Hunter Mahan Starts Effort To Kickstart Career With 68

On the list of questions I get from readers, Hunter Mahan has recently pushed aside Nick Watney and Anthony Kim atop the list of "where has he gone?"

Thankfully Tim Rosaforte at Golf World answers what has happened to Mahan's game, what he's doing to repair his confidence and what the prospects are for the one-time 4th ranked player in the world and 2014 Ryder Cupper.

Most prominently, Mahan's switched to instructor Chris O'Connell.

Mahan and O’Connell were connected through Tom Dundon, a mutual friend and developer whose golf interests include Trinity Forest in Dallas and Topgolf. O’Connell had been following Mahan’s career since he finished second in the 2002 U.S. Amateur and won the Haskins and Hogan Awards before wrapping up his college career at Oklahoma State in 2003. Seeing Mahan struggle, Dundon was persistent that O’Connell was the correct fit.

“I don’t expect Hunter and Kuch to look alike, but they both do specific things critical in the area of delivering the club into the ball,” O’Connell said. “I told [Mahan] at first, 'I don’t want to teach you anything you didn’t know or do. I simply want to put back what you were doing when you were highly regarded as one of best hitters out there.' I would not want to do anything else but just restore him.”

The restoration process involves rebuilding confidence. Mahan missed seven straight cuts in the early stages of the transition, but he's coming off a T-16 at the Wyndham Championship that included back-to-back 65s. He jumped from 791st to 731st in the world at the Wyndham, and goes into the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship ranked 748th.

Mahan opened with a 68 in round one of the Nationwide Children's Hospital Classic.