Henley learns to lay back and let go at the Masters
Russell Henley already had the West Coast hair.
A Macon, Ga., native who lives in Charleston, his hair is long, slick, two-toned and stuffed under a white visor when he’s playing. His attitude, though, was way too high-strung and East Coast for his golf game last season and for much of this one.
Henley, 25, wasn’t happy with his game or himself last year during the PGA Tour’s West Coast swing.
“I remember I was grinding so hard and practicing when I got done, and just really working on my game really hard,” he said. “And then, finally, it was like, I just can’t keep doing this, I’m driving myself crazy. I remember thinking (I needed to relax) Thursday night when I was in almost last place at Riviera, and the next day I went out and shot 66 and almost made the cut. And a week later I won the Honda.”
Still, the message he was getting from his internal monologue didn’t stick (“I’m very stubborn,” he said.). He was still struggling with a need to let go and lay back in March of this year when he finished 49th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“I was absolutely furious,” he said. “Everybody around me encouraged me to go home and don’t play golf for a week. So I went back to Charleston and I didn’t pick up the clubs the week before Houston, I didn’t pick them up for seven days and just either laid on the couch or went on the boat and hung out. Showed up at Houston fresh, and I liked it again.”
Henley finished fourth at the Shell Houston Open on April 5 and carried that momentum into Thursday’s first round of the Masters, shooting a 4-under pas 68 to sit four shots off Jordan Spieth’s lead.
“Whenever I start taking things too serious and putting a lot of pressure on myself, trying to be structured, like you feel like you’re supposed to be out here when you get out here on Tour and you feel like you’re supposed to have the workout coach and the mental guy and the swing coach with you at all times; and you’re supposed to practice when you get done, all that. I feel like when I get into that mindset, I become a very average player,” Henley said. “When I just show up like I got invited at the last minute, just to have fun, I’m a lot more fun to be around and I play better. So I took it very light, took last week light. I’m going to try to keep doing that till it stops working.”
The former University of Georgia golfer was “not quite as nervy” when he walked to the first tee at Augusta National on Thursday for his third Masters. It helps to have a kind of home course advantage, he acknowledged, being halfway between his hometown and his new home.
“People are yelling at me, ‘Macon, Georgia,’ ‘Go Dawgs!,’ ‘Charleston,’ a lot of that,” he said. “It’s fun. It’s fun to have people rooting for you and encouraging you, for sure.”
Henley, who is ranked No. 47 in the world this week and played only 18 holes of practice here this week, heard his brother yell to him from the gallery Thursday.
“That made me laugh,” he said.
It also started a run that saw him birdie Nos. 5, 8 and 9 to move to 3-under. After a bogey at No. 11, he birdied Nos. 14 and 15 to earn his 4-under.
“Just had a ball today,” he said.
He doesn’t know, he acknowledged, if his West Coast attitude will keep him in contention for three more days, but he knew as he left the grounds Thursday afternoon that he’d sleep well.
“I feel like when I can accept the fact that this game, how I play in this tournament is not going to define who I am when I drive out of here today, it makes it a lot more fun game,” he said. “It makes me enjoy the game. When I feel like it’s who I am, I don’t like the game at all.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2015 at 11:14 PM with the headline "Henley learns to lay back and let go at the Masters."