After graduating from North Carolina State in May, Stephen Franken did what a lot of new college grads do: he finished nailing down a job and did a little traveling. But for Franken — the 2018 ACC Player of the Year, a three-time All-ACC selection, and former No. 50-ranked amateur golfer in the world — that meant a whirlwind transition from college golf to life as a tour pro. Over a stretch of six weeks, Franken played the ACC Championship, Mackenzie Tour Q-School, the NCAA Tournament regionals, and his first pro event on the Mackenzie Tour. Franken started hot in Canada, making five of his first six cuts and finishing T15 or better in three of those events. But over the next month and a half, Franken missed four of five cuts and narrowly missed out on retaining his Mackenzie Tour card. He headed into Korn Ferry Tour Q-School in need of a jolt, and he got it: a T12 finish at the First Stage site at Kannapolis, N.C., and medalist at Second Stage in Dothan, Ala. With conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020 assured, Franken is eager to convert his momentum into improved status at Q-School Finals, but also ready to embrace whatever his future looks like. “If I’m playing Monday qualifiers all year next year, then I need to do that to be best of my ability; and if I’m playing every event with full status, then I need to do that to the best of my ability,” Franken said. “I just need to be wherever my feet are.”
. . .
LYING FOUR: You’ve gotten a pretty good taste of tour golf this year. How have you found tour golf to be different than college golf?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: The first thing I would say is that the players are just better. In college, it’s like football or any other sport — you’ve got hundreds of universities, and 10 guys on each team; it’s just a lot easier to make a college golf team than it is to make it onto a tour. So you’re playing against the best guys. And then of course there are less mistakes, because everybody is better. One of the big things that I’ve had to learn and adjust to is getting better at eliminating the big mistakes and getting tighter with everything. That’s the big difference between one level and the next.
LYING FOUR: What is the vibe like on the Mackenzie Tour? Even among hardcore golf fans in the States, most folks will never make it up there for an event.
STEPHEN FRANKEN: I was fortunate coming out of school; there were probably 10 to 15 other guys that were right out of college as well and had earned status the same way I did, through Q-School. It was actually a really cool environment for all of us, because none of us knew exactly what we were doing. So we’d ask each other for advice, play practice rounds together, go get meals together, split Airbnbs and do host housing together. The camaraderie is pretty good there. A lot of the players gravitate toward one another. There’s different groups of guys that hang out together and play cards together — there were multiple times when we had rain delays, so we’d just hang around, play some card games, and wait it out. The courses up there are different than they are in the States. On the PGA Tour, almost every week, people can say, “Oh yeah, this is one of the best courses or hardest courses in our state.” Up there, a lot of the courses tend to feel somewhat similar — a little bit more scoreable. If you look at some of the guys who played really well up there — I mean, Taylor Pendrith had a three-week span where he shot over 68 in only three rounds. So the courses were definitely a lot more scoreable; it almost turned into being lots of wedges and lots of putts up there. Whoever was putting really well was playing really well. But it was a great transition for me, in learning the day-to-day grind and figuring out how to go from week to week, be on the road, and be away from friends and family back home. You don’t get that experience in college.
LYING FOUR: I know you also played in the REX Hospital Open on the Korn Ferry Tour in June. Did you get a sense of the difference between the Mackenzie Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what the difference is, but it’s kind of that next-level thing again. In a college golf tournament, there are probably 25-30 guys in a field of 80 who have a legitimate chance of winning. On the Mackenzie Tour, you’ve got half the guys going in each week believing that they can win. There’s probably three-quarters of the guys on the Korn Ferry that believe they can win, and on the PGA Tour, 100 percent of the guys believe they can win every week. What I noticed on the Korn Ferry Tour when I played there was that everybody has a lot of confidence in their game. You just have to own your own game and focus on yourself, and focus on what you do well, and not get caught up in what somebody else is doing and thinking that you need to do it differently.
