The game of golf might be a perfectionist’s nightmare, but for Aberdeen Roncalli senior Claire Crawford, the drive toward unattainable perfection on the course is the exact reason she loves the sport.
Crawford can regularly be found sitting atop the leaderboards at various tournaments, or at least prowling around in the top five. Yet after each round, Crawford goes home knowing she still has some improvement to make.
“Every time you go play, there’s something you know you can do better,” Crawford said. “You just keep going out and practicing more and more, because there’s always that drive for perfection that no one ever reaches in golf. That’s the fun part about it. You can always do better.”
Crawford will lead the Cavalier girls’ golf team into the state tournament next week after Roncalli posted its fourth straight Region 1A title. Crawford finished fourth in that tournament, and heads back to the state meet as last year’s runner-up.
It will be the culmination – of sorts – of a career, the seeds of which were planted very early in Crawford’s life. She and her brother both participated in the First Tee program, then moved on to playing more competitively in the Junior PGA program. When her brother stepped away from golf, Crawford stuck with it.
And even when other sports – volleyball for a time, then basketball for longer – entered the picture, it was golf that had Crawford’s attention.
“I think golf is so much more mentally challenging than the other sports,” Crawford said. “You can’t just train, train, train and then go out and perform. You have to actually practice being in the moment. … Golf, it can be a real mental roller coaster. Unlike other sports, you have a lot of time to think on the golf course, which can be good and bad. You can think about the good things, you can think about the bad things. That’s one of my favorite parts about golf, just being able to be mentally calm and stay in it. Sometimes other people can’t, and I think that’s where I sometimes stand out from other people.”
There’s another aspect to the game that appeals to Crawford. Integrity. So much of golf is played on the honor system that walking off the course with a clean conscience can mean as much or more than the number on the scorecard.
One such instance sticks out in Crawford’s mind.
“I don’t know how young I was,” she recalled. “We were playing in a tournament in Madison and I hit my ball into the hazard. We thought we found it, so I hit my ball out and I got up to the green, and I marked my ball and one of the coaches was standing there. I said, ‘This isn’t my ball. I hit the wrong ball out of the hazard.’ One of the things that stuck out to me was, he said. ‘Thanks for saying something. Somebody on my team would never have said that.’ My thought was, ‘Well, how could you not say something?’ If I wouldn’t have said anything, that would have just ate at me all the time.”
While that approach to the game is mostly intrinsic, Crawford also credits Roncalli coach Jon Murdy for helping shape other aspects her game.
“He’s been great for our team,” Crawford said. “He helps bring positivity and he knows a lot about golf. Anytime, he’s up to help us. I’ll text him on a random weekday, ‘Can I get a lesson tomorrow, or today even?’ ‘Sure, yeah, what time? Yup. OK, see ya there.’ It’s great to have somebody who’s just as invested in your golf game as you are. When I’m struggling with confidence, he has the confidence in me and that brings me more confidence knowing that he knows I can do it. He probably knows my golf game better than I do.”
Crawford said one key component of her game, aside from swing mechanics, that Murdy has helped her revamp is course management, knowing when to be aggressive and when to dial back.
“A lot of courses in the area, you can’t just go and hit driver off the tee every time,” she said. “Sure, you may be far, and close to the hole, but that’s not what’s going to give you the best result. That’s been a big help for me.”
But just because she finished as the runner-up last year and enters this year’s state tournament figuring to be in the hunt, Crawford knows anything can happen.
“I don’t like giving myself entitlement, because golf is a crazy sport,” she said. “It can change at the snap of a finger. I think that’s what drives my practice. I got second last year, and obviously, I’d like to win. When I’m practicing, I’m practicing knowing I have the ability to place highly among all people in the state, and I want to continue to practice so I can show that wasn’t some fluke. I want to show people I’m capable of that. And hopefully, do one better this year.”
Regardless of next week’s result, Crawford’s career will take on a new hue next season when she heads to Dakota Wesleyan to play for the Tigers.
