John SMOLTZ set to tee it up at the SENIORS U.S. OPEN

[FISHHEAD]

AP

 

On the pitcher's mound, John Smoltz never shied away from pressure.

This week, the man considered by some to be the most clutch postseason pitcher in baseball history finds himself dealing with an entirely new sort of stress.

The Hall of Famer qualified for a spot in the U.S. Senior Open, which starts Thursday in Colorado Springs. Instead of delivering the nasty stuff, he'll be trying to avoid it on a Broadmoor East Course that ate up the seniors 10 years ago for this tournament -- won by Eduardo Romero, whose 6 under was one of only three scores in the red for the week.

 

[FISHHEAD]

1000-1 to win the event at 5dimes currently

[Sharp Square]

Go Smoltzy! 

[FISHHEAD]

Baseball Hall of Famer John Smoltz missed the cut at the U.S. Senior Open after shooting a two-day 22-over-par 162.

However, within that he improved by eight strokes in his second round and each nine represented an improvement of the previous in relation to par. His second round included a long birdie putt on No. 2, a chip-in birdie on No. 12 and a par save from the driving range on No. 17.

[Machiavelli]

It's just hard to accept Smoltz as a "Senior."

[FISHHEAD]

Q. What do you take away from this experience?

SMOLTZ: I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget this experience. I plan on being back. I plan on qualifying again. And I just think that if I could do some different things with my time off and get back in the gym and get back in shape. I learned a lot, that I’m not in the kind of shape I need to be in to play this kind of golf. I thought I was.

 

 

 

Q. Have you ever done anything similar to this?

SMOLTZ: Not really. Transferring from starter to closer was a huge, huge hurdle to overcome. I know that the end of the season it looked easy, but it wasn’t, it was one of the hardest thing I ever had to do. This was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done because nothing I’m doing prepares me for this. … Everyone was great. I mean, this place, first time being here, everybody around, I mean I never had so many people rooting for me when I’m making bogeys, and cheering for me and rattling me on and knowing how hard it was. So I’m grateful for that, because when you’re in baseball, I never heard noise. I know there’s a lot of people and there was a lot of noise, but I never heard it. And I was locked into what I was doing. When I heard it, that meant bad things were happening. And today — and obviously you don’t hear noise until you hit, but just everybody, the gallery was super kind and a lot of — it meant a lot.