By Mark Hutton

Post Tribune

 

Nick Stasil is that rare combination of talent and combustible energy. He can bomb a drive more than 300 yards.

He walks (well, now drives) across the street from his house in Dogwood Estates to the Brassie Golf Club to practice, mostly on his putting lately. He can look out his window and see the course, a dangerous temptation for someone who can never do enough to get better.

He is addicted to the competition. Loves to play when it matters most.

He has a baseball player's mentality. Until he was a freshman, that sport was his preference.

He is coming off a season in which he made all-state. Only Josh Kalita, his teammate, and Taylor Noel, a Boone Grove graduate, scored better than him at the state tournament last year.

For Stasil, this season, with all those components working together, has the potential to be a monster year. He recently signed to play golf next year at Calumet College.

His teammate, Ryan Grassel, is as good as him and perfectly capable of pushing him and vice versa.

The one minor tweak in his approach this year is to be a more thoughtful player. Aggressive, but only to a degree.

Stasil loves to go pin hunting. Maybe not quite so much this year. Conservative is an option.

"I'm going to try to stay laid back more," he said. "I want to take it one shot at a time. I don't want to think ahead so much. I want to know what could happen if I hit a shot instead ending up with a double or triple (bogey)."

Sounds good for a player who truly is working on the finer points of the game.

Stasil came out last summer and shot a 66 at the Brassie in a Mountain Dew event.

He was the medalist at the LaPorte Regional in 2009.

His to-do list for the season is pretty tight. He wants to break 80 for every 18-hole match, break 40 for every nine-hole match and avoid the mental breakdowns.

Oh, yeah. He'd like to avoid the club tossing. Last year, he hurled one after a bad shot in a match at Coyote Crossing. John Sparks, his coach, saw him and suspended him for a match.

He learned his lesson.

"I just don't want to be a lunatic on the course," he said.

The evolution of Stasil's game has been pretty incremental.

He arrived as a freshman and averaged 42.

Last year, he averaged 76 for 18 holes. During tryouts, he was at 37. Pretty good for a guy who really didn't take the game seriously until ninth grade.

Until then, it was all baseball for Stasil, a third baseman. The only time he ventured into golf was at the end of the season, when baseball was winding down.

He made the decision to give up baseball and play golf because he figured he could do more in golf in college.

He doesn't regret it, though he misses baseball.

"I miss it," he said of baseball. "But I think I made the right choice."

His days now are spent doing putting drills, like trying to make 100 three-footers before he leaves (a Phil Mickelson drill).

"I just want to try to put pressure on myself," he said.

Sparks is looking forward to the season, which tees off Saturday for the Trojans in the Hall of Fame Classic.

"I think you could see some interesting things from Ryan (Grassel) and Nick," he said.

 

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