Question 1: Tell us more about yourself, your junior golf, and where you are right now.

Answer: Hello there my name is Adam Villanueva, I am originally from a small town in South Texas named Kenedy. Now I have, successfully, moved to Austin. I am currently signed and committed to play D1 golf at The University of Texas at Austin starting in the fall of 2025. My golf journey began when I was only 5 years old, growing up without a local golf course or any practice area was definitely a challenge despite my desire to fulfill my ambition to play at a high level. Our closest golf course was a commute of 30 minutes(and sometimes more) to practice. While dirt patches and windy conditions were the only things I had to learn the game from, I advanced my golf game to the sky and strived to play in junior golf tournaments around the local area, which often would be expensive. This would eventually be the beginning of a new awakening of golf. 

Q2: How do you currently track your stats and data during practice and tournaments? Do you use specific tools, apps, or systems?

Answer: How I track my stats and data for golf is in my opinion very scattered. I have stats for only tee shots, maybe just shots that didn’t feel comfortable, but I love to keep a small journal of stats that one day I can go back and learn from to improve my swing and most importantly, decision-making.

Q3: What are the most important metrics you focus on to improve your game? How have these evolved as you've grown as a player?

Answer: I believe the small important stats to keep track of is Mental Score. This is a concept of what Dr. Cook explains as SFT: " See it, Feel it, Trust it". This is a score that focuses on your mental execution of each shot, exposing your flaw as a number. For example, if you are playing a Par 4 and you make an amazing up and down from the short right bunker to save par. Now let's say that the reason why you hit your second shot in the bunker is because you hit a club that you knew that didn’t have the possibility to get there and you muscle it and pushed it right. These are examples of mental flaws, that one shot would be a deduction from your score. Your actual score is 4, but your mental score is truly 3 because of the one shot that you didn’t fully commit to the SFT routine. 

Q4: You are ranked very well in many junior golf ranking systems(JGS, AJGA, etc.). What is your opinion on these rankings? Are they fair? Where can they be improved? Which one is the most fair and why?

Answer: I am aware that I am ranked very high in many rankings. I would still love to improve them, but I like to think of rankings as a category of who plays the most tournaments. Golfers who play a lot of tournaments often earn a lot of points. Even though they didn’t win or get in the top page of the leaderboard, when all of these points are added up, they would still beat a player who had only played a few but placed very well. So in my opinion, I really don’t like the junior ranking system. 

Q5: Take us through your typical training schedule. With more freedom and resources, how do you want to improve this in college?

Answer: My overall day routine consists of waking up early for workouts, then attend school for almost a quarter of the day, then when I am able to practice without any interference. I tend to practice around 5 to 6 hours on the golf course. Therefore, in the morning, I prep by getting some good rest and eating and drinking plenty of well-balanced meals to keep my body strong during the day. Then, going to the golf course, I tend to work on a part of the game which I struggled the most specifically from my small journal full of mistakes. This is what I believe is disciplined training which makes or breaks most golfers. 

Q6: What about the University of Texas makes you most excited?

Answer: I think the most exciting part of going to UT is UT golf club, the amount of practice facilities and equipment that they have to offer is unlike anything I have ever seen. After a long morning of workouts and school, I can spend the rest of the afternoon grinding on whatever my heart desires. It only seems like a few more days before I’m there but I am very excited to be a part of such a great program.