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Tiger Woods will be just “a guy without a face” from now on for Victorian Jarrod Lyle as he prepares for his second tilt at the US PGA Tour.
Lyle, who scored his second Nationwide win of the year last Sunday, admitted he was overawed in his debut on the main circuit last year, playing alongside the game’s superstars.
With victories at Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sunday and in the Mexico Open at the start of the year, Lyle needs one more win to earn a “battlefield promotion” back to the main tour in 2009.
But the 26-year-old Victorian is guaranteed a card in any case because of his Nationwide earnings — and this time around he says he will be better prepared to deal with competing against the world’s best.
“I’ve just got to look at those guys as just another guy with a golf swing, that’s all they are,” Lyle said today.
“To me now they’re just a guy with no face — it doesn’t matter who it is, they’re out there trying to do the exact same thing that I’m doing and that’s win golf tournaments.
“Now I’ve just got to look at it as that — they’re just people without a face, whether it’s Tiger Woods, whether it’s Jim Furyk … who cares.
“They’re not going to care who you are by the end of the day and I think that’s the kind of attitude that I’ve got to take — not that I don’t care who they are … but you’ve got to beat them as much as you can.
“That’s something that I’m really going to work on, and not get carried away with if I’m standing next to Phil Mickelson on the range, he’s just there hitting balls the same thing I’m doing,” he said.
Lyle, from Shepparton, said that in retrospect he had reached the US Tour with too little preparation after 18 months in Asia and just six months in the US.
Deep down I think I probably made it to the PGA Tour too quickly and I wasn’t ready for the whole experience,” he said.
“Although I did have a couple of good results that year it possibly could have been the best thing for me to miss me Tour card and have to go back to the Nationwide because I think that was going to ground me a little more.”
Lyle finished 48th in the US Open two weeks ago at Torrey Pines and that, combined with a collaboration with a sports psychologist, has sent him to the top of the secondary money list.
“Just getting some confidence back after shooting some good scores at Torrey Pines I think was enough to help me out because I had been struggling with my confidence a little bit,” he said.
“I was playing really, really good but I just wasn’t scoring. If you’re doing something well and not getting results it starts to play on your mind a little bit.
“Definitely making the cut at the US Open was a bonus, then shooting 71 on Sunday was pretty cool.
“I spoke to a good friend of mine, Sean Lynch, who I’ve had a lot to do with since playing state golf with Victoria.
“He helped me through a few things last year and I speak to him two or three times a week.
“He is more of a mind coach than anything else and he’s given me a drills to do over the past 18 months and I think I’m starting to finally see the results from those.
“Being able to close out (on Sunday) was a big step because I have always struggled in third and fourth rounds for some reason.
“The good thing is that I’ve got enough money up now that I’m totally secure and I know that I’m going to be on the PGA Tour next year.”