The Winning Word: NCCGA Northwest

Player Interview - Brandon Drake (Medalist) - 76-74=150

Brandon Drake- Senior at University of Idaho- Professional Golf Management

Question 1: Favorite Club from the weekend?

3-wood, played a lot of tee shots with it today and it never got me into trouble.

Question 2: What played into your great weekend of golf?

Hit the ball straight and played most of my shots out of the fairways, which ended up minimizing my mistakes. It was a good weekend of golf.

Question 3: How did you prepare for this tournament coming off of a snowy winter in the Northwest?

I went down south repeatedly to Lewiston to get some shots in as well as trying to get a bunch of shots in at our indoor hitting facility. It’s hard to get the right feeling for hitting outside when you just hit repeatedly inside, so the trips to Lewiston and practicing helped a lot this week.

Team Interview - Central Washington (A) Danny Peterson - Team President

Question 1: How did you guys prepare for this tournament?

We prepared for this tournament by watching a lot of golf and trying to play at the local course when the weather permitted. Our preparation was minimal due to the snowy weather.  A significant amount of snow was still on the course because most of it had not melted off the course until the Wednesday before the tournament. This only allowed the team a few days to prepare, so we made the best of our situation by playing as many rounds as we could with range sessions in between. With very minimal practice and winter workouts, the mindset of the weekend was to have fun and to knock some winter rust off.

Question 2: Who makes up your team?

Typically, we have tryouts to determine which club members will travel to the events, but unfortunately this time we were unable to do so due to the course being closed because of snow. Since we were unable to hold a formal tryout, my vice president and I had to pick the players based off of performance in prior events, and observations in the Fall. Luckily, we were fortunate enough to budget funds that allowed us to bring two teams to this event, which gave us a total of 13 members that were able to compete in this event.

Adam Englehorn is the NCCGA Northwest Regional Coordinator.