reigning Athlete of the Year<\/a>\u00a0knew said he needed something special to climb back into the title chase.<\/p>\n“The guy in the lead (Gabriel Mainella) won it the year before me, so I knew he wasn’t going to collapse or anything like that,” he said. “I told myself I needed to have a pretty special round on the third round to get myself back in position.”<\/p>\n
He did exactly that, setting a new course record \u2014 an 8-under-par 63\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and putting himself within striking distance heading into the final round.<\/p>\n
“Afterwards it was more just shot by shot, keeping pace with him,” Shropshire said. “It was a battle right until the last hole. It was really fun.”<\/p>\n
Shropshire, who captured the Ontario Junior Boys title last year, said there was little added pressure despite returning as the defending champion.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the result really speaks volumes of where I got better or worse than last year,” he said. “The two of us had both won it before. There wasn’t a lot of nerves or pressure because we both won it before. It just turned out to be his day and not mine. It’s not a big deal. I congratulated him afterwards and talked to him after the round.”<\/p>\n
The biggest takeaway, he said, wasn’t the silver medal but the confidence he regained on the greens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I found a lot more self-belief in my putter this week that I’ve been missing the whole year,” Shropshire said. “Honestly, for my standards, I’ve had a pretty rough start to the year. This week was more just a confidence builder, especially with shooting that course record in the third round. It was pretty cool, and it’s something that just kind of kickstarts the year.”<\/p>\n
Shropshire, who will begin his collegiate career at the University of Michigan in August and is a member of Team Canada’s NextGen program, said the tournament served as an ideal tune-up before a challenging stretch of events.<\/p>\n
“This was kind of just seeing where your game’s at, making sure you get your confidence back up,” he said. “The next few weeks I have a couple really big tournaments, so this is a really nice start to that\u00a0stretch.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
His next stop will be the Ontario Amateur Championship, which begins Monday.<\/p>\n
“I have a couple days here at home, and then my buddy is going to be caddying for me this week, so we’re really excited,” he said.<\/p>\n
Shropshire is scheduled to report to Michigan on Aug. 18 and believes his game is stronger than it was a year ago despite the putting struggles that slowed his start to the season.<\/p>\n
“Every other part of my game I felt has improved,” he said. “I’ll give good props to the Team Canada program and our coaches. My swing has gotten to a point where it’s more stable and more consistent. Now that I’ve found this putting, I’m excited for the next month because I have all the confidence that I need to go and play better and get better results.”<\/p>\n
As he prepares for the next chapter of his golf career, the Patrick Fogarty Catholic Secondary School graduate\u00a0said the encouragement he receives from his hometown continues to motivate him.<\/p>\n
“I can’t say enough,” Shropshire said. “I feel like every week when I go out and play, my dad gets a text from someone we know saying they’re following me. It really does mean the world. Coming from a small town, it’s a big honour to represent it and give people something to follow and cheer for. I feel very grateful.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Coming from a small town, it’s a big honour to represent it and give people something to follow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-779074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}