by Craig Morgan, special for www.theSunDevils.com
TEMPE, Ariz.– Koichiro Ishika was feeling low. The Sun Devil freshman golfer was 6,000 miles away from his Japanese home, his golf game, his academics and his mastery of the English language weren't where he wanted them to be, and while most of the student population had gone home for the winter break, he was stuck in Tempe, wondering if he had made a mistake by coming to ASU.
"I didn't think I could play at this level," he said. "Honestly, I didn't think I could make the lineup. We have good players on this team from all over the world. I watched Kevin [Chun An Yu] practicing at the driving range every day and I felt like there was so much difference between him and me. I felt like he was far and away better."
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, Ishika went to work.
"I didn't have anything else to do so I decided to practice every day for like five or six hours," he said. "I was asking myself how to improve my game really quick. I mainly hit balls. Every shot, I would analyze 'why did I hit it well? What was I thinking?' I was on the driving range but I practiced like I was on the golf course. After that, I would play Karsten for nine holes, sometimes 18 by myself."
Sun Devils coach Matt Thurmond had recruited Ishika while he was the coach at Washington. He knew there was something special inside the kid who was winning amateur tournaments the moment he set foot on United States soil and then enrolled at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
"That alone is so hard to do," Thurmond said. "You travel across the world, playing in conditions and with people you've never seen. To go beat everybody requires a high level of self-confidence and skill."
As Ishika began to tinker with his game, however, he went into a deep slump that lasted two years. Washington didn't work out so but Thurmond took "little bit of a leap of faith" in bringing him to ASU, remembering the immense upside he had seen earlier.
"At the end of fall, he came to me and he was frustrated," Thurmond said. "He said 'what do I need to do to get better?' I said, 'Ko, you've improved this fall faster than probably anyone I have ever had. You're not perfect but you just keep doing what you're doing and you're going to do really well. Don't feel like you need to change something or there is something wrong with you.'
"He was so excited to hear that. I think it had been a while since he felt good about his game. In golf, we like to think there's something wrong and it's not always the case. In his case, he had no confidence. He didn't need anyone to fix stuff. He just needed to develop confidence and learn how his own game worked."
Thurmond had planned all along for Ishika's first season in Tempe to be a development season, a chance for what he called "a mental detox," but the player that emerged from those self-help sessions changed that plan.
"I saw a guy in January that expected to be in the lineup," Thurmond said. "I think there was improvement in skill for sure. He was putting a little better and hitting it consistently straighter, but the biggest difference I saw was he had a whole different level of confidence. I think he knew he had earned the right to be successful. When you invest deeply you can expect good results. He invested at a level he never had before."
Ishika got a glimpse of the change in his game before the rest of the Sun Devils arrived back on campus. With a newly earned driver's license, he drove across the desert and finished tied for 12th at the Agave Amateur at Shadow Hills Golf Club near Palm Desert, California in December. He followed that up with a fifth-place finish at the Saguaro Amateur at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa.
With the Sun Devils, he tied for second at the National Invitational Tournament in Tucson in February, he tied for 13th at the Bandon Dunes (Oregon) Championship in March, and he finished in sixth place, tops among Sun Devil golfers, at the Pac-12 Championship at Rolling Hills Country Club (Par 71/7,130 yards) in Rolling Hills Estates, California with an 11-under 273 (69-69-66-69).
"I gained so much confidence from Pac-12s," said Ishika, who played along USC's Justin Suh, the No. 6 player in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. "I felt like I'm not that far away from him and he's No. 6 in the world and I'm like 1,000 [914] but I didn't feel far away from him, like I could catch him sometime soon."
For Thurmond, it was a telling transformation for a player who had wilted under similar pressure when playing with Cal's Collin Morikawa and Oklahoma State's Viktor Hovland, two of top 10 ranked amateurs in the world, at the Cabo Querencia Collegiate in Mexico in March.
"I told him on the drive to the course, 'Ko, when you played in Cabo in this pairing you weren't ready for it. Now, you are ready for it," Thurmond said. "A freshman is supposed to kind of self-sabotage a little bit, shoot 74 and drift back into 18th place. He kept going, shot 69 in final round and finished awesome."
Arizona State will be the fourth seed in Raleigh, North Carolina for a 54-hole NCAA Regional from May 14-16. The low five teams and the low individual not on those teams from each regional will advance to the NCAA Championship. Like everyone else in the field, Ishika wants to play well, but he has another goal in mind after rediscovering his joy for the game.
"As a team we want to win, obviously," he said, "but for myself, when I played with Justin at Pac-12s, he was enjoying every moment even though he was struggling the last day. I really liked that part of him so I'm going to try to do that.
"I had high expectations before I came here so I would get mad or stressed out by my mistakes. Justin showed me you have to enjoy every moment."
