<p>It was a lot of little things, much the way Tiger Woods makes a double bogey. Gets a little greedy off the tee and hits driver instead of putting a 3-wood in the fairway. Fades it just a little to much and ends up in the rough, three yards off the fairway with a bad angle to the green. </p>
<p>Instead of playing safe for the middle of the green, he takes a line at the pin, tucked away on an inaccessible mound. Hits it dead stiff, but the green is hard as a rock, the ball doesn’t check up, and trickles over the back edge. </p>
<p>Faced with a delicate downhill chip and fearful of running the ball past the hole, he leaves the third shot on the ledge above the hole. </p>
<p>Goes for broke on the 20 foot par put and runs it 10 feet past. Misses the putt coming back. Double-bogey.</p>
<p>Not a big mistake in the bunch. On another day, the same strategy could have produced a birdie.</p>
<p>That’s pretty much the way it went for Andi, Jr. Just a lot of little things adding up to a bad number on the scorecard. A little bit of miscalibration on the initial list. Mentally thinking about schools low on his list as safeties, when they weren’t. Applying to the same schools as every other great student from hot-stuff suburban high schools; got caught in a traffic jam. Some really, really bad advice from GCs in a couple of key areas. (They told him not to send a music tape; nobody noticed that Swarthmore requires it.) And, perhaps the unfortunate reality that schools can get kids with Andi, Jr.'s stats from the same kind of high schools and the same zip codes and the same nationally recognized music programs who don’t check the financial aid box.</p>
<p>The thing that really makes it difficult is that, had he taken a different club off the tee, I think Andi, Jr. could have gotten in Swarthmore and probably could have gotten a merit aid package at WU-Stl.</p>
<p>It’ll all work out in the end, if not this year, then next and someday it’ll just be a great story to tell the grandkids.</p>