From Shooting 100 to the PGA Tour

“So I ask ye first, why does gowf bring out so much in a man, so many side o’ his personality? Why is the game such an X-Ray o’ the soul?” These questions posed by Peter McNaughton in Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom, have long echoed in the mind of one of the newest members of the PGA Tour, Zach Bauchou. 

The 29-year-old Bauchou earned his PGA Tour card by winning the Korn Ferry Tour’s Simmons Bank Open in September, but his journey to the big show has been anything but smooth. On this week’s Any Given Monday, the former All-American at Oklahoma State University revealed he was “shooting 100” when he first turned pro in 2020 and “was playing terrible.” Bauchou’s struggles ran so deep that his invitation to the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans was rescinded—by his own partner. 

In 2021, Victor Hovland was a PGA Tour member and invited Bauchou to partner up with him at TPC New Orleans. In the six months leading up to the tournament however, Bauchou couldn’t get his ball in play off the tee. 

“I was shooting legit 100,” Bauchou says. “Couldn’t even finish the holes basically. You know, I’d slice two (balls) 100 yards right of the fairway and I was like, I’ll just drop one in the fairway and try to play from there.”  

As the Zurich Classic approached, Bauchou decided to play a mini tour event in Louisiana hoping he could find form and prove to Hovland he could compete. On a course that mini tour players were lighting up, Bauchou struggled to keep his ball in play, relying on low 2-irons off every tee. The only reason he broke 80 in the opening round was because of his short game. 

“I shot 79 at an easy little course you should never shoot above 70,” Bauchou says. “I would shoot nine over par. That was chipping and putting well. Any wood I was hitting out of bounds.”

Bauchou withdrew after the first round and flew home. The breakup text from Hovland came shortly after, and Bauchou knew it was for the best. 

“I said, yeah, buddy, I can’t play,” Bauchou says. “That was a pretty low point in my life.”

Where does a fledgling pro and former top-ranked college player go when he is struggling just to finish a round? How does someone so talented lose their game completely and find their way back? For Bauchou, the answer was one small step at a time.

“Personally, I believed if I could mentally handle the scores I was shooting I could continue to play and work on it.” He’d start by trying to improve on shooting 100 and rebuild confidence from there. “That should be a pretty easy task. I kind of figured, ok, I have a mental side of this and a physical side of this–let’s try to work on both sides of it.”

Many people tried to help–offering advice to calm his mind over the ball, and others focused on the swing. Bauchou also became a voracious reader of psychology.

“I did a lot of EMDR that I believe has helped me with some psychological elements.” he says, referring to eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a therapy used to reduce the stress of traumatic memories. “I would step in a greenside bunker and maybe your heart rate would be at 70, and I’m at 150. Basically, I’m being chased by a bear right now through the woods–this is a bad situation.”

The process took years. While working on his mental game and swing, his short game fell apart. A week before a KFT Monday qualifier, Bauchou bought a broomstick putter out of a pro shop in Arkansas. The long putter steadied his stroke–and his nerves. 

The next week, he Monday qualified into the Wichita Open, made the cut, and shot 13 under on the weekend to finish fourth. The breakthrough gave him more starts and he finished 82nd on the KFT points list. 

At year’s end, Bauchou went to the LIV Golf Promotions event in Abu Dhabi, where the top three players earned LIV status. He was in contention late into the final round before plugging an approach shot into a greenside bunker and making a double bogey. Another bogey followed and Bauchou fell two shots short of a playoff, finishing 6th. Disappointed with the finish and with KFT Q school ahead, he received a text from Hovland. 

“Dude, you should keep your head up,” Hovland wrote. “You’ve come a long ways in the last couple months and you’re on the right track now.” 

The test of the past couple of years had been an X-ray of the soul, and it had been revealing. The game hadn’t broken him—it made him stronger.

“It means a lot that you can turn the ship around,” says Bauchou. “Personally, I think that’s why we like sports–we can see a team make progress and do it quickly. The Oklahoma City Thunder are a testament to that. They got a couple good players and now they’re the best team in the league and won a championship. People love those stories. And it’s pretty cool that my life has basically been one of those stories."

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Listen to Bauchou on Any Given Monday or watch the interview on Youtube here.