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TEMPE, Ariz.– Koichiro Ishika was feeling low. The Sun Devil freshman golfer was 6,000 miles away from his Japanese home, his golf game, his academics and his mastery of the English language weren't where he wanted them to be, and while most of the student population had gone home for the winter break, he was stuck in Tempe, wondering if he had made a mistake by coming to ASU.
"I didn't think I could play at this level," he said. "Honestly, I didn't think I could make the lineup. We have good players on this team from all over the world. I watched Kevin [Chun An Yu] practicing at the driving range every day and I felt like there was so much difference between him and me. I felt like he was far and away better."
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, Ishika went to work.
"I didn't have anything else to do so I decided to practice every day for like five or six hours," he said. "I was asking myself how to improve my game really quick. I mainly hit balls. Every shot, I would analyze 'why did I hit it well? What was I thinking?' I was on the driving range but I practiced like I was on the golf course. After that, I would play Karsten for nine holes, sometimes 18 by myself."
Sun Devils coach Matt Thurmond had recruited Ishika while he was the coach at Washington. He knew there was something special inside the kid who was winning amateur tournaments the moment he set foot on United States soil and then enrolled at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
"That alone is so hard to do," Thurmond said. "You travel across the world, playing in conditions and with people you've never seen. To go beat everybody requires a high level of self-confidence and skill."
As Ishika began to tinker with his game, however, he went into a deep slump that lasted two years. Washington didn't work out so but Thurmond took "little bit of a leap of faith" in bringing him to ASU, remembering the immense upside he had seen earlier.
"At the end of fall, he came to me and he was frustrated," Thurmond said. "He said 'what do I need to do to get better?' I said, 'Ko, you've improved this fall faster than probably anyone I have ever had. You're not perfect but you just keep doing what you're doing and you're going to do really well. Don't feel like you need to change something or there is something wrong with you.'
"He was so excited to hear that. I think it had been a while since he felt good about his game. In golf, we like to think there's something wrong and it's not always the case. In his case, he had no confidence. He didn't need anyone to fix stuff. He just needed to develop confidence and learn how his own game worked."
Thurmond had planned all along for Ishika's first season in Tempe to be a development season, a chance for what he called "a mental detox," but the player that emerged from those self-help sessions changed that plan.
"I saw a guy in January that expected to be in the lineup," Thurmond said. "I think there was improvement in skill for sure. He was putting a little better and hitting it consistently straighter, but the biggest difference I saw was he had a whole different level of confidence. I think he knew he had earned the right to be successful. When you invest deeply you can expect good results. He invested at a level he never had before."
Ishika got a glimpse of the change in his game before the rest of the Sun Devils arrived back on campus. With a newly earned driver's license, he drove across the desert and finished tied for 12th at the Agave Amateur at Shadow Hills Golf Club near Palm Desert, California in December. He followed that up with a fifth-place finish at the Saguaro Amateur at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa.
With the Sun Devils, he tied for second at the National Invitational Tournament in Tucson in February, he tied for 13th at the Bandon Dunes (Oregon) Championship in March, and he finished in sixth place, tops among Sun Devil golfers, at the Pac-12 Championship at Rolling Hills Country Club (Par 71/7,130 yards) in Rolling Hills Estates, California with an 11-under 273 (69-69-66-69).
"I gained so much confidence from Pac-12s," said Ishika, who played along USC's Justin Suh, the No. 6 player in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. "I felt like I'm not that far away from him and he's No. 6 in the world and I'm like 1,000 [914] but I didn't feel far away from him, like I could catch him sometime soon."
For Thurmond, it was a telling transformation for a player who had wilted under similar pressure when playing with Cal's Collin Morikawa and Oklahoma State's Viktor Hovland, two of top 10 ranked amateurs in the world, at the Cabo Querencia Collegiate in Mexico in March.
"I told him on the drive to the course, 'Ko, when you played in Cabo in this pairing you weren't ready for it. Now, you are ready for it," Thurmond said. "A freshman is supposed to kind of self-sabotage a little bit, shoot 74 and drift back into 18th place. He kept going, shot 69 in final round and finished awesome."
Arizona State will be the fourth seed in Raleigh, North Carolina for a 54-hole NCAA Regional from May 14-16. The low five teams and the low individual not on those teams from each regional will advance to the NCAA Championship. Like everyone else in the field, Ishika wants to play well, but he has another goal in mind after rediscovering his joy for the game.
"As a team we want to win, obviously," he said, "but for myself, when I played with Justin at Pac-12s, he was enjoying every moment even though he was struggling the last day. I really liked that part of him so I'm going to try to do that.
"I had high expectations before I came here so I would get mad or stressed out by my mistakes. Justin showed me you have to enjoy every moment."
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