Wake Forest Athletics
GOLD RUSH: Allison Emrey Profile
3/23/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of Gold Rush
By Jay Reddick, Gold Rush
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Allison Emrey's senior golf season has been the embodiment of a paradox: The moment she stopped worrying so much about her own score, her scores got better.
Her new mental approach is one of the reasons why Emrey has blossomed into a leader for the Deacons as they enter the heart of their spring season.
The Charlotte native improved her stroke average to 72.5 through five events in 2014-15, a dip of almost three strokes from last year. She finished second at Harder Hall, and her top-5 finish at the Landfall Tradition led the Deacons to a team title.
And though she has done plenty of work on her shotmaking and mechanics, she gives a lot of credit for her improvement to a mental shift of focus.
The team met with Joshua Medcalf, the founder of Train to be Clutch, and Emrey really took to his teachings.
"He told us to focus on the process, not the outcome," Emrey said. "Ninety percent of golf is between the ears - I knew that, but now I have a new way to approach it."
A lot of her approach involves preparation - practicing with a purpose and visualizing the shots needed in any situation, so when the pressure is on in a tournament situation, she can focus on the task at hand.
The philosophy worked for the entire team at the Landfall Tradition in October. The Deacons were tied for the lead entering the final round of the Wilmington tournament, then they just went out and played their game.
"We didn't know the scores coming down the stretch," Emrey said. "It helped us stay in the moment and not get ahead of ourselves."
The Deacons had five birdies on the last three holes and won the tournament by four strokes. Emrey was tied for fourth individually.
Emrey credits her father for getting her started on golf at a young age. The engineer was "good when he was younger," Emrey said, and would take Allison and her siblings out with him on the course.
"If you won the hole, you got to drive the cart," Allison said. "That's how I learned to compete."
Allison drove the cart a bunch, and her fast development continued. By her freshman year at Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, she was good enough to capture the 4A individual state championship right around her 15th birthday.
That's when the college offers started to roll in. Her parents attended Virginia, and she thought she might follow in their footsteps, but a visit to Winston-Salem the summer before her junior year changed her mind.
"It felt like family there," Emrey said. "I knew immediately it was the top contender along with UVa. I committed my junior year, and I'm so happy with my decision. I love the school so much."
For all of Emrey's talk about the motivational side of golf, when it comes to academics, she can get quite technical. She had planned to major in economics but eventually settled on computer science, studying straight lines of code instead of the flow of a golf swing.
"I took a class in economic metrics and thought it was over my head. I decided I can't sit through six or seven classes of this (to finish a major)," Emrey said. "I had taken some computer-science classes in high school as electives, so I thought, `What about that?' My parents thought I was crazy at first, but I'm really glad I'm doing it. It's hard, but I like it."
As the snowy winter brings the beginning of "spring" golf, Emrey is focused on her final go-round as a college player. She thinks the Deacons, ranked No. 10 nationally by Golfweek entering the spring, are ready for whatever comes their way.
"I saw where Golfweek called us one of the sleepers of the season," Emrey said. "Sleeper? I don't know if that was a compliment or an insult. I think other teams need to worry about us more than that. We've learned that when you put in the work, you'll see the benefits down the line. Well, the whole team has done the work, and now it's all coming together."
Players Mentioned
