The Tarheel Tour Interview With David Sanchez

David Sanchez currently plays on the Nationwide Tour as well as the Tarheel Tour. He won the Tarheel Tour money title in 2005 before earning his Nationwide Tour card in 2006 by successfully playing his way through all three stages of PGA Tour qualifying school. The North Carolina State alumnus made two of the first three cuts on the Nationwide Tour in 2007, including a top-10 finish at the Henrico County Open. Since then Sanchez has struggled as many first year players do on the Nationwide Tour. After returning to the Tarheel Tour to play the Northstone Open, he spoke with us about life on the Nationwide Tour.

You have struggled on the Nationwide Tour for most of this season but in your return to the Tarheel Tour at the Northstone Open you posted a 19-under par total with rounds of 66-66-65 and finished second. What changes have you made that have allowed you to begin playing solid golf again?

David Sanchez: Not many physical changes. I was probably the most comfortable that I have been in a tournament this whole year and I don't know why. Just to come back out to a familiar golf course with familiar people and all of sudden, it just kind of started working again. So that is the best reason that I can give you.

I wonder how much the feeling of pressure comes into play there. You have now played all three stages of Q school, regularly on the Nationwide tour, and won on the Tarheel Tour. How does the pressure differ in each of these instances?

D.S.: Actually, to be honest; it is pretty much the same, because I was probably just about as nervous on the first day at Northstone as I was at any other Nationwide event or at Q school. For me, it doesn't really vary too much. I was really, really psyched to be playing. It doesn't vary for me, the stage might be a little different and the environment, but the pressure itself is about the same.

You got off to a pretty good start this year on the Nationwide Tour. You made two of your first three cuts, you finished in the top 10 at the Henrico County Open but after that top 10, you tailed off, you missed 11 straight cuts. What do you think happened?

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D.S.: I don't really know. I can't put my finger on one thing. I know as soon as I played a good tournament, the next week, my expectation level rose a few notches. I didn't really play that poorly. My putter wasn't really cooperating for the next couple of events and then I started hitting it poorly and then I started losing confidence and then I started maybe working on the wrong things. It was kind of a domino effect.

One or two bad weeks in a row is one thing, but when you keep going and keep going, all of a sudden, you feel like you are just in a hole and even when you are in an event and you are playing well, in the back of your mind, you are kind of waiting for something bad to happen. And when you are expecting it to happen, it is going to happen sooner or later. Then you turn what should be a decent event into another missed cut. That is basically how it has worked this year.

If you had the ability to go back to the beginning of the season, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself to play better out there this year?

D.S.: The main thing is, I would not have tried to reinvent my golf game over the winter and earlier this year. In the off-season, I like to address the areas where I feel I am weaker, and I think I took on too much. By the time the season started, the changes that I wanted to integrate, weren't really clicking and I kind of kept working on them and kept working on them and it took all the way until the middle of the summer, until I sat down with some friends of mine and people I trust. And they were saying, look, you were good enough to get here; you don't have to totally reinvent yourself. What you've got is good enough. So I stopped working on stuff so much and just started playing again.

What were you working on? You have always been known on the Tarheel Tour as a great ball striker. What did you focus on over the winter?

D.S.: It was mostly a full swing thing. There were just a few areas controlling my ball flight, controlling which direction to shape it. Mainly, the biggest thing I thought I was weak with was playing out of a lot of rough and I figured that the Nationwide Tour probably would have a lot of events with some pretty high rough. I have never been a really good player out of deep rough, so I tried to change my angle of attacking the ball and getting on it a little steeper. By doing that, I just got into a lot of bad habits, which had an adverse effect on everything. From driver, all the way through to my wedges, you know, everything just kind of suffered from there.

What would you say are the major differences in a Nationwide Tour course set up compared to what you were used to on the Tarheel Tour? Is it just the rough or are there other differences?

D.S.: Out of the tournaments I have played, we probably had maybe two weeks where we had a lot of rough. So I wouldn't have really worked on those things.The set ups are not overly difficult. I think the Tarheel Tour events are set up more difficult than the Nationwide events. Nationwide bumps tees up on some long par fours if they are going to be into the wind that day and they give you a lot of pin placements that are really easy to get to. They are not so easy to putt to, but they are easy to get to. On the Tarheel Tour, you go from hard pins one day to harder pins the second day, and the last day, the hardest pins, for the most part. So the set ups aren't really that difficult in my opinion.

What do you think the hardest adjustment has been going from the mini tour world to the Nationwide tour?

D.S.: The biggest thing is that every person out there on the Nationwide Tour is good. And that is not to belittle anybody in the Tarheel events or any other mini tour event. But if you start with 144-player field, on the Nationwide tour, every single one of those guys has the ability to win, and on a mini tour, you probably wouldn't find that. You would find maybe half the guys out there have the ability to win and the other half have the ability to have a good event, but maybe not contend. That is just not the case out there. I mean guys have bad weeks everywhere, but the ability is always there on the bigger tours I think.

Now having played against some of these top rising stars on the Nationwide Tour, what are some things that you have seen in their games, that perhaps you feel like you need to incorporate into your game to get to the next level?