LYING FOUR: You had a really successful amateur career. Is it weird going from those heights to starting over at the bottom of the food chain as a pro?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: In a way, it’s kind of refreshing. It’s definitely humbling. The second you start thinking that you’re really good and that you’ve got it figured out, you play against guys who have it more together, and they’ve figured it out a little better, and have been at a higher level for a longer time. And you’re like, “Well, alright. Here we go. I guess I gotta get better.” It’s encouraging and also humbling. I say “refreshing” because it’s a fresh start — you’re starting something new and building a career from the bottom up. I think that’s what makes it so enjoyable — the process that goes along with it, and working toward a long-term goal. I did a lot of the things that I wanted to accomplish in college, and there were a few things I didn’t accomplish that I wanted to. But for the most part, it was nice to move on, begin my professional career, and start working toward goals that I’ve had for years.
. . .
LYING FOUR: So what’s the vibe like at Q-School, compared to events on the Mackenzie Tour?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: Definitely a lot more intense. On the Mackenzie Tour, we have practice rounds on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday especially, everybody’s pretty relaxed and having a good time — chatty for the most part, just hanging out, and being themselves. On Wednesday they’re trying to get it dialed in, and then on Thursday, they’re going to work. At Q-School, for me, that work started a week before the event; I was pretty dialed in and focused from the first practice round. Every shot matters at Q-School, because it’s your entire next year on the line, essentially. At the end, every shot is the same in every tournament, and you have to approach every shot the same way, but you can definitely feel the intensity, because it could be one shot that gets you in or gets you out. Everybody wants to play their best at that time of year, and they’re just doing everything they can to make the best version of themselves come out.
LYING FOUR: At First Stage, you played well for three rounds, and then you shot a final-round 66. Anyone would’ve thought they had it locked up with room to spare. But you wound up getting through by only two strokes. When you were out on the course, did you know how close it was going to be?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: I shot 65 in the first round, and then in the second round, I struggled; I made a bunch of birdies, but I had a couple of loose swings and a couple of mistakes, and I made a couple of big numbers. I shot one-over that round. After the first round, I got a little comfortable, and I went out in the second round and maybe got a little too comfortable — thinking that I’d already done the work that I needed to. Not playing so well during that second round kind of locked me back in; I thought, “OK, you’ve still got two rounds to play, and you’ve got work to do.” I finished really well. I think I was eight-under for the last 27 holes. When I got in from the third round, I think I was one shot out, and I remember thinking that I needed to shoot four or five-under to be pretty safe. But I just went about my business; I knew to play my game and focus on my shots the best that I could. That’s how the best version of myself comes out. My mindset was that if I did everything that I could, shot three-under and ended up getting left out, then so be it, right? I was fortunate and humbled to shoot a good round that day and get in. I definitely knew where I was that last round: I knew that I needed to play well.
LYING FOUR: Did that roll over into Second Stage? You shot 66 in the last round at First Stage, and then you just blew through Second Stage. Was there a connection there?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: I had an experience this summer where I was inside the number on Mackenzie, and then played really poorly in my last three events to lose my Mackenzie Tour card by two spots on the money list. That was a little bit of a wake-up call that nothing was going to be handed to me, and that I needed to do everything in my power to be more focused and figure out what worked for me and do those things. Definitely, at First Stage, I was reminded of that again when I had a good first round and then made a couple of mistakes in the second round. You just have no room to get lazy or take a shot off at the professional level. My goal for Second Stage was just to go out and play 72 holes of golf to the best of my ability. And I felt like I did that really well. Luckily, it put me on top of the leaderboard and got me through handily. There were times when I’d think, “These are big momentum putts,” but then at the end of the day, I’d have to remind myself, “It’s just another putt. Go through your process, and do the best you can. If it goes in, great. If it doesn’t, so what? Either way, you did your best.” I just did that for 72 holes, and it worked out well. I think I’m starting to get the hang of what it takes for me to play well. I’m starting to figure it out, now that I’ve played professionally for six months.
. . .
