Page 50 - Las Vegas Golf & Leisure Fall 2021

GOLF

“The first thing that comes to my mind about the round
is that I have put in a lot of hard work with a sports psy-
chologist, and I have really been working on staying in the
present,” says Hack, who won the Arizona Open a couple
weeks after the 57. “The front nine was my fourth sub-
30, nine-hole round in the last month, but I haven’t really
been able to finish anything off. The other times, I ended
up shooting like a 62 or 63. Obviously, this course is very
scorable and it’s summertime in Vegas, so it plays even
shorter. But still, you have to battle the subconscious and
you have to hole some putts. My goal today on the 10th hole
was to reset my mindset. I said to myself, ‘Hey, let’s restart
the round and let’s see what we can do by restarting the
round.'”
And his move to Vegas was a breath of fresh air. “I pretty
much gave up on golf and kind of disliked myself, but mov-
ing out to Vegas and learning to stay patient has really
helped my game and mindset,” Hack says. “Because I work
at Shadow Creek, I get to play and practice out there, which
is great, plus just getting beat up by all the guys out here and
having a lot of games has been good. That stuff, and getting
the new coaching circle has given me hope. My plan is to
keep playing and I have a bunch of tournaments coming up.”

TAYLOR MONTGOMERY, the son of Shadow Creek gen-
eral manager and former UNLV golfer Monte Montgomery,
experienced several cruel fates in 2020 and 21 as he
attempted to earn his official PGA TOUR card. He finished
26th on the season-long points list before finishing, 26th in
the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. The top 25 in either case would
have earned his card. Adding additional bad luck to his sit-
uation, Montgomery was within the top 25 at what would
have been the end of the 2020 season, but TOUR officials
extended the season to throughout 2021 because of the
Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite such poor luck, Montgomery has kept a sense of
humor about the situation while looking ahead. “Finishing
26th twice has to be some kind of record, right?” Montgomery
says with a chuckle in mid-September when asked about it—
again. “I am trying not to think about it anymore and just
go forward the best I can. After like the first couple of days,
all you think about is, ‘Well, if I did this, if I did that.’ I'd say
anybody inside the top 30 if they did just a few things here
or there or caught a break, they would have qualified. And
they're probably thinking the same thing.”
Taylor Montgomery

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