Home-field advantage doesn't always apply in golf

In most sports, playing at home gives athletes a distinct competitive advantage.

The mixture of fan support, familiar surroundings and lack of travel leading up to game time regularly help baseball teams, basketball teams and football teams defeat their opponents in home venues. That’s what makes the expression “home-field advantage” so common.

You just don’t hear it much in professional golf. Certainly not from Zac Potter or Ryan Spears, the two former Wichita State golfers and Crestview Country Club members who are playing in the Air Capital Classic at their home course starting Thursday.

“There are a lot of added challenges this week,” Spears said. “I know some buddies out there who have struggled playing at their home courses, and I personally think it is always tougher playing in your home town, because you have got all these expectations. If it doesn’t go your way it triggers something in your brain and you beat yourself up for it and you play bad.”

Potter knows the feeling. Like Spears, he has played in Wichita’s Web.com event before. But neither of them has made a cut.

“There is definitely good and bad with it,” Potter said. “The exciting part is I have played a couple hundred rounds on the course and know some intricacies of the course I wouldn’t know on other courses. But there are obviously a few more pressures that comes with playing at your home golf course. A lot more people follow you, and it kind of puts you on a lonely little island where you are battling all this pressure to impress the crowd.”

It is rare for two members to play in a professional tournament, especially at this event, and it will be interesting to see how their intimate knowledge of Crestview will help. They know what clubs to hit on every par 3 and how to attack holes based on different wind conditions. They know how to use slopes to their advantage and how to read the greens.

They also know how to attack the course’s No. 1 handicap hole, the par 4 seventh. Players have the option to hit a safe, short drive the right and then take aim at the green with an iron on their approach. This generally leads to a par. Or players can launch a long drive over water and hit a wedge into the green. When executed perfectly, birdie odds increase. But the margin for error is small. Dunk one in the water, and high numbers come into play.

Both members learned long ago to play it safe.

Will all that help them recreate practice rounds in which they have shot in the low 60s? Or will the pressure to post low numbers have the opposite effect?

Playing with the correct mental approach will be of the utmost importance.

“I have been a member out there since 2012, so I am just going to try and relax and let myself play the way I know I can,” Potter said. “There are so many positives that should come with playing at your home track. Everything should feel comfortable. It’s extremely motivating to go out there and play well, because when you typically make a putt on tour no one cheers for you. This week there will be some support. Hopefully it gets real loud.”

Spears says he will treat this like any other tournament, with the only difference being he gets to sleep in his own bed between rounds.

He thinks playing at home can be overrated, because tournament pin placements are different from normal hole locations, the rough is much thicker during tournament week and the greens are faster. All are major changes that can make a familiar course seem new.

“I don’t think there is anyone out there who has been in the field and played that course more than me,” Spears said. “There are some secrets that could help me, but mostly I am just going to take it as a normal tournament and not have too many expectations. I want to go out there, play my game and see where I am after four rounds, whatever the total may be. That’s all I can do.”

If Spears continues to play the way he has of late, he should do well. He has earned $76,532 on the Web.com tour this season, ranking him 34th on the money list, and he has made the cut in four of his past five events. That streak includes a second-place finish at the United Leasing Championship and three straight tournaments in which he finished at 10-under par or better.

He credits an improved mental approach for the success.

“Golf is so mentally tough,” Spears said. “You get mentally fatigued and you slip up in one moment and your round is ruined. This year, when things have gone bad I try not to beat myself up. Why waste energy on something you can’t fix? After you hit a golf shot you have to let it go. I have struggled with it in past years. This year I have done better with it. That’s why I am playing better.”

Potter is also playing well this season. He is coming off his first PGA Tournament, the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, in which he missed the cut. And he has done enough to make into this field as an exempted golfer, rather than qualifying on Monday as he has done in the past.

Now, much like Spears, he wants to take advantage of playing on his home course and deliver a good finish on Sunday.

“I have green-lighted myself to have positive thoughts this week,” Potter said. “I am capable of playing my best golf here. I have done it in the past, I just have to remove some of those expectations and allow myself to play well.”

This story was originally published June 20, 2015 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Home-field advantage doesn't always apply in golf."