By CHRISTOPHER TREMBLAY, Staff Sports Writer

Coming into the fall golf season, first year Bartlett High School Coach Alex Hetherman knows that he has himself a solid athlete in Adam Urato, but at this time he is not fully sure what he actually has in the sophomore on the golf course and to what extent.

 The second year Bartlett athlete began playing golf at the age of five at the urging of his father.

“My dad was into golf and thought that it would be a good idea for me to try the sport,” Urato said. Once I picked up the clubs I found it to my liking and have been doing it ever since. Golf is an individual game where I can be by myself while relying on my capabilities, not just physically but mentally.”

Although the Bartlett sophomore doesn’t recall all that much about when he first started playing the game, he has been told that he picked up the game rather quickly. At 10 he began playing in New England Pro Golf Association (NEPGA) tournaments and while things may have started of rough in the beginning because of his nerves he has gotten better thought the years the more he has played.

“In the early stages of playing NEPGA I was hitting the ball late and it was going all over the place; I needed to focus on getting around on the ball. I would get down on myself and that only made it worse, he said. “I have been playing baseball longer than golf, so I was hitting the ball like I was playing baseball. I started to improve my game by keeping my club square to the ball.”

Not only did the adjustments in his mechanics greatly help, Urato also got into the mindset that each shot was his last and eventually that also helped his game. He may not have been winning at the beginning, but he soon realized that focusing on himself and his game was much more important that what everyone else around him was doing.

Last fall as he entered the high school he was looking forward to playing golf with kids around his own age, but when tryouts came he found the nervousness return.

“I was definitely nervous, but I soon realized that I was one of the better golfers on the course and that I could help the team,” Urato recalls.

As a freshman last year, he was slated to play as the Indians’ number two golfer and that seemed to originally put a lot of pressure on the young athlete. Luckily for Urato his very first high school match was on a course (Blackstone National Golf Club) that he was very familiar with, and the nerves went flying out the window. 

Urato averaged around a 44 last fall on the courses, most of which he had never played on before. Not knowing a lot about the courses he was to play on, many very difficult in his mind, attributed to his inability on the greens and accounted for his mid 40’s score. 

As he gets ready to step on the courses for his second year he not only has confidence in his ability to take command of them, but he is also looking to be once again playing at the number two position, with the possibility of even taking control of the top spot.

“I am just going to go out and play my hardest while trying my best while focusing on myself and hopefully that’ll be enough to lower my average down to around a 42,” Urato said.

The sophomore is also going to take a different approach to his game this year, he is hoping to play smart with no more going for the risky shots and he definitely wants to stay away from the three shot putts.

“When I miss a putt that I think that I should have gotten it only makes things worse,” he said. “I was not a real good putter last year, so I worked on that aspect of my game extremely hard this summer to improve.”

As the season gets underway Urato is hoping that he can help Bartlett win more matches than they did last fall, while still having fun on the course; hoping that it doesn’t have any affect for his love of the game.