Guest columnist — Ryan Keeney: Preparing mentally is key to good start

Tuesday, May 27, 2003 | 10:03 a.m.

Ryan Keeney is a freshman on the UNLV golf team and is writing a guest golf column exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun. He will be part of the Rebels' five-man lineup in the opening round of the NCAA Golf Championship today in Stillwater, Okla.

We got in on Friday and that took a much longer process than we were hoping. We were getting used to flying private jets and we flew commercial, so we were all up at 5 a.m. and got here sometime around 5 or 6 p.m. That really showed us how important it is to fly private jet -- we would have been here at 9 a.m.

Once we got here, it was a low-key night. We went out to dinner and we went to see a movie and just kind of got used to knowing that we have a big week ahead.

The next day we slept in and got some good rest. We were kind of disappointed to be going way out to Tulsa to play a practice round. We drove about an hour out to the course that Coach Knight had a connection with. As much as we were unsure how that day was going to go, we were pretty happy. The course we played awesome and the pro there was really cool. That was a good day of practice, a real tough golf course.

Sunday morning, we were all anticipating seeing the NCAA course. Nobody heard one bad thing about it. A couple of guys had seen it, but no one had played the course. I think we were all really impressed.

We had kind of a low-key practice round. We were trying to enjoy ourselves more than be real focused. We just wanted to see the course and not spend too much mental energy, so we had a good day.

We kind of started getting down to business that night. We had a couple of different meetings and the second one lasted over an hour. We just wanted to mentally prepare for how tough it's going to be this week. It's going to be tough situations out on the course, whether it's wind or the golf course. There are a lot of things to block out and we're trying to get used to that.

We came out to the course Monday morning with a whole different perspective than we did on Sunday. We wanted to be real focused and really understand what it is we're trying to accomplish on the golf course.

(Monday) was an awesome day. As far as Sunday, I don't know if we just weren't really sure where to hit it off the tee or what, but we were hitting balls all over the place. Monday, we hit the ball really good, real solid. We didn't lose any balls. We hit 12 or 13 out of 14 fairways. We're really confident going into (today), but we still know what the course can do to you if you're offline.

I think we're prepared for both. We're prepared to play well and not be shocked by the course. Our teammate Ryan Moore was saying you need to respect the course -- but not too much. You need to know that it's difficult, but not be scared by it.

I think we're at that level right now. We're not scared by it at all, but we do have respect for certain shots and we are going to pick the safe shot quite a bit. Ryan Keeney is a freshman on the UNLV golf team and is writing a guest golf exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun. He will be part of the Rebels' five-man lineup in the opening round of the NCAA Golf Championship today in Stillwater, Okla.