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debtfreeinthree · 7 years

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How to Get Fabulous Makeup Without Spending a Fortune

When I first decided that I wanted to pay off my loans early, I realized I needed to cut costs. Everywhere. That included my makeup and skincare products. Gone were the days of going to Sephora every time I wanted a new lip color, in came drugstore makeup.

Growing up I was always envious of girls with designer lip glosses and eyeshadows, so it felt amazing once I started buying the brands I once coveted.

But spending so much money on makeup seemed frivolous once I realized how much I owed on my student loans, and many people claimed that you could find the same quality for cheap. If that was true, then why was I spending so much money?

Unfortunately, I haven’t entirely converted to drugstore makeup, but that doesn’t mean I’m OK with buying full-price products. There are ways to save when you’re shopping at Sephora or Ulta.

Do Tons of Research

Anytime I’m in the market for a new eyeliner or lipstick, I go to the number one place to read reviews: MakeUpAlley.com. You have to register there to see the reviews, but it’s so worth it.

For example, if I want to get a new tinted moisturizer, I’ll go there, click on Product Reviews, Tinted Moisturizer and search. I can instantly sort the options based on price, number of reviews and average rating. Usually, I do it by the number of reviews because if someone’s rated an item five starts once, it’ll be the highest rated.

Once I’ve found a few I want to learn more about, I click on the links and read the individual reviews. I like knowing if a foundation made someone with oily skin break out more or if the facial sunscreen left a white cast. Reading lots of reviews makes me prepared to actually go to the store and start shopping.

MakeUpAlley includes both drugstore and high-end brands in their reviews, so you can easily see if there’s a CoverGirl tinted moisturizer that works as well as the Nars or Laura Mercier. I love that! Who wants to spend more money for the same product?

Find Duplicates

Sometimes when I find a high-end product I really like, I still don’t want to splurge on it, especially if it’s something non-essential like setting powder or eyeshadow. I’d rather save my coins for foundation or eyeliner, something I use every time I put on makeup.

So if I have a product in mind, I’ll go to Temptalia, a blog that does makeup reviews and finds duplicates (or dupes). Most of the time, the dupes are cheaper versions of the same product. Temptalia writes about how the two are different, and she’ll rate how close the drugstore version is to its high-end twin.

Here’s an example. I looked up MAC Ruby Woo and found a bunch of dupes. Temptalia recommends the Maybelline Very Cherry – and even shows how it’s $9.51 cheaper than MAC and matches Ruby Woo 94% – what a win!

Seriously, if you’re not looking at drugstore duplicates, you’re really missing out.

Try Before You Buy

If you haven’t found a drugstore version of the makeup you like, it’s ok to get it from Sephora or Ulta. Sometimes, quality is more expensive. But before you splurge on $50 foundation, try a sample of it. Nowadays, I always get samples before I buy makeup because I want to see how it works on my skin away from the bright lights of Sephora. I also like samples because you can make sure your skin doesn’t have a bad reaction to it.

Sephora’s employees are super nice about letting people take samples, but the people at Ulta can be a little hesitant about it. Still, it’s better to get a sample before you buy something you don’t like. Too many people end up not returning something, so that’s why I recommend getting a sample first.

Wait for Sales

Ulta and Sephora rarely have sales or coupons, so definitely stock up when they do. Sometimes I’ll even buy my favorite NARS foundation when it hasn’t yet run out because I don’t want to wait and miss the sale. Sephora’s sales are in April and November, while Ulta always has some around the holidays.

Join the email list so you’ll be notified when it happens. Ulta also has weekly coupons you can use on their cheaper products, which is also a great deal.

Join the Rewards Program

Both Ulta and Sephora have a rewards program that is free to join, so definitely sign up for that if you haven’t already. You can get free gifts on your birthday – I’ve gotten a mini free NARS lipstick from Sephora that was perfect for my skin tone and a travel-size Fresh cleanser. Plus, it makes it easier to return items if they’re linked to your card.

Sometimes Sephora has special deals where they’ll double how many points you earn with each purchase. Since Sephora’s rewards are actually super valuable, this is also a good time to buy anything you need.

