VICTORY SETS A NEW COURSE
Adam Hadwin tries to stay calm
As they cancelled flights and hotel reservations on Sunday night, there was an air of disappointment for the young couple.
Sure, they’d talked about the possibility this could happen, that the stars would align and things would change. But it’s one thing to deal with what-ifs. It’s another to deal with reality, and they’d invested so much in this dream: the wedding, honeymooning in the French Polynesians.
“I felt it, too,” Adam Hadwin said Monday, the morning after his life changed. “(Fiancée Jessica Kippenberger) said she believed in me, that I could get it done, but what were the chances, especially before the wedding?
“We’ll have to reschedule and it will be great no matter where we go. But we were really looking forward to this.”
As it happens, they still have some things to look forward to. They’re just a little different than what they had planned.
Hadwin is trying to sort out a lot of things these days. There are manageable things like cancelling hotel reservations, and there are big existential things — like what happens to his career and his life following his PGA Tour win on Sunday at the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Fla.
The easy part? On this morning, Hadwin is driving to Orlando, Fla., for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, where he’ll tee it up on Thursday. The harder part? He’s still not sure — he just knows it’s coming.
“I’m still trying to get a grip on what went on,” the 29-year-old from Abbotsford, B.C., said. “I’m in a bit of a fog.
“I want to go out and contend again, but there’s so much other stuff going on. I don’t know if I should get back in my tournament bubble or get out of it. I’m still not sure what’s best right now.”
But he’ll probably find the answer when he gets out to the course, out where everything he’s worked for still exists.
Hadwin, as you might be aware, brought all this on himself with his first win of his PGA career, which opened a new world of opportunities and wealth. Now, instead of Tahiti for his honeymoon, he’s headed to Augusta National for the Masters. Now he has an entry to the Players Championship and the PGA Championship. Now he sits fourth in the FedEx Cup standings and seventh on the PGA money list.
It’s heady stuff for someone who’s toiled on six different tours, but while there will be distractions and temptations, the best part about all this is Hadwin believes he’s ready to handle it, that everything he’s experienced in his nine years as a touring pro has prepared him for this moment.
On Sunday night, he sent the following text to his swing coach, Ralph Bauer: “Now the hard work really begins.”
And if there’s one thing Hadwin knows for certain about this uncertain game, it’s the value of work.
“This win changes nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t allow me to relax. I go out every day and I work at the things that make me a better player.
“That’s the great thing about our game. We don’t stop. We keep going. I want to be at that same position this week. The win’s great. We’ll go out and celebrate, relish the moment. Then it’s back to work.”
In Palm Harbor, Hadwin played brilliant, error-free golf for 70 holes to put himself in position to win, then had to call on the reserves of resilience and mental toughness he’d built over the previous nine years when things went horribly wrong.
Holding a two-shot lead with three holes to play, Hadwin plunked his tee ball in the water on the 16th hole at Copperhead on his way to a double-bogey 6. With his lead gone and the dream not far behind, he regrouped with a nerveless par on 17, then fashioned a resourceful par on 18 while Patrick Cantlay, who had stalked Hadwin throughout the final round, stumbled to a bogey.
All week Hadwin had said it didn’t matter how he got there — all he wanted was a chance to win the tournament walking up 18. On Sunday, he got his wish and so much more.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Hadwin said of his mindset after his gaffe. “It was either flight or fight at that point.
“It happened at a completely inopportune time, but I had to stay in it. I never gave up the lead and that’s where my focus was. I just didn’t want to hand (Cantlay) the tournament.”
Instead, it was Cantlay who blinked as Hadwin made a clinical up-and-down on the 18th green with a creative, slightly unorthodox bellied wedge from the fringe to within two feet.
“It’s not a shot you practise often,” Hadwin said. “You just let instincts take over at that point. I had to come up with a good shot. It was simple as that.”
Now he has to find the simplicity in the next challenge. Going back to the 2011 Canadian Open at Shaughnessy where he contended as a Canadian tour player, Hadwin always had the talent and charisma, and now his ballstriking has finally caught up to his world-class putting stroke.
But his rise is also about something that transcends the technical and veers toward the spiritual.
“I just feel like I’ve matured so much over the last little bit,” he said. “I’m not affected by missed shots and missed opportunities.
“It’s a little bit of everything. It’s growing up. It’s being out (on the PGA Tour) a couple of years. It’s being close (to winning). It’s having Jessica there. Life’s good. I’m just in a really good place right now.”
And if he remembers everything that brought him to that place, it will get even better.