WVU's Ransone has great experience at US Open qualifier

And so it was for Jon Ransone, a rising West Virginia junior member of coach Sean Covich’s golf team who made his way to the final qualifier for the U.S. Open this Saturday, only to have a pair of 78s come up and kick him in the butt at Ohio’s Springfield Country Club, about an hour from his home in Hilliard, Ohio.

Chamber of horrors? How about this horror that Ransone was faced with.

”I actually had to hit a putt backwards, away from the hole,” he said, explaining the break on the firm, fast and hilly green that was typical of all of them broke in such a fashion that was his only chance to get the ball near the hold.

If his golf score wasn’t good enough to qualify — and when you consider that he was playing in a field with four professionals and many of the top amateurs in the country — the experience made him a winner.

First off, this was his first experience in any kind of national championship competition.

And second, he was paired with Pittsburgh’s Gordon Vietmeirer, a former Tri-State PGA Player of the Year, and Brian Stuard, who won the Zurich Classic in New Orleans last month.

Stuard missed qualifying for the Open at Pittsburgh’s storied Oakmont Country Club in a couple of weeks by just one stroke while three amateurs and a professional did qualify.

Ransone is not looking at his performance as any kind of failure but instead as a chance to move himself forward as a golfer.

”It was probably the hardest course I ever played and probably the biggest stage I’ve ever played on,” he said.

But rather than being intimidated by being paired with a PGA tournament winner and facing a field that was by far the most presigioius he had ever faced, to say nothing of having the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow being a spot in the U.S. Open, he used it to learn about himself and the game he was playing.

”Just seeing the way Stuard handled himself on the golf course was huge compared to college golf,” Ransone said. “That’s the next step in what we’re all working for. To see what he has done, his interaction with his caddy and how he prepared himself, I think the biggest thing I noticed was that he is really patient. If he needs pars and stuff, he doesn’t beat himself up if he hits a bad shot because he knows it’s going to happen for him eventually.”

Younger, inexperienced golfers do the opposite, not yet realizing that in golf it is the next shot that counts, not the one that’s already been taken.

”Brian (Stuard) had a double bogey on a hole but rebounded quickly,” Ransone said. “He didn’t let it faze him, where the amateurs — myself particularly — get on themselves. You can’t do that. You have to stay focused and keep going.”

Ransone spent a lot of time soaking up what was going on around him.

“Coach Covich talked to me about using it as a learning experience. He was basically saying, it’s a free education. You are really getting to see what some of the best do,” he said. “You can see what you need to do to get your game where you want it.

”To play in a competitive atmosphere like that was huge. It could help me a lot.”

And, as with every round of golf, there was something quite positive to take from the day.

”I got to the back nine of the second round,” Ransone related. “I’d been struggling. I knew I wasn’t going to qualify.

”I told myself to just go out and try to compete with them and gain motivation to go through the summer. From then on I shot 2-under. I think that really stuck with me. I thought, ‘Wow, you just beat a PGA player over the last nine holes,’” he said.

He even dropped in a birdie putt on his 36th hole to send him off with a smile on his face.

He doesn’t believe his game picked up necessarily because he relaxed knowing he had no chance to qualify.

”It wasn’t necessarily I wasn’t playing for anything. I just saw how people were able to not think about shots too much. I think I learned a different approach to how you play,” he said. “I had nine holes to play where I could turn around the whole round. It gave me motivation to keep working instead of beating myself up.”