Remember the name Harrison Endycott: Riversdale Cup 

winner could be next Aussie star on world stage
 

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews with the men's and women's Riversdale Cup winners Harrison Endycott and Kirsty Hodgkins. (Photo credit: Monash Leader)

 
FROM THE AUSTRALIAN GOLF NEWS LETTER
If you hear about a young man wandering around Royal Adelaide, Australia A this week looking as if he’s on a mission, it might just be Harrison Endycott.
The New South Welshman is on a roll  – and he makes no secret about his desire to add next week’s South Australian Classic to his collection.
Endycott, 19, this week added the time-honoured Riversdale Cup to a trophy cabinet already bulging with the Lake Macquarie and Avondale Amateur prizes safely housed after a spectacular seven-week east coast swing.
But the young Sydneysider wants more.
“It’s a great feeling to win – I really want to win all the time,” Endycott said.
“So to be able to have a bit of success like this is great – I feel really good about my game right now and I’m very confident in what I’m doing out on course.”
The NSW state team member “absolutely” wants to be in Golf Australia’s national squad at some point in the near future.
But “rather than sit around and whinge about it”, the effervescent Endycott is using it as a motivation to drive his winning run.
“I really like the guys in the national squad and I have absolutely nothing against them … and I’m not bitter about not being in it at all,” he said.
“I just take it as everything happens for a reason and obviously I’m not quite ready yet … but I’ll keep going away and trying harder and pushing to get into it and hopefully one day soon I’ll be ready.
“It definitely makes me want to beat those guys, that’s for sure.
“So if I can keep going at the SA Classic next week, hopefully I’ll get that little bit closer.”
When the world amateur rankings are updated this week, Endycott will be within touching distance of – if not already having achieved – his stated 2016 goal of the top 50.
But listening to him speak, you get the feeling that will ultimately be just a stepping stone.
“I’m just really focused on getting better right now. All the (Golf NSW) high performance guys are,” he said.
“Dean (national coach Dean Kinney) and all the high performance staff and Precision Athletica are doing an unbelievable job of helping us become not just better golfers, but better athletes – and I really stress `athletes’.  
"Because that’s what we are now – we’re an Olympic sport and we’re competing against other sports as well to get the best athletes competing.
“And we’re always being told it doesn’t matter how much talent you have, if you don’t work hard, you just won’t get there.
“And I think you’ll see there’s been a lot of good results (from NSW team members) lately because we have that really good relationship among us, and the coaches and staff and we’re really pushing each other. It’s fantastic.”
Endycott paid special tribute to his coach Mark Paterson, also the head professional at his home club at Avondale in Sydney’s north-western suburbs.
“I sat down with Mark before Riversdale and we were discussing exactly what you needed to do to win there,” Endycott said of the club in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs for which he has a special affinity as it and Avondale play an annual – and highly prized – interclub match.
“So I know the course pretty well and Mark just said to me that if there was one area of my game that needed to be on last week it was `inside 100m’ – just really taking advantage of the short irons in that you get plenty of at Riversdale.
“I’ve always been a confident driver of the ball, so we figured to grab those opportunities inside that wedge range was going to be important … and that’s exactly how it panned out.”
Endycott beat a quality field with a final-round leaderboard the envy of most amateur events in Australia.
But applying all the lessons he has soaked in since first breaking through in the 2013 Srixon International as a junior, he held his nerve to complete three spectacular closing rounds of 67-67-69 after a nervy opening 71 that included three bogeys in a four-hole stretch from the first hole.
That run highlighted to the Sydneysider exactly where his improvement had come – and was critical in securing a one-stroke victory over Henry Spring with a host of other top contenders right in the mix.
“I feel one of the keys in the past couple of months has been for me to grind out rounds when you know you’re not playing your best but not to play yourself out of contention with a big score,” he said.
“I think to have known that and felt like I did there, it was good not to eliminate myself … especially at a tournament that means so much to me.”