I haven't documented a career/dynasty here since my DDS:PB3 days with the Houston Rockets and Royce Young's anxiety problems. I tried the demo for DDS: Pro Golf last night and loved it...so of course I cracked and grabbed the deluxe edition on sale this weekend. With that said, I'm going to start my career and try to document how it all plays out.

Starting out my career as a 22-year old Aussie on the Web.com Tour as I want to earn my way to the PGA Tour as my career takes off. I started out with the difficulty set to hard and I imported all of the real life mods: golfers, courses, tournaments, etc.



With putting being such a crucial part of the game and can save you so many strokes, I decided to put the largest investment into that from the jump. If I can win on the greens it should give me a chance to climb the standings slowly but surely. The next three skills I focused on were woods, long irons and wedges. I figure with power not being one of my main concerns, accuracy with the longer clubs would be important. Hopefully short changing the short irons won't come back to haunt me too much. The rest of the ratings were 40 or below. Was this a smart move? Probably not but it's something I was willing to skimp out on. In hindsight, I probably should have focused more on consistency but I guess that will come in time.



With $70k in cash on hand, we needed to get some equipment to play with. The way I figured was if I didn't have the skills to pay the bills I was going to need some top end clubs to help my game as much as possible. I spared no expense and decided to roll with Ping clubs. They are rated as excellent quality but cost me a pretty penny: $2,500. Hopefully the return on investment will be ten fold!

For golf balls, I need all the help I can get to keep it on the fairway, but I didn't want to sink too much money into them (considering I'll be losing quite a few I would imagine). I settled on playing the Pinnacle ball, a high quality golf ball that ran me $440. Solid starting equipment to hopefully give me an upper hand on the course.

They won't let you play on the professional tour without a caddy. Go figure! If it were up to me, I would go out there and play on my own. I mean I made it here on my own merits anyways, right? Regardless, I'm a newly-minted "professional" golfer without a ton of funds. With that in mind, I tagged Cooper Henry as my caddy for now. He's not that expensive and with that comes with below-average ratings when it comes to strategy and reading the greens.



I set my training budget for $7,000 per session. I'm going to need a ton of help developing my game but can't splurge for much more than that. Hopefully this can get me started in terms of development.

October 10, 2018 – It’s my first day on the tour as a professional golfer. I’ve got my tour card and I’m ready to go…but now what? Our first tournament for the Web.com Tour isn’t until January 12, 2019 so I’ve got exactly three months to work on my game.

The main focus is going to be playing as many practice rounds as possible. What better way to work on your craft than getting on the course and just practicing, right? We will mix in a few training sessions where I see fit but damn those things can be expensive! Let’s just hope they pay out in the long run.

After 13 weeks of preparing for the first tournament of the season I was able to get in 59 practice rounds as well as six training sessions (to go along with 26 rest days to keep the fatigue down). The practice rounds that give me a chance to improve my game…didn’t. My ratings are exactly the same as they were 13 weeks ago. Golf’s a funny sport, huh?

The six training sessions ran me $42k and netted me two measly stars: one platinum and one copper. I’m almost positive the platinum star is a gift for completing your first training session but I’ll take them however I can get them! Theses stars can be used to upgrade my current skills or exchanged for some cash and/or a star of a lower level. For now, I’ll hold on to them to see what would be best for me to do with them when the time comes.

Thursday, January 12, 2019 - I step up to the tee for my first ever professional event here in Wolverine, MI. I’m playing with a couple of other nobodies in Grant Hart and Alexis Kennedy. A beautiful par 5 that runs you about 484 yards from the blue tees to the hole that’s fairly wide open down the fairway, I need to make a decision: do I just take my normal swing, do I go up and over swing and try to crush it or play it super safe with an easy swing and try my best to keep it within sight. I know I’m not a favorite to win this event and I would love to make a name for myself, so I’m looking to absolutely throttle this ball. Maybe if I have the ball disintegrate from hitting it so hard Pinnacle will hit me with a multi-million dollar endorsement deal for their new line of golf balls coming out.

