pretty useful footballer, having had trials with Leicester City.

Eason went out the next day and, lo and behold, shot an immaculate, bogey-free 68, silencing the trolls on Twitter. “To be honest, I thought the criticism was a little unfair,” he said. “I played three rounds of bad golf on some pretty tough courses in bad conditions. It’s amazing how small people will make you feel for shooting a couple of scores in the 90s. Like, you really feel belittled. And so it’s a whole other challenge of getting yourself out of that hole that you’re in.

“I tried as hard in that round as any round I’ve played. I really wanted to prove to everybody jumping on the bandwagon that I’m absolutely fine.”

Eason returns to action on the Web.com Tour in Colombia this week, and he has high hopes. “That round really has changed my mindset,” he said. “This was a massive step in the right direction, to be able to cure and get over something that was personal and a deep-rooted problem. It’s just enlightening to me that you can get through adversity on the golf course. Now, I feel fantastic. I feel like I could take on the world at the minute.”