Max Power
I'm in the media center for the NCAA Championships right now. There's a big screen up front. On the big screen is the Texas/Texas A&M Super Regional for the NCAA Softball tournament. I guess I could maybe snap a photo here and show you what I'm looking at. Here's the media center and the big screen up front:
On that screen, a Sports Thing just happened. Texas A&M's Maya Perez comes to the plate with two outs and two runners on in the bottom of the seventh, trailing 8-5. It's a 2-2 count. Texas is one strike away from forcing a deciding Game Three tomorrow.
And Perez hits her first career home run to tie it and send it to extras. Her first career home run. Into the Texas crowd in Texas' home stadium where no one wanted to catch it. To send it to extras against #1 Texas.
People understand that sports moment. Two out, two on, down three, home run. The best softball players in the country doing the best softball things. Texas A&M was up 5-0, then Texas scored eight unanswered, and then Texas A&M tied it 8-8 in the 7th. The best teams trading punches.
The last two days, I find myself searching for the words to let you know how good the golf has been. I did it last night with Max Herendeen's wedge on the 18th hole. I did it a bunch today on Twitter. Some of these shots are so incredible. I wish college golf was bigger nationally (or at least being televised before the final round) so that you could see as well.
My plan for this post is to just do... that. I walked all 18 holes with Illini freshman Max Herendeen today. I want to tell you about it. ALL about it.
First, the context. The Illini were the #11 seed here. As of this moment, we're in 2nd place going into the third round tomorrow. After the third round, 30 teams will be cut to 15. And after the fourth round, they'll name an individual national champion and then move the top 8 teams on to Match Play. Quarterfinals Tuesday morning, Semifinals Tuesday afternoon, Finals Wednesday.
Finishing top three means that we'll go off first tomorrow (earliest tee time). Last year, at Grayhawk in Scottsdale, that was a huge advantage. Soft course in the morning, baked-out course in the afternoon... it was probably a 10-shot advantage to go off first that Sunday.
Tomorrow? I just talked to Mike Small a bit ago (you'll hear that interview later), and he said it's not as much of an advantage "on the coast" because the weather changes so quickly. This isn't exactly a "receptive greens in the morning, unreceptive greens in the afternoon" situation. It's likely to be calm (the wind has come up this afternoon and these afternoon teams are really struggling at the moment), but as he noted, it rained on the morning wave yesterday and the afternoon might have been an advantage.
That's the context. Now let's talk about Small's best recruit in ten years.
The Illini started on the 10th hole this morning. La Costa is kind of like St. Andrews – nine holes in one direction, turn around, nine holes back to the clubhouse – so I took the shuttle they provide from the clubhouse to the 10th hole. Had I not done that, it's a two mile walk to get to the 10th tee.
Jackson Buchanan, Piercen Hunt, and Ryan Voois had already teed off by the time I got there, so my Illini golf watching today consisted of watching Tyler Goecke on the 10th hole, then staying there to watch Max Herendeen on the 10th hole, and then walking all 18 holes with Herendeen. There were a few times where play backed up so I walked ahead to the green to see what Goecke was doing. But I'd then hang there to watch Herendeen's shot so I saw basically every shot Max hit today.
NOW I can tell you about it. After I tell you that Texas just won 9-8 in extra innings to force a game three. That home run is still a massive SPORTS moment, but... her team lost in extras.
Here's what I'll say about watching Max all day. He shot two under. He's currently tied for fourth (with two players ahead of him still on the course). And he shot this two-under despite...
- A poor three-putt on 17 (his 8th hole).
- A three-putt from 15 feet on the 1st hole (his 10th). The comebacker he missed was less than three feet.
- A drive into the fescue on 2 that he could only chop out and advance maybe 10 yards (he'd BIRDIE that hole).
- A wedge on 6 from left of the hole that didn't make it up the hill and rolled back to his feet.
Do all of that and put up what's currently the 5th best round of the day? A ball rolling back to your feet, chunking it 10 feet out of the deep stuff, and a three putt from 15 feet and you put up a 70 when the scoring average is 75.78? And that's the scoring average of the 156 best college golfers? Just incredible. The four mistakes I mentioned above are supposed to push your score from 72 to 76. But it pushed his score from 66 to 70.
I'll let you hear from him (and Mike Small) in a bit, but first let's watch some of these shots. Including the single best shot I've ever seen live. Let's start there.