D.S.: Ninety percent of what I lack in my opinion, is probably on the mental side. I have played with a lot of guys this year that you can see that they are struggling with their game. Putting, full swing, short game or whatever, you can see that they are kind of struggling, but they still manage to put a score together and make a cut on a week where they just have nothing. And they turn it into a respectable week. That is probably the biggest thing. I get to an event or I did this year, knowing that I wasn't hitting it well and then you are just thinking, oh boy, now I am in trouble. And those guys just find a way to get it into the hole with whatever they have got. Some people do it better than others. I mean Tiger is a pretty good example. He still goes and wins, but doesn't have his best stuff or close. That is a huge difference in my opinion. And they just don't let little things get to them. I mean I was terrible this year about letting little things, bad bounces and stuff that you can't change, get to me a little too much.

Let's change gears a little bit. One aspect of playing the PGA Tour or the Nationwide Tour that the Sunday golfer doesn't understand is the amount of money that it takes to stay out there. Just generally, how much does it cost to play out there every week with expenses and caddy fees? When you are struggling out there and you have missed a few cuts in a row, how does that play on your mind or does it not?

D.S.: Oh it does. It costs, conservatively, about $2000 a week. And that is very conservative. $2500 is very, very easy to do, once you get a caddy and you're flying most weeks, because the schedule doesn't permit you to drive in between and so on. And so yeah, I mean, if you go, let's just say four weeks in a row and miss every cut, you have spent roughly $10,000. Everyone has got an endorsement deal and so on and so forth, but it is not like that is putting money in your pocket every single week. That is just to try and counter it. So that plays a big part in my mind. And the other thing is, Nationwide is a little bit like most mini tours, in the aspect that all the purses are top heavy. So once you finish outside the top ten or so, you are not making all that much money. If you top ten it every week, you are going to make a bunch of money and that is all great, but outside of that, it is not like the PGA tour, where this week for example, you are going to finish in the middle of the pack but you are still going to make six figures. It is pretty easy to make a cut and win, $2500, $2000 bucks out there. And you think you have had an okay week but you just barely broke even.

There has been quite a bit of talk about the FedEx Cup recently and the fact that it is making it more and more difficult for players to move towards everyone's dream, which is of course playing on the PGA Tour. The FedEx Cup playoffs have pushed a lot of players with PGA Tour status into some Nationwide events, taking up spots that could have gone to you and other Nationwide Tour players. What is your opinion of the FedEx Cup playoffs and the reconstructed PGA Tour?

D.S.: It is taking up some spots, especially these last couple of weeks. The biggest area where it has impacted me, is that with my status, and with all the other guys who have conditional status, we kind of have to wait until the week before or the week of, to see if we are going to get in. And a lot of players are, they call it dually committed, so they are committed to the PGA Tour event and the Nationwide Tour event that week and they are waiting to see if they are going to get into the big tour before they take their name out of our tour. So it is really hard to plan anything ahead of time. Conversely, after the Tour Championship on the PGA Tour, it should open up a lot of spots that weren't going to be available for Nationwide guys in the coming weeks. Because all the players that were kind of marginal to get into the PGA Tour fields are probably going to get in, thereby giving our marginal guys, like myself, a chance to get into the Nationwide events.

So what is your plan for the rest of the season, in terms of playing Nationwide events or playing Tarheel Tour events? What are you going to do leading up to Q school?

D.S.: My plan originally was, after my last Nationwide event in West Virginia, not to play any more out there this year and go back and play the Tarheel Tour up until Q school, because my confidence level was zero. So I wanted to go to Q school with maybe at least a two, on a scale of one to ten. So, I am going to play the Tarheel Tour as much as possible, if nothing else, because I enjoy it so much. The only Nationwide event that I might play is a couple of weeks down the road in Idaho. I am a bit iffy on that and the Tarheel is off that week. So I will probably go to that one and that will probably be it, unless something miraculous happens. I will probably stay out on the Tarheel, because I believe if I play leading all the way up until Q school, two or three or four weeks in a row, that it will prepare me well. So that is my plan right now.

Speaking of Q school, you are one of the success stories. You made it through all three stages last year. Theoretically, you didn't make it through the final stage, but you did enough to earn Nationwide Tour status. There are a lot of guys on the Tarheel Tour who have played really good golf for a lot of years and have never made it to the third stage. What advice would you give to those players on how to approach Q school and how to be successful there?

D.S.: The biggest thing for me, is I tried to treat it just like I treat every over tournament and not make it out to be anything bigger than it is. In essence, it is just a golf tournament. You know, it kind of determines what you are going to be doing the whole next year and possibly the rest of your career in some cases. But it is still just a golf tournament and you can't go into it thinking that it is anything bigger than that, because it is just putting a lot of pressure on yourself and there is enough pressure in that thing as it is. It is the most expensive tournament that you will ever enter, just as far as the entry fee goes. So there are a lot of hazards or little nuances to that tournament that you don't have in other ones, but if you can go out and play, if you know where you are going to go first stage, go out and get as familiar as possible with the site. That always helps.

Second stage is a little harder, because you are not always sure where you are going to go. That is the biggest thing. Just try and take it, just for what it is and not put any added pressure on yourself and if you have a backup plan for what you are going to do next year, which always helps, then it is not the be all and end all.

So, I am going to take my own advice this year. I mean, if I don't get my card next year, I am more than happy to come back and play the Tarheel again. I had more fun this week at Northstone, just in that week, playing or results aside, than I have pretty much the whole year on the Nationwide Tour. That is just the kind of tour that the Tarheel Tour is, you know.

Thanks a lot David, it was nice talking to you. We look forward to seeing you on the Tarheel tour this fall.

D.S.: Sounds great, I appreciate it.