Seymour Creek's Bryn Parry Faces Pro Pressures
December 18th, 2010 11:32 AM
Bryn Parry is a name you’d better get use to hearing. As well as being one of Canada’s best professional golfers, he played the Nationwide Tour full-time in 2007. Bryn is one heck of a nice guy who loves teaching almost as much as he loves playing. He is based at the Seymour Creek Golf Center here on the North Shore.
Bryn grew up a junior member of the Pitt Meadows Golf Club. He laughs as he repeats the story of how his dad could tell how well he played by how he shut the door. “If I slammed the door dad would guess that I shot 78… If I didn’t dad would ask if I shot 68.”
Bryn stayed close to home throughout the years. He admits that was a mistake not to go to an American university in the California desert on a golf scholarship. That’s because about the time he started to think about becoming a PGA golfer, Bryn started having doubts about his capabilities. He knew he could play and win locally but when he turned 30, he felt changes would have to be made if he wanted to take his game to the next level.
“To feel like I could compete at a high tour level I had to go through a swing makeover,” he says. “I had to find a different way of routing the club around my body – to get away from playing a spin draw – to where I could hit the ball straight. Maybe not Moe Norman straight but as close as I could get. And considering that I have been playing since I was a kid, to start making changes in my thirties was very difficult.”
But he made those changes and soon he was swinging better than ever. He missed his PGA tour card by only one stroke at the 2006 Q-school and later, while playing the Nationwide Tour, he got into a four-man playoff at the Henrico County Open. He didn’t win but he came away knowing he could compete at this level.
Sadly he then started missing cuts. He’d shoot 67 one day and 77 the next. He was one of the lucky Canadian players to be awarded a spot in the Canadian Open last year but when your luck is running low you can feel like a flat fish on a platter. Bryn got sick. He went from hitting 290-yard drives to “not being able to squeeze toothpaste out of the tube… On the first tee while others were nervous about hitting a bad shot I was hoping not to loose the club on my follow through.” He regained his health but by that time the season was almost over.
Bryn finished 88th on the money list in 2007 and earned conditional status on the Nationwide Tour. Now he has to grapple with the reality of getting only 20 to 23 starts in 2008. He will be away from his family for almost 25 weeks and racking up $50,000 in expenses. This makes earning his way onto the PGA Tour for 2009, or full-time playing status on the Nationwide Tour, a pressure-packed situation. He will need three wins on the Nationwide to get a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour and he’ll probably need at least one win to guarantee himself a PGA Card for 2009. Talk about pressure! But knowing Bryn and his dedication to winning, I am one of the many predicting great things in 2008.
The North Shore's Tom Cattermole is a
freelance golf writer. Cattermole@telus.net
Copyright North Shore Magazine Issue Apr - May 08
Bryn grew up a junior member of the Pitt Meadows Golf Club. He laughs as he repeats the story of how his dad could tell how well he played by how he shut the door. “If I slammed the door dad would guess that I shot 78… If I didn’t dad would ask if I shot 68.”
Bryn stayed close to home throughout the years. He admits that was a mistake not to go to an American university in the California desert on a golf scholarship. That’s because about the time he started to think about becoming a PGA golfer, Bryn started having doubts about his capabilities. He knew he could play and win locally but when he turned 30, he felt changes would have to be made if he wanted to take his game to the next level.
“To feel like I could compete at a high tour level I had to go through a swing makeover,” he says. “I had to find a different way of routing the club around my body – to get away from playing a spin draw – to where I could hit the ball straight. Maybe not Moe Norman straight but as close as I could get. And considering that I have been playing since I was a kid, to start making changes in my thirties was very difficult.”
But he made those changes and soon he was swinging better than ever. He missed his PGA tour card by only one stroke at the 2006 Q-school and later, while playing the Nationwide Tour, he got into a four-man playoff at the Henrico County Open. He didn’t win but he came away knowing he could compete at this level.
Sadly he then started missing cuts. He’d shoot 67 one day and 77 the next. He was one of the lucky Canadian players to be awarded a spot in the Canadian Open last year but when your luck is running low you can feel like a flat fish on a platter. Bryn got sick. He went from hitting 290-yard drives to “not being able to squeeze toothpaste out of the tube… On the first tee while others were nervous about hitting a bad shot I was hoping not to loose the club on my follow through.” He regained his health but by that time the season was almost over.
Bryn finished 88th on the money list in 2007 and earned conditional status on the Nationwide Tour. Now he has to grapple with the reality of getting only 20 to 23 starts in 2008. He will be away from his family for almost 25 weeks and racking up $50,000 in expenses. This makes earning his way onto the PGA Tour for 2009, or full-time playing status on the Nationwide Tour, a pressure-packed situation. He will need three wins on the Nationwide to get a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour and he’ll probably need at least one win to guarantee himself a PGA Card for 2009. Talk about pressure! But knowing Bryn and his dedication to winning, I am one of the many predicting great things in 2008.
The North Shore's Tom Cattermole is a
freelance golf writer. Cattermole@telus.net
Copyright North Shore Magazine Issue Apr - May 08