LYING FOUR: When you’re in a particularly stressful event like Q-School, and you’re playing well, does the enormity of the moment ever creep into your mind? And is that OK, or do you try to push that away?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: It is OK that it’s there. I think it’d be wrong for me to try to overlook it. Something that I try to do a good job is not thinking about it, but recognizing that it’s there; “OK, it’s there, but what do I do about it?” I knew that if I got through Second Stage, I’d be a Korn Ferry member; I knew there’d no more pre-qualifiers, and that I’d have job security for next year. Those thoughts do creep in. Then I say, “OK, what do I do about that at this moment? What does that mean?” The best way for me to handle that is to bring myself back and do the best that I can. And that’s something that I tried to remind myself of constantly. I think it’d be foolish of me to pretend that it’s not there; instead, I recognize it and I move myself toward something that’s more productive and in the moment.
LYING FOUR: It occurs to me that your position heading into the last round of Second Stage wasn’t so different than where you were coming out of the first round at First Stage: you were playing great, and you had to know that you’d be in good shape if you took care of business. But you played much better the second time around. So what was the difference in the final round of Second Stage, compared to the second round at First Stage?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: Both times, I was somewhat comfortable, I guess. At Second Stage, I just handled it better. I was able to play a good round, regardless of being comfortable. I actually never looked at a leaderboard all week at Second Stage. I knew it wasn’t going to help me play better; it wasn’t going to help me focus on the next shot any better. It was just going to bring more tentativeness; I was just going to think about what it meant even more. So I didn’t even look at a leaderboard. And I think that helped me. I just treated the final round as another day of golf. My caddie is a buddy of mine, and he really helped me to dial in my process and just focus on each shot. I told him before the final round, “No different than the first three days. Let’s do our jobs to the best of our abilities. We’re gonna do our jobs, every shot.” That was my mindset, and I think my mindset at the second round of First Stage was more like, “Let’s do our job when we need to.” I didn’t really say it that way, but there were some times where maybe I forgot to think about the wind a little bit, or I made little mental mistakes that kept me from shooting a good round.
LYING FOUR: What’s your mindset now? You know you’ve got conditional status already, but everybody would like to improve that in Finals. Is it helpful to know you’ve already got status locked down, or is a little bit anxious having to sit around and wait for Finals to get started?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: I was comfortable for a couple of days after Second Stage; I kind of let it settle. But I’m staying hungry. Something that I think about is that I can go to Final Stage and play really well. I’m just trying to stay hungry, and stay focus on what I can control from day to day. I’ve got a pretty good plan for the next few weeks before Finals, which gives me some time to rest but also time to get after it. It’s definitely antsy, because you want to get out there and get it over with and know what status you have, but at the end of the day, I’m really at peace. Regardless of whether I get more status than I have right now, I know that wherever I’m playing next year, I just have to play good golf. If I’m playing Monday qualifiers all year next year, then I need to do that to be best of my ability; and if I’m playing every event with full status, then I need to do that to the best of my ability. I just need to be wherever my feet are. That’s how I’m thinking about it. I just know that for me to play well at Finals, I need to stay focused on what I can control and what I can do best — and that’s focusing on today, focusing on tomorrow, and staying ready for when Final Stage gets here.
LYING FOUR: What’s your plan between now and Finals? Are you practicing a lot, playing a lot…?
STEPHEN FRANKEN: Florida Elite Golf Tour has two mini-tour events down at Orange County the next two weeks. So I’m getting some competitive rounds in at the site of Final Stage, down in Florida where there’s a little warmer weather. Then I’ll head back up to North Carolina or Thanksgiving, and take off Wednesday through Saturday. The next week I’ll head down to Pinehurst to do some practicing at a club where I’m a member, work with my coach a little bit, take some time, and just hang out with people who encourage me and support me. My practice isn’t going to look much different. After that, I’ll be pretty prepared to come back down. I will have seen the course multiple times and will know what I need to do.
. . .
All photos: credit North Carolina State Athletics
You might also enjoy reading…