One Sunday afternoon every April, the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, becomes the stage on which golf’s greatest players celebrate one of the game’s greatest achievements — winning The Masters.
This upcoming Sunday morning, Taytum Oswald of Beloit will compete on that hallowed ground in the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals.
Oswald, a sixth grader at Parkview Jr./Sr. High School in Orfordville, reached the national finals in the 10-11 age group after qualifying through local, subregional and regional DCP events last summer and fall. She won the Upper Midwest qualifier played Oct. 1 at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill., a course that hosts the John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour every summer.
Ten players from four age groups divided by gender make the national finals, making Oswald one of 80 nationwide to qualify. It will be her and her family’s first trip to Augusta National, she said.
The drive and chip competitions will be held on the driving and chipping ranges on the Augusta property; the putt portion will be played on the green of Holly, the course’s 18th hole where such legends of the game as Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tiger Woods and countless others have claimed their green Masters jackets.
“It doesn’t come without her putting a lot of work into the game,” her dad Tim Oswald said. “She’s out there at the driving range at the Beloit Club by herself for hours upon hours. She’s not afraid to put the work in, and it wasn’t just given to her.”
Since winning at Deere Run, Taytum Oswald said she and Travis Becker, her coach at TPC Wisconsin in Madison, have spent the winter focused on maximizing her performance at Augusta.
In October, she said the chipping and putting categories were her strengths but said in an interview Tuesday that she’s made strides with her driving since winning her regional.
“Just the other day, I had my PR (personal record) at 204 yards, so I think I’ve been hitting my drives a lot better,” Oswald said. “They’re also going a lot straighter than they used to. I’ve built up a lot of confidence in the driving category.”
She also took lessons on chipping and putting in the intervening months and remains highly confident in those aspects of the competition.
Oswald also has been working with a mental coach who has given her breathing techniques and other advice for dealing with the nervous energy that is sure to accompany the occasion of playing at Augusta National — and on TV, no less. The event will be broadcast live on The Golf Channel starting at 7 a.m. Sunday morning.
“I’m going to try to forget about it and not make it a bigger deal than what it is,” she said of playing in front of TV cameras.
Another part of the preparation was watching YouTube videos of the 15- and 30-foot putts on Augusta’s 18th green during last year’s DCP National Finals, she said. Watching the video has limited utility, though, especially if the spots for the putts change from year to year.
“It’ll be a matter of seeing how the people who tee off before me, how the green breaks for them,” she said.
The national finals will be comprised of players being scored on two drives, two chips and two putts, a format that makes the margin of error on any one swing pretty slim. Oswald said she likes it that way.
“The suspense is nice. You have nine shots (in qualifying), and those nine shots pretty much have to be perfect for you to succeed.” With just two shots at every station, the nine shots become just six at nationals.
One person who will be on hand Sunday to help Oswald stay focused and confident as her caddy is her older brother Trey. Now golfing at Eastern Illinois University, he was the Division 3 individual state champion in the WIAA state boys golf tournament in 2022 for Parkview.
The main function of the caddy on competition day is to serve as moral support, Taytum and Trey’s dad Tim said.
“It’ll be a cool experience for brother and sister to do that,” he said.
The family is set to leave Friday, which they will spend in Charleston, South Carolina, before heading west to Augusta, Georgia, the next day.
Practice sessions and a dinner at the hotel will be held Saturday, and on Monday, the DCP competitors will get to see the rest of Augusta National when they will be able to watch pros play practice rounds ahead of The Masters, which is set to begin April 11.
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