I’m gripping the ever-living hell out of the driver, my legs are a little shaky but I pull back, twist at the hips and rip through the ball and…right down the middle! Damn did that feel good! The official distance: 247 yards from the tee. And with that, my career is off! After a couple iron shots, I was just a few yards off the green. I pulled out the sand wedge, flopped it within 10 feet of the cup and was staring down a par putt. Unfortunately I left it just long as I misread the break and had to settle for a bogey.

The first, of hopefully many, professional holes in my golf career was over and done with…

My first round is in the books and while I lost to both my opponents in the threesome by a total of 14 strokes I actually think I played better than I expected. I grabbed the first birdie of my career on the par-3 5th hole in which I left it just three feet from the hole off the tee. While the putter let me down a couple times - three putts are the devil! - I did have a highlight putt on the par-4 10th hole as I knocked down a 48-footer for yet another birdie. On the day, I finished with two birdies, five pars and 11 bogies. No doubles so that's a positive!

The second round I was playing much more aggressive considering I was sitting in dead last of the standings. I wanted to test a few things out with my game and while some things worked, others blew up in my face. This round I had zero birdies, five pars, 11 bogies and two double-bogeys as I shot an abysmal +15 to finish the first two rounds +24. This was an ugly score car to turn in for sure but hopefully things can only get better, right?

Both golfers I played with - Grant Hart and Alexis Kennedy - finished the weekend 15-under par and took home $11,160 for their performance's. The winner was Wyatt Thompson who edged out fellow American Jacob Murray by one stroke as his -22 was enough to take home the win and $108,000 of the purse. Looks like I've got a LOT of work to put in before I'm threatening to make the cut.

My first round of the tournament started out pretty well as I was only one over after the first seven holes! That's a pretty sweet improvement if you ask me! Unfortunately, my round took a turn for the worst starting on the 8th hole. I would bogey both eight and nine but the real blowup came on the 10th hole. I put my drive deep into the woods and instead of letting me taking a one stroke penalty I had to play it where it lied. After needing FOUR shots to punch it out of the woods I finished that hole at +5 alone! Ugh, so damn frustrating. I started to right the ship as after the blowup I kept my composure and finished with par on six of the next seven holes going into 10. Unfortunately, I put my long iron shot into the water as I caught the end of my club en route to a double bogey. I finished the round shooting an 82 which is +11 for the Wolverine Golf Club. Not the start I was looking for...



You want to talk about a stellar round? Feast your eyes on that score card! In the second round I played par golf through 17 holes - connecting on one birdie and canceling it out with one bogey - before I found myself staring down that 18th hole again. With visions of yesterday in my head, I had a decent drive that found its way just off the fairway down the left edge. I took out my 8-iron with my sights set on splitting the bunkers and plopping this down on the green for a chance at my first professional round under par. But then I was fixated on the water hazard in front of me and put it in the same exact spot as yesterday, needing to drop it just on the other side of the hazard! I finished the hole with a seven and the round with a 74, good for a +3. Hey, I can't complain because that's six strokes better than my previous best round of +9!

My two-round score of +14 wasn't good enough for the cut [obviously]. The winner was American Noah Thomas who finished three shots ahead of Dennis Blom with a -31. He walked away with $108,000 for his work this weekend. With yet another tournament under my belt, I feel as if I've made some strides in the right direction but maybe it's time to cash in those XP stars....

January 23, 2019 – So after two tournaments I know I’ve got to make a change somehow and there’s two ways of doing that: using my XP stars and by training. With that said, we got cracking on making those changes.

The first thing we looked at were the two XP stars I had available. I had one copper (lowest tier) and one platinum (highest tier). The way the upgrade system works I couldn’t actually use any of them on my current skills so I ended up having to exchange them. The copper star netted me $1,000 while the platinum star I had two options. I could exchange it for cash only – good for $50,000! – or for one gold star and $20,000 in cash. Since the gold star is something I wouldn’t have been able to use either, I decided to take the cash and run. Total net earnings from my two XP stars: $51,000.

Armed with some extra cash – that upped my cash on hand to $70,720 - I needed to find the most efficient way to utilize it. My original training budget was $7,000 per session. With that seemingly being a mistake and costing me so much money with little results to come of it, I decided to drop the budget to $2,000 per budget. That means I could get in many more training sessions over the next few weeks in hopes to improving my game slowly but surely.

Let’s see how this plays out…