I always wait to use my Sephora rewards until I’m 100% sure I want the product. Sometimes I’ll have enough to redeem for a special gift, but there’s nothing I actually like. But if I’m patient, eventually I’ll find something I like.

Also, if you shop online at Sephora.com, you can usually get extra samples and offers if you spend more than a certain amount. You can find this in the Beauty Offers section.

Check the Sale Section

Both stores have an in-store and online sale section that can have great stuff if you poke around. I’ve gotten good deals from their clearance area before too. Plus, you can usually sample the goods at Sephora so you’ll know if you’re getting a good deal or a crappy product.

My Favorite Budget Beauty Buys

Nowadays, about half of my makeup comes from Sephora and half comes from Target or Amazon. I research carefully before deciding if I want to splurge or if I can save a few bucks. I rarely buy new makeup, so it’s always a big deal when I need to replace something. I’m really confident in my recommendation, so here’s a list of my favorite budget beauty items:

Real Techniques Brushes

A good makeup brush is almost more important than the makeup itself, so I’ve always strived for quality when it comes to my brushes. The great news about Real Techniques is that their brushes are affordable AND highly rated.

I’ve slowly replaced most of my brushes with Real Techniques. If you wash them regularly with gentle soap and cold water, they’ll last forever.

I also save money because as you can see, I don’t own a ton of their brushes – just the blush and foundation brush. I still have an eyeshadow brush from EcoTools that I use, but when it starts to fade, I’ll replace it with a Real Techniques.

They work well, distribute color evenly and last forever. Just make sure to keep them away from your dogs, who might think your eyeshadow brush is a small chew stick.

Cost: Ranges from $3-$8 per brush on Amazon

Wet n Wild Color Icon Collection Eye Shadow Trio in Silent Treatment

This is my favorite eyeshadow palette. I can layer the colors to create a sophisticated look, and they hold up throughout the day.

I would recommend this to anyone who doesn’t want to splurge on the Naked palette but still wants a few good neutrals to wear. Did I mention it was less than $3?

Plus, since I travel a lot, I can fit this easily in my makeup bag. It holds up throughout the day (even better when I layer eyeshadow primer underneath it). Even though I have a bigger palette now, I still reach for this one when I’m in a hurry.

Cost: $2.99 at Walgreens

L’Oreal Voluminous Original Mascara (Waterproof)

For a while, I was buying my mascara at Sephora, but I went on MakeUpAlley (duh) and this mascara had great reviews. It’s held up really well and doesn’t run like other drugstore mascaras I’ve tried. I get the waterproof since my eyes get teary, but I think the regular version also does well.

Cost: $7.99 at Ulta

What are your best tips for saving on makeup and skincare? Share your favorite tips below!

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How to Get Fabulous Makeup Without Spending a Fortune was originally published on Debt Free After Three

#beauty #budget #drugstore makeup #makeup #maybelline #nyx

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senelkins-blog · 7 years

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NEW YORK TIMES. FEBRUARY 2017.

SENATOR ELKINS DID NOT ASK TO BE A BELLWETHER. At no point in his prodigious career did he ever ask for the mantle of prophet or did he demand the cardboard sign of an apocalyptic herald. Instead, his thirty-plus years of dedication to the conservative cause gradually transformed him into a tough love advocate for its transformation. His devotion to the right-wing has pushed him into battles with everyone from his own party to each branch of the government —— federal, state, and local levels, too. His image is one of a protector, if not necessarily a cage-fighter. He hearkens back to a different age of politics (one that he suspects never truly existed) when good men got their hands dirty behind close doors and while wearing gloves. The word integrity comes to mind, though it may perhaps be a partisan twist of the term. He does the right thing, even if that thing is announcing —— unflinchingly —— the impending demise of his own movement.

November 9th, 2016. The senator gives his final public speech of the year. At the time, no one suspected that he would disappear behind the scenes well into the new year. His ghost-like presence on the campaign grew gradually more public until the very last minute; his final speech was every bit what would have been expected. However, no one —— not even members of the Solis campaign itself —— could have predicted that the godfather of the party would seemingly turn his back in their darkest hour. In that speech, which some of his long-time enemies regard as infamous, he concluded by paying homage to Barry Goldwater.

