Snook qualifies for Porter Cup
Three weeks after qualifying for the Porter Cup, Jonathon Snook still can’t wipe the smile off his face.
“I have a lot of friends who are asking me to hang out and do stuff and I have been telling them that this is my main focus for two or three weeks,” the 25-year-old Niagara-on-the-Lake native said. “This is the most important seven days of my life to this point.”
The former Brock University golfer has been on Cloud Nine since qualifying for the event June 24 by shooting a two under par 68 at the Niagara Falls Country Club in Lewiston, N.Y.
“There were a ton of great players trying to qualify and it was crazy after I qualified,” he said. “It was the 36 happiest hours of my life.
“I’m even looking forward to the practice rounds and getting to play with some highly ranked players.”
The Toronto resident was on the fence about even trying to qualify for the event. He registered on a Tuesday, played a practice round Wednesday and then qualified for the tournament the following Monday.
“It was really cool.”
Cool and something he has wanted to do for a long time.
“The course is five kilometres from my house — right across the river — and I have driven past it probably a 100 times,” he said. “I’ve looked at it and thought to myself that I want to play it one day. And obviously I know about the Porter Cup and how big of a deal it is.”
Snook played his practice round with his friend Peter Leone and Leone filled him in on all the tricks to playing the course.
“He had a lot of good knowledge that he passed along my way and without him, I couldn’t have done it.”
Snook shot 35 on the front nine and 33 on the back and his two under par 68 tied him for second in the qualifier with Thomas Code. Minwoo Park won the event with a 67.
“I just played pretty steady and pretty solid the whole day and I only made two bogeys,” Snook said. “I was two under par after 13 holes and it was the most nervous I had ever been on a golf course. It got a little hairy coming in because I bogeyed the 15th hole which is the easiest hole on the course.
Following two pars, he birdied the final hole by sinking a six-foot downhill putt.
“It’s such an awesome golf course and an absolute pleasure to play out there,” Snook said. “A lot of people have scar tissue on some of the holes but I didn’t have anything like that. The whole course sets up really nice for me.”
He hasn’t set a goal for the tournament because he is trying to focus more on the process rather than the results.
“That was the coolest thing about the qualifier,” he said. “I was really good at just hitting one shot at a time and not thinking about where I was. After I got to two under par after 13, I knew I was playing well and I started to get nervous. But the least nervous I was was when I was hitting every shot.”
Snook has always battled with getting ahead of himself on the golf course and forgetting there was still plenty of work to be done.
“When I was a junior, I would birdie one of my first two or three holes and then I would start planning on what I would say in my interview afterwards,” he said. “Then I would make a quad and think that I had probably got ahead of myself a little bit.”
“I still make a ton of mistakes and everything but I am trying to be a lot stronger mentally this year.”
He is a much different golfer than when he used to tee it up representing Brock.
“I have been playing a lot better this year and I have been basically starting from scratch. I totally broke down my swing and I started over with the fundamentals: set up, grip and posture,” he said. “Because I was focusing on fundamentals, it actually went fairly smooth.”
Once he was done Brock, he figured it was the perfect time to revamp his game.
“There wasn’t the pressure to do well because I figured if I did this, it could get a lot worse before it got better.”
He worked with a golf teacher in Georgia named Chip Chambers and he’s hoping all his off-season work will help him at the Porter Cup.
“I definitely just want to play solid and it is going to be a big learning experience for me. I’ve never played in an event on this stage, but I feel really good about my game.”
He missed the cut at last week’s Ontario amateur but he now uses his bad tournaments as a learning tool to get better.
“Every time I play badly, I reflect and learn a whole bunch of stuff and I keep coming out better.”
The Glendale Golf and Country Club member no longer blames other things for his poor play.
“That’s been a big difference for me,” he said. “Before, I would kind of lie to myself if I had a bad round and I wouldn’t own it. One of my goals this year was to be honest with myself for everything and to try and learn something from every single event that I play.”
Other locals who tried to qualify for the Porter Cup were: Jake Dupuis, tied for 11th with a 71; Luke DelGobbo, Mitchell Molen and Hayden Molon, tied for 21st with 73s; Nolan Vonkalckreuth, tied for 34th with a 74; Nolan Piazza, Logan Lammerant and R.J. Derhodge, tied for 41st with 75s; Ethan Bennett, tied for 61st with a 77; Peter Leone, tied for 81st with an 80; and, Ben MacLean, tied for 90th with an 83;
The tournament starts Wednesday, July 24 at the Niagara Falls Country Club and concludes with the final round on Saturday, July 27. The last local to play in it was former Welland resident Hanish Nagrani, who tied for 58th in 2017. Among the events past champions are David Duval and Phil Mickelson. Tiger Woods competed in the tournament in 1994.
