English Major Golfer

Building on the strong foundation laid in 2025—a year defined by playing healthy, making more birdies, and markedly improving the short game—the roadmap for 2026 is clear, challenging, and focused on elevation. My ultimate goal remains qualifying for the US Senior Amateur Open in 2028, and these three main objectives are the next crucial steps on that journey:

• Get Stronger: The Engine for Distance
• Promotion to Golfweek Amateur Tour’s Champ Flight (0.0-3.9 Index)
• Break Par

Get Stronger: Tee Distance and Consistency

The progress of 2025 was centered on “playing healthy”; this year, the emphasis shifts to “get stronger.” This is the empirical goal that underpins everything else. My Driver swing speed typically hovered around 105-107 mph last year. With the introduction of the new PXG Black Ops and Tour AD 50 g S shaft, I’m already seeing speeds closer to 110 mph and ball speeds exceeding 160 mph. 

My distance off the tee with my new driver has jumped my @Arccos distance from 269 yds to 280 yds. While my ego would love to chase distances, the goal of increasing speed is more focused on consistency and finding the fairway – I would be quite happy with an average distance that hovers around 285/290.

The addition of the Whoop fitness tracker and its AI coach is the new lever in this part of the journey, already showing results by guiding me to increase the weights in my workouts. This is a commitment not just to strength, but to building the better swing speeds necessary to truly attack golf courses and make the Champ Flight Promotion goal a reality.

Champ Flight Promotion: Tightening the Screws

This goal is a continuation of the commitment to elite-level consistency, requiring significant improvement in the two core areas:

• Better Off the Tee: Last year’s stats (-1.4 SG and -1.3 SG penalties over 50 rounds) clearly point out the largest area for gaining strokes. The new Driver and 3W are key pieces of equipment—a commitment to technology to aid consistency and distance. Reducing penalties and finding more fairways will unlock everything else.
• Improve Approach Shots: My 2025 results show I was already close to a 3 HCI player, but “close” is not enough to break through. I finished 2025 with 8.5 GIRs per round, and my All Approaches Distance was 52 feet. The gap to elite performance is small: increasing GIRs by just 0.1 and cutting the average All Approaches Distance down by just 3 feet will transform my opportunity set. This is about committing to hitting that 9-foot proximity goal more often to nearly guarantee a 50% chance at birdie, building on the success of my 2025 putting improvements.

Break Par!

There were rounds in 2025 where the “idea” of breaking par – whether in a tournament or practice round – seemed like a fantasy. As my mental game continued to improve and carding two 74s and one 73 (in tournament), the realization that a sub-72 round was within reach, sunk in. This is the ultimate, non-negotiable benchmark for 2026.

Achieving this will be the direct result of succeeding in the first two goals: it requires getting off the tee more consistently (mainly reducing those penalties), tightening my approach shots to give myself better looks, and continuing the excellent progress in putting (which averaged 1.6 birdies per round in 2025 tournament play).

The building blocks are in place. Now, it’s about the focus and mental fortitude to execute them consistently. Just as 2025 transformed me from an “angry-rage golfer” to one “in command (most of the time) of his swing AND emotions,” 2026 will be the year to prove that the progress from a low-5 to a 1 or 0 HI is not only reasonable, but likely.