We had two themes all week at Grayhawk last year. The first was having a sense of urgency. At regionals, we didn't get out the gate that fast, which you need to do if you're going to win a championship. We reminded the players of that.

The other thing was the mental and emotional piece. The players did a great job of never getting too down on themselves, so if they lost one hole it didn't turn into two or three holes. You're going to have a bad shot, you're going to have a bad hole, but you need to take a minute to get over it. Don't let that mistake become two or three or four mistakes. I really think that piece was the reason why they won. We play a hard sport and you just don't win very much, especially as an individual. You need to have that confidence inside yourself because if you don't, you're just not going to last. It's a grind.

We needed to make sure that our players know what their weapons are

If you don't have confidence or you don't feel good about yourself, it does something to you. So, I just started brainstorming. We needed to make sure that our players know what their weapons are or what their superpowers are.
What we do well as a staff is we all have areas that we're really good at and we all stay in our lanes. We communicate about what's going on and after a tournament Coach Lewellen will come and say, 'OK Ryan, tell me about our team'. I look into what I see in the data and we talk about what we saw in person and we formulate a plan and go execute that.

In our meetings with the players, I'll tell them what they need to work on. But then I make sure to tell them at the end what they do well. Just because you're good at something doesn’t mean you're always going to always be good at it, so it’s important to maintain a focus on it.

Ahead of going to the 2023 NCAA DI National Championships, there were a couple of things that we worked on specifically that showed up in Clippd in their What To Work On breakdown for Grayhawk.

Leading up to the tournament we had talked about the fact the fairways at Grayhawk are tight and the rough is high. You have to have your speed dialled in on the greens. Speed definitely was something that hurt us in 2022. 

In the bespoke analysis Clippd did for us before the championships, around the green shots from the rough came up as a priority in What To Work On. We practised a lot on that in between regionals and nationals and it really helped.

We also went to Mountain Top Golf Club, so we were able to work on gauging how far our golf balls fly in a different place, at higher elevation. We got to work on the rough there as well, so that was really important.

Rachel Kuehn(pictured below)won all her matches at Grayhawk. She is a superstar in the making. Just knowing that Rachel's out there with you, knowing she can be good for a 68 or at times a 64, is really comforting to everybody else. She's a great putter, she's always in it, and she's a great competitor.

Rachel Kuehn won all her matches at Grayhawk. She is a superstar in the making

For Rachel, Clippd identified some things in her game that she needed to know. It showed her she is long off the tee. It showed her short game was good enough and she’s an elite putter but what she needed to work on was her approach play. You may have misconceptions about who you are as a player, good or bad, so you need to know that kind of stuff. 

Part of the reason why she thought she was a bad chipper is because she spends a lot of time chipping with her boyfriend Alex Fitzpatrick and he's probably got the best short game I've ever seen! Knowing that she was a better chipper than she gave herself credit for was really important to her confidence.

Lauren Walsh had been a really good player for us as a freshman. She was an All-American and on a team that had won a bunch of times. But she started to really struggle with her ball striking. Her putting was okay, but it wasn't great. 

When we showed her Clippd for the first time, she was really excited about the opportunity. In the summer of 2022, I put all of her data in from the spring. Coupled with how we played at Grayhawk, we could then have a conversation.

We looked into the data and Clippd showed it was her putting that was really making a big difference. I reached out to Clippd and said, ‘I'm not disagreeing with you guys but I just don't see this'.

We got on a call and went through everything. They said, 'Look, ball striking is important but here's the deal: if you miss an eight footer that counts as a shot. You can hit a bad iron shot and still get up and down. It's not hurting you in a Strokes Gained perspective, but putting is.’

So, we came up with a plan to address what was inhibiting Lauren from playing good golf. To her credit, she worked really, really hard over that summer. Her ball striking got significantly better and that really helped, but her putting got significantly better. At the end of the year I was like, 'Yeah, that all makes sense'. 

Lauren was leading [the individual stroke play tournament] after two rounds and then shot 79 because she made an 11 on the 4th hole in round three. She hit it in the front bunker and left it in there a number of times.

