Play 9 with Desiree Dubreuil
March 4, 2010
Did you grow up playing any other sports? I did. I played club soccer until I was about 14, and I actually didn’t start golf until that age. So soccer was my main sport, and I started when I was about five. Then I played basketball, volleyball and some tennis. Those were my main sports -- I played a little bit of everything. Who introduced you to golf? My dad is a big golfer. He would play six days a week in the morning, at the crack of dawn. I did it just a little bit when I was a kid, but nothing all that serious. We just went to the course one day, he sent me to a really good instructor and then I got into it. Now more than ever before, golf is appreciated as a sport and not just a game. Do you think your competitive background in all those other sports helped you transition into golf that way, with that mindset? Yeah, definitely, because it gets you mentally prepared that it’s a team sport as well. It gets you in the mindset to know that you’re not only playing for yourself, you’re also playing for the rest of your team. You’re trying to represent something -- you’re playing for something bigger than just yourself when you’re on a collegiate team like this. What club do you trust the most in your bag? I really like my wedges. I’d say my 60-degree wedge is my favorite. I’ve been trusting the putter lately too. It’s been working for me. How important is a consistent pre-shot routine? A pre-shot routine really gets you into the mindset of focusing on that shot. It’s like nothing else matters, and when you’ve got a routine for it, you’re not focusing on anything else. You’re focusing on the repetition of the routine and the perfection of it. It really helps you to focus on that shot, where you are going to hit the shot and different conditions. You have to factor in all that.
The routine you use now, have you used that since the beginning? No, it sort of evolved. I’ve manipulated it a little bit. I practice getting behind the ball so that I can look down the line of flight basically, so that’s something I’ve changed in the last couple of years. Who is the first person you remember wanting to beat at golf? I’d say my own teammates in high school. We would always compete for what we called medalist, which was a lowest score among teammates. How is the team dynamic developing this season, especially with so many freshmen and sophomores? We know what each others’ strengths are and we can kind of play off of them. We can help each other in certain ways, like we know that one person likes doing one kind of drill during practice and other people like doing different things. You can pair up and practice with different people for different aspects of the game. We can improve ourselves and others at the same time. What do you enjoy about the facilities at your disposal at the UT Golf Club? I really enjoy the privacy of it all. A lot of places have to share their facilities with members or the public, and it’s really nice to have something away from that, so we can just focus. It’s really nice that we have all of that space to ourselves, it’s nothing I’ve ever really experienced before. |
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