Golf instructor Joe Thiel is the 'Yoda' behind Peters' golf game

Ephrata senior Kenedee Peters calls the mind game going on in her head battle of Player 1 vs. Player 2.

Player 1, of course, is the good guy that says, “Good shot, you can make this.”

Player 2 is the little rat sitting your shoulder giggling at every mistake, “I told you you couldn’t make that.”

She once told me her game is about controlling Player 2, but the way she’s playing anymore I wonder if she hasn’t buried the little rat in a box out back of the house.

She won every tournament entered in 2017, including her second 2A state medalist at Indian Canyon Golf Course in Spokane. On the way, she set course records at Gamble Sands Golf Course (66), Lakeview Golf and Country Club (69) and Desert Aire Golf Course (70).

The Ephrata senior hit the ground running in her final high school season, coming off a summer where she finished 20th in the 56-golfer field at the U.S. Women's Open Sectional Qualifier, ninth at the IMG Junior World Qualifier, and made it to the semifinals of the PNGA Senior Amateurs.

Peters set the new course record at Highlander Golf Course in East Wenatchee in the first tournament of 2018 with a round of 64. She had it to minus-7, but bogeyed the final hole for a career-best round.

There’s no brag, no swag to what she does. It’s just Player 1 and the kid. “I just want to get better,” she told me after shooting 79 at Lakeview Golf & Country Club last week. She had to make a 20-foot putt on 18 to get in under 80, but she was still swinging on a day where 95 would have won.

As someone that gets to get a little closer than the average fan, I tend to get caught up game-day stuff and not the preparation. We forget just how many hours they work outside the lights, outside the lines, when no one’s watching, when it’s just them and the dream. That's where The Game comes from.

Kenedee tends to hold me to my A-Game, so when threw out the question, “Was today a matter of working on your mental game?” Meaning the weather’s cold, the wind's blowing and you’re gonna win anyway.

She just smiled, “I don’t work on anything on the course,” she said. “I just play the game.”

I get it.

The work is done on the driving range, the practice green, giving positive affirmation to that person in the mirror. The end result is what we see on the course.

She spends her spring and summer going back and forth to the west side to work with the swing doctor at Joe Thiel’s World Wide Golf School in Olympia. I don’t suspect Joe’s the kind of guy that puts a Band-Aid on any swing. They tear it down, they build it up one swing at a time.

Kenedee’s kind of like the Columbia Basin Luke Skywalker going to Yoda for the answers, and the lasers she shoots off the tee are the result of hours of work with a guy that teaches students from around the world.

Thiel’s been named the PGA’s teacher of the year three times. Golf Magazine’s had him on the country’s top 100 golf instructors list more than once. Thiel flies to Asia and teaches in Japan, China, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, instructing players on the Japan and European pro golf tours. He’s taught some of Japan’s best, including LPGA players Won Han, Kang Soo Yun and Se Ri Pak.

We’ll see if Yoda’s instruction leads to the next NCAA rising star and someone with LPGA dreams.

But for the time being, Kenedee Peters will test her game against some of the best high school players in Washington state this week during the Joe Lenburg Invitational at the Apple Tree Golf Course in Yakima. The field should include Class 4A medalist Cassie Kim of Davis and 2A state runner-up Morgan Baum from East Valley. Baum is the 2016 2A medalist, who held off Peters in a epic back nine battle at Columbia Point Golf Course, and Kim won the 4A state tournament (70-71-141) by six strokes last year.

It’ll be fun to see who’s Player 1 has it going in this early test of the best.

Rodney Harwood is a sports writer for the Columbia Basin Herald and can be reached at rharwood@columbiabasinherald.com