“Offer a choice, not an echo,” the senator repeats to me. His home in Raleigh is every bit what one would expect: we sit on a massive wraparound porch; his wife handed me a cold glass of sweet tea with a wedge of lemon before disappearing in her scarf to the garden; there are a couple of grandchildren chasing each other along the edge of a cornfield in the front yard; the sounds of the city are just far enough away to emphasis that of a tractor somewhere in the distance; the senator’s mint-condition 1953 F-100 sits in the driveway. I sit in awe of my surroundings, aware of the depth to which the senator’s carefully crafted image goes.

“Voters want change, and that’s a fact. Even when things are good, they ain’t satisfied. They want better. They deserve better, and they know it. A lot of politicians would tell you off the record that the people are dumb, and their attention just ain’t long enough to keep track of four years of work. But, that’s plainly wrong. They know —— they sense it in their guts without having to pick up a copy of the Post. America is more than a place, you know. It’s a state of mind, it’s a place in the heart. It’s an ideal that voters expect us to strive toward. Do we?”

He lets the question hang in the air and, at the time, I wonder if he recalls my original question. A few minutes earlier, I brought up a recent topic from an interview he allowed in his Hill office. Deterioration of the Republican party, he had said. Everyone from the RNC chair to the House Minority Leader have been forced to comment, and they all say the same thing: he’s working on it. The phrase has become synonymous with Senator Elkins over the years; when he gets to work on something, be it a vintage car or an improbable slog uphill and back into power, the work tends to be fruitful. But, rather than hashing through the how, I want to know the why.

“Right after we lose our way, we do.” He continues abruptly. The illusion of distraction comes across as he leans forward in his rocking chair to wave at a grandchild who has ducked toward the porch —— presumably for a glass of the tea, though I later see her rush outside with a model dump truck with working wheels which the senator says he hand-painted last Christmas. We take a break from the interview to go help the little girl load the back of the toy with dirt from Mrs. Elkin’s garden.

It is here that he really elaborates on his thoughts. I realize that I get real answers on his terms, usually as a product of a roundabout discussion that leaves the questions I fed him untouched to the point of frustration. Still, the senator’s home life is a fascinating look into who he is as a person. For a politician so paradoxically impersonal, even the way he helps his wife pull weeds tells a small story about who he is in Washington.

“The Republican party ain’t smart anymore. Emotions are a powerful political tool, be we’ve been using them right poorly as of late. Good ole McCain was destined to lose, going up against all the hopey-changey stuff.” He pauses to wink at me. “But, it’s been bad ever since then. Romney was out of touch. Solis was … a miscalculation.”

The Carolina soil under my nails is dark and wet; Mrs. Elkin’s tomatoes are beautiful.

“We went back to the Fifties, I think. We offered voters two shades of the same color, and they went with the one that did it best. Frankly, the conservative vision has become watered-down, weak, too indecisive to appeal to the average voter. They see a bunch of rich [jerks] in suits vying for a spot on some wealthy donor’s lap. It’s sickening, and people from Coal Country and the Delta and even the suburban Triangle can see that. Theresa Wright should not have won. She’s not as charismatic as Barack Obama, she offered herself as a lite version of him, and everything about her screamed centrism.” He clears his throat, and the sound is intentionally ugly. “We’re picking up the piece right now. I can’t figure out for the life of me how we were so off.”

This sounds like an aside. Can’t sounds more like paint when he says it.

“Conservatism looks like elitism these days. I want to take it back to the little people, and do it quick. The Dems have abandoned mom and pop and Joe and Suzy with even more zeal than we have, and it’s gonna become a race back to the trailer park once the midterms wipe them out.”

I ask over barbecue sandwiches if he truly believes that there will be Republican majorities in 2018.

“Absolutely. I like the word deterioration. I also like the word regeneration. I got things in the works, you know. Ever since Obama, we’ve been trying to make ourselves palatable. We like to play to the center as much as our base, and we went a little too far during the campaign. Not enough red meat. Not enough contrast. Wright is leading everyone into the wrong, and I can feel it like an ulcer. The people know when they’re being duped, and they know when Washington don’t care about them. Am I waiting for her to make a wrong move? Yes, I sure as hell am. When she does, we’ll show the nation that we ain’t an echo —— of anything, of anyone. People want something to believe in, and they want to believe in change. More than anything else, they want solid and real choices.”

by Gia Saab.