She was completely in control and brimming with confidence because she knew that her long game was in a good spot and she was holing putts. What’s most impressive, though, is she was seven over after four holes on the third day and she shot seven over. It tells you something about her as a player and a person.

On the last day, she came to 16 and I was on the tee. She had worked her way back into contention to where she was three down with three to go. It was really impressive. 

It almost felt like it was destiny for us to win because Lauren hadn't won an individual event in college. She'd been second a number of times and I was really hoping that would happen for her. I think that if you asked her right now, she's fine with how everything played out.

Everyone on that team has their own story. Mimi Rhodeswas probably in that category with Lauren because of how far she came that season. She started working harder, she started working smarter and she got the reward. She was All-ACC last year; all five of our players were All-ACC, which was cool. 

We used Clippd with Mimi to identify the best areas for her to spend her practice time on. It showed us that she needed to chip it closer and capitalise on the birdie opportunities that she has when she hits so many greens. 

Mimi is a range rat. We know that's where she loves to spend her time. I think it hit home for her that if you want to play professionally, and she wants to do that, you need to spend your time a little differently.

To her credit, she did. She started with putting and she stuck to a routine. Then she started coming to us, asking. 'What do I need to do now for my performance?' You've got to buy into the process and then you've got to do it and then you've got to get the reward. 

Mimi was very steady for us all week. She probably would have won all three of her matches and that was while she was battling heat exhaustion. She went to the hospital on Sunday night and had to get an IV. I was just really happy that she got the reward.

Carolina Chacarra and Jennifer Kupcho are the two best drivers of the golf ball I've ever coached

Carolina Chacarra is a great talent and a hard worker. You don't get to where she is without being a grinder and we're very fortunate to have her on our team. She's very coachable and just one of the kindest individuals I've ever met. 

She's an elite ball striker, too. Carolina and Jennifer Kupcho are the two best drivers of the golf ball I've ever coached. When you start like that and you're in the fairway and you're out there pretty long, if you're a good iron player, which she is, it makes things really easy. She also came a long way with her chipping.

The main thing with Carolina was her putting. She viewed herself as a below average putter and what we really worked on with her is her perception of herself and the idea that she can improve. She worked on her stroke a lot. 

What Clippd told us was she hit it inside 15 feet a lot and she needed to start making those birdie putts if she wanted to shoot 68. We did a lot of training on that and she got to where she was making four, five, six out of 10 from 8-15 feet.

In the matchplay at Grsyhawk, we put Emilia Migliaccio out first every day

Emilia Migliaccio was older and mote experienced and she's obviously been really successful along the way. She'd seen it all. In the matchplay stages at Grayhawk, we put her out first every day. In all of her match play experience at the NCAA she was five and one. 

We did this because it gave her confidence, but also it gave the team confidence. They felt like Emilia was going to win a point. She was a really strong player for us, but also a really strong person for us. 

Emilia has always been a really good ball striker. The biggest thing for her was she spent a lot of time on her putting and she really improved. I think what Clippd did for her is she could see her Player Quality score. When her Player Quality for putting was high, she played well because she capitalised on her iron play. 

I think she realised she had to put herself in situations in practice where she had to make a four footer or had to make a 12 footer to complete a drill and walk away. That really translates to match play.

On hole 14 of the championship match, we had two players who were significantly up in their matches and two who were down. It was looking like Emilia needed to win her match. She was only one up and as a coach, you don't feel secure with one-up matches, but then she went and holed a 14 footer. That just made me feel so happy as a coach because it's like, 'Man, she's just been working on that all spring!'

You have to have a good team and be peaking at the right time. Then you need perseverance and work through things. Everyone on our team knew we were a good team and we were getting ready for Grayhawk. It's really easy to say in September and believe it but then you get there and there are 30 good teams that have all had good seasons. 

You always want your players to be moving upwards. If you have that information and the data in front of you, and as long as you put in the work, which our players do, it's going to help you move towards your goals.

Ryan Potter is Associate Head Coach of Wake Forest women’s team. To book a Clippd demo click here