2nd hole (his 11th). He's in a rough spot. He three-putted 17, got it to the front bunker in two on the par-5 18th but a bad bunker shot meant a par and not a birdie. Then the three putt from 15 feet on 1. Then, the very moment he hits his drive on 2, he goes with the No Laying Up logo:
I had tweeted about OB left yesterday, so I worried that he might be OB and was staring down a bogey or double bogey. But it was safe. Well, not "safe." It was deep in the long grass. The fairway volunteer on that hole had put a flag where the ball went into the long grass and here's Mike Small standing near the little yellow flag and waiting for Max to get there:
They talk about it for a while (if you've ever tried to hit this shot, you know that you might not even get it out of that stuff), and here's Max's shot:
If you're on your phone and you were squinting to see where the ball went.... it went about 10 yards. Bounced on the cart path and came to a stop in the rough on the other side. So now he has 285 yards left on this par five and he's hitting his third shot. So of course he birdies.
Remember when I said "best shot I've ever seen live" earlier? This is it. 285 yards, from the rough, 3-iron (3-iron from 285!):
In case you couldn't see where it ended up there (and you couldn't - I was standing 300 yards from the pin), this was what he had left:
Two hundred eighty five yards with a three iron and he had 18 inches remaining for birdie on a hole where he had to hack out of the long stuff and only advanced the ball 10 yards on his second shot. This is one of those moments where I try to comp it with other sports but all I can come up with is "Marshawn Lynch's BEASTQUAKE run, but for golf."
This broke Max out of his funk. He'd get two more birdies and post a 70. But I'm not done describing his shots.
Here's the wedge on six that rolled right back down the hill:
I show you that to say, again, that he didn't have his best stuff and shot 2-under par. If he gets that one up the hill and makes the putt (like he made the putt after his second shot from down there), he shoots a 69.
Three holes left now, so obviously he gets two birdies. I know that some of you are all "where's that Mike Small interview you talked about", so I'll try to make this quick.
On the 7th hole, Max Herendeen drove the ball 389 yards and then hit a nice shot to 12 feet and made the birdie putt.
"Robert, you have a typo there. You said that he drove the ball 389 yards."
No, it's not a typo. It was so far down there that I flashed my media credential to get inside the ropes and ran out to see the distance myself like I was Dottie Pepper. There was a sprinkler head about two yards behind the ball that said 134. I pulled the tee sheet out of my pocket and it said the hole was a 521-yard par four. 521 yards, he has 132 remaining, that's... a 389-yard drive.
Here, I even shot a video. A look up towards the green, then a shot of the ball and the sprinkler head that gave me the distance, and then a zoom back up the hill trying to find the tee box (you can't see it but it's to the right of the green you see up there):
A verified three hundred and eighty nine yard drive. Wedge, putt, birdie.
But he wasn't done. After a par on 8 (his 17th), he hit a perfect drive on 9 to set up this shot. Last video I promise and then we'll get to the interviews.
He tapped in that putt for a birdie. It put him at -2 for the day and put his team as one of the three teams to go under par today. Those three teams currently sit 1-2-3 in the standings after the 2nd round:
And those three teams will go off first in the morning.
OK, NOW the interviews. My chat with Mike Small:
I was proud of my "is this team surprising you?" question there. Made him think a bit.
And then I talked to both Max Herendeen and Tyler Goecke at the same time. I began by showing them (mostly Tyler) the video of Max's shot on 2.
What a great day. A surprising 2nd place halfway through led by a budding megastar. I feel really good that Max Herendeen might be part of a national championship team at Illinois.
Maybe this year.
An epilogue of sorts.
My oldest son (as in 32, not 12) called a bit ago. It was a really good talk. There was some family conflict that we had needed to talk about for a while. You don't need the details here. I'll just say that conflict, although uncomfortable, has once again been an agent of positive change.
After that I returned to my computer to finish this article. But the guy over to my left was transcribing an interview without using headphones so I put my AirPods in. Needed some background music so I chose a Dustin O'Halloran playlist that I use while writing. It's just a playlist of solo piano music.
I wanted to take a photo of the Illini card on the handwritten scoreboard outside before it got dark, so I headed out there to take that photo and tweet this. The final group was just finishing up on 18, and as I walked towards the scoreboard, a moment hit me out of nowhere.
Conversation with my oldest son where we both had tears in our eyes at one point, then a stroll along the walk above the 18th green, Opus 26 from Dustin O'Halloran in my ears... I think I need one more audio-visual aide here. I did snap one photo, so let me make a short video real quick with just that photo and the music.
My moment at the top of the hill. Sound on if you want to hear the music.
Conflict creates depth. Struggle purifies. A day with so much joy ended with some "gosh this is hard, but I love you" tears on the phone. And then a stroll outside, at sunset, with the perfect music for the moment.
Bowl or no bowl, Elite Eight or no Elite Eight, Match Play or no Match Play, I love following these teams and writing these stories. Finding what you were meant to do is an incredibly joyful experience. Thanks for coming along with me.
See you tomorrow.
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