#OKAY !!! a) i did not proof read #b) i made up a reporter lmao #c) i have no idea what this is other than a response to an ask #( graphic. )

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perfectzablog · 5 years

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How Selective Empathy Can Chip Away At Civil Society

Militia leader Ammon Bundy, famous for leading an armed standoff in Oregon, had a tender moment in November of last year. He recorded a Facebook post saying that perhaps President Trump’s characterization of the migrant caravan on the U.S.-Mexico border was somewhat broad. Maybe they weren’t all criminals, he said. “What about those who have come here for reasons of need?”

Bundy did not say he was breaking with Trump. He just asked his followers to put themselves in the shoes of “the fathers, the mothers, the children” who came to escape violence. It was a call for a truce grounded in empathy, the kind you might hear in a war zone, say, or an Easter Sunday sermon. Still, it was met with a swift and rageful response from his followers, so overwhelming that within days, Bundy decided to quit Facebook.

In an earlier era, Bundy’s appeal might have resonated. But he failed to tune in to a critical shift in American culture — one that a handful of researchers have been tracking, with some alarm, for the past decade or so. Americans these days seem to be losing their appetite for empathy, especially the walk-a-mile-in-someone’s-shoes Easter Sunday morning kind.

When I was growing up in the ’70s, empathy was all the rage. The term was coined in 1908; then, social scientists and psychologists started more aggressively pushing the concept into the culture after World War II, basically out of fear. The idea was that we were all going to kill each other with nuclear weapons — or learn to see the world through each other’s eyes. In my elementary school in the 1970s, which was not progressive or mushy in any way, we wrote letters to pretend Russian pen pals to teach us to open our hearts to our enemies.

And not just enemies. Civil rights activists had also picked up on the idea. Kenneth Clark, a social scientist and civil rights activist, half-jokingly proposed that people in power all be required to take an “empathy pill” so they could make better decisions. His hope was that people with power and privilege would one day inhabit the realities of people without power, not from the safe, noblesse oblige distance of pity, but from the inside. An evolved person was an empathetic person, choosing understanding over fear.

Then, more than a decade ago, a certain suspicion of empathy started to creep in, particularly among young people. One of the first people to notice was Sara Konrath, an associate professor and researcher at Indiana University. Since the late 1960s, researchers have surveyed young people on their levels of empathy, testing their agreement with statements such as: “It’s not really my problem if others are in trouble and need help” or “Before criticizing somebody I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.”

Konrath collected decades of studies and noticed a very obvious pattern. Starting around 2000, the line starts to slide. More students say it’s not their problem to help people in trouble, not their job to see the world from someone else’s perspective. By 2009, on all the standard measures, Konrath found, young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent!

It’s strange to think of empathy – a natural human impulse — as fluctuating in this way, moving up and down like consumer confidence. But that’s what happened. Young people just started questioning what my elementary school teachers had taught me.

Their feeling was: Why should they put themselves in the shoes of someone who was not them, much less someone they thought was harmful? In fact, cutting someone off from empathy was the positive value, a way to make a stand.

So, for example, when the wife of white nationalist Richard Spencer recently told BuzzFeed he had abused her, the question debated on the lefty Internet was: Why should we care that some woman who chose to ally herself with a nasty racist got herself hurt? Why waste empathy on that? (Spencer, in a court filing, denies all her allegations.)

The new rule for empathy seems to be: reserve it, not for your “enemies,” but for the people you believe are hurt, or you have decided need it the most. Empathy, but just for your own team. And empathizing with the other team? That’s practically a taboo.

And it turns out that this brand of selective empathy is a powerful force.

In the past 20 years, psychologists and neurologists have started to look at how empathy actually works, in our brains and our hearts, when we’re not thinking about it. And one thing they’ve found is that “one of the strongest triggers for human empathy is observing some kind of conflict between two other parties,” says Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at Indiana University who studies empathy. “Once they take the side, they’re drawn into that perspective. And that can lead to very strong empathy and too strong polarization with something you only see this one side and not the other side any longer.”

A classic example is the Super Bowl, or any Auburn, Alabama game.

But these days in the news, examples come up every day: the Kavanaugh hearings, emergency funding for a wall, Spike Lee walking out of the Oscars, the Barr report, Kirstjen Nielsen, every third thing on Twitter.

Researchers who study empathy have noticed that it’s actually really hard to do what we were striving for in my generation: empathize with people who are different than you are, much less people you don’t like. But if researchers set up a conflict, people get into automatic empathy overdrive, with their own team. This new research has scrambled notions of how empathy works as a force in the world. For example, we often think of terrorists as shockingly blind to the suffering of innocents. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an “excess of empathy. They feel the suffering of their people.”

Breithaupt called his new book The Dark Sides of Empathy, because there’s a point at which empathy doesn’t even look like the kind of universal empathy I was taught in school. There is a natural way that empathy gets triggered in the brain — your pain centers light up when you see another person suffering. But out in the world it starts to look more like tribalism, a way to keep reinforcing your own point of view and blocking out any others.

Breithaupt is alarmed at the apparent new virus of selective empathy and how it’s deepening divisions. If we embrace it, he says, then “basically you give up on civil society at that point. You give up on democracy. Because if you feed into this division more and you let it happen, it will become so strong that it becomes dangerous.”

We can’t return to my generation’s era of empathy innocence, because we now know too much about how the force actually works. But we can’t give up on empathy either, because empathy is “90 percent what our life is all about,” Breithaupt says. “Without it, we would be just alone.”

In his book Breithaupt proposes an ingenious solution: give up on the idea that when we are “empathizing” we are being altruistic, or helping the less fortunate, or in any way doing good. What we can do when we do empathy, proposes Fritz, is help ourselves. We can learn to see the world through the eyes of a migrant child and a militia leader and a Russian pen pal purely so we can expand our own imaginations, and make our own minds richer. It’s selfish empathy. Not saintly, but better than being alone.

How Selective Empathy Can Chip Away At Civil Society published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

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bisoroblog · 5 years

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How Selective Empathy Can Chip Away At Civil Society

And it turns out that this brand of selective empathy is a powerful force.

A classic example is the Super Bowl, or any Auburn, Alabama game.

How Selective Empathy Can Chip Away At Civil Society published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

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thisislizheather · 6 years

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2018 Resolutions Revisited

This is one of my favourite posts to write, but I feel like you know that already. Most people throw away their resolutions after a few months, but I love to keep very specific track of everything I try to do throughout the year, so here we go. Here’s how 2018 went for me.

Read at least one book per season.

For winter, I read Jen Kirkman’s I Can Barely Take Care of Myself and Lindy West’s Shrill. For spring, I read Rachel Dratch’s Girl Walks Into A Bar…, David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day and Jim Gaffigan’s Food: A Love Story. For summer, I read The Duplass Brothers’ Like Brothers, Mike Reiss’ Springfield Confidential, Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want To Talk About Race and Penny Marshall’s My Mother Was Nuts. For autumn, I read Bill Cunningham’s Fashion Climbing. So I guess you can say YEAH, I crushed this resolution.

Go to the gym or do some kind of physically strenuous activity at least ten times a month.

January - 8 times

February - 2 times

March - 3 times

April - 9 times

May - 13 times

June - 4 times

July - 0 times

August - 9 times

September - 5 times

October - 3 times

November - 5 times

December - 23 times (hahah, can you tell I was trying to be extra impressive this month?)

So that means that I worked out for 23% of the days of the year, which is better than 2017 (which was 17%) so that makes me feel great. I know it’s just a number and I shouldn’t care about things like that, but I do so what can you do. Going to strive for an even better number next year.

Juice at least five times a month.

January - 24 times

February - 6 times

March - 6 times

April - 1 time

May - 15 times

June - 8 times

July - 3 times

August - 5 times

September - 1 time

October - 1 time

November - 0 times

December - 25 times

Okay so there were five months when this didn’t happen. But I mean… look at January and May and December. I feel like I go nuts with the juices every five months or so. Weird. Still love this resolution.

At least once a month, go to a nice restaurant that you've never been to before.

January - Fuck! Nowhere!

February - The Wilcox (the lobster poutine was nuts) & BlueBlood Steakhouse (good, but definitely overrated)

March - Martina (killer pizza), The Spotted Pig (the gnudi is obviously a dream but with all the terrible things that went on here, it just felt wrong to be any kind of a fan of this place), Butcher Bar (definitely not as great as Astoria blogs tell you it is)

April - Prime by Jean Georges (crazy overrated/overpriced), Emeril’s Delmonico Steakhouse (so, so great - this man can do no wrong)

May - Javelina (so good!), L’Artusi (literally the best pasta I’ve ever had in NYC)

June - Bocca (only okay)

July - Astor Court (lovely as hell)

August - The Russian Tea Room (overrated, average food)

September - Cherry Point (so, so good)

October - Nowhere!

November - Dante (quite good), Del Frisco’s (really good meat), Rainbow Room Pop Up Bar (incredible), Ofrenda (best quesadillas), Pil Pil (really good tapas)

December - The Spaniard (crazy good burger), Le Rivage (average, though the snails were good)

There were only two months when this didn’t happen! That’s pretty sweet.

Take Baby Dog on at least two dog adventures per month (this could include going to Central Park, Astoria Park, dog dates, etc.)

Oh boy, was this an eager resolution. I did take her to Central Park as much as I could when the weather was warm, but of course I could’ve taken her more. She also went to some dog friendly cafes, so that was good too. If I keep this resolution for 2019, I’ll definitely revise it to be a seasonal aspiration instead of a twice-monthly one.

Properly go on a date with Nathan at least once a month.

I kind of can’t even believe we did this every single month except September (which he travelled for most of), sometimes even a few times a month! It was great! I could list everything we did here but that seems… like something a crazy person would do (said the person who counts her juices & workouts on a daily basis).

Learn how to meditate.

I think I did? For a few months I tried to do it and it seems like something I need a lot more practice with. Also, maybe I was doing it wrong, but I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to get out of it. Obviously it’s great for a lot of people, I’m not trying to be a dick, but I think I was just missing something about it in general.

Once a month, write a letter to someone that I haven’t seen for awhile.

Hahahah, awww. Not a chance in hell. I did this once and I’m pretty sure I mailed it to the wrong address.

Once a season, do a week-long juice cleanse or follow a completely raw food diet.

Again, NOPE! Too hard.

By the end of the year, stop waitressing and start editing full time again.

I was reeeeally close to having this done in June, but then backed out of it. Lots of reasons. Some personal ones just for me to know. But I’ll keep working towards this goal. I happen to not completely hate waitressing, so until I do, I think I’ll keep doing it.

Some other notable things that happened: I was on Nathan’s podcast Positive Anger twice, which was really, really fun. I started doing my monthly roundup posts (May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December) that I think I’ll continue to do. So many great photos were taken (which reminds me that I need to make the 2018 photo book sometime soon). My attempt at Halloween domination continued. Went on some memorable vacations to Las Vegas and Vermont. We celebrated my dad’s 95th birthday. My grandmother turned 100.

2018 was kind of a good year, I think. It’s so hard to tell when you’re looking back at it. It wasn’t the best or worst, but it’s over now so we can only look forward. Definitely going to try and make this one a wicked one. Thank you so much for continuing to read and encourage all of the nonsense that I post on here, it means more to me than anyone will ever know.

#resolutions #resolutions revisted #2018 resolutions revisited #this is liz heather #Liz Heather

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stoneybrookgolf · 6 years

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Remember this young man – 17 years old and making his Tour Debut this week

Akshay Bhatia, 17, full of swagger and set for PGA Tour debut at Valspar

At the Walker Cup practice session in December, U.S. captain Nathaniel Crosby left junior golfer Akshay Bhatia with one final piece of advice ahead of the Jones Cup Invitational in late January.

“He said, ‘You better be in the final group on Sunday so I don’t have to chase you around,’ ” Bhatia recalled.

Bhatia, 17, did better than that. He defeated Georgia sophomore Davis Thompson on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff at Ocean Forest Golf Club on St. Simons Island, Ga., after the final round was canceled due to rain.

“I’m just sorry he ended up driving five hours to watch me play one hole,” Bhatia said of Crosby’s trip.

The victory at one of amateur golf’s most prestigious invitationals should shoot Bhatia, Golfweek’s No. 1-ranked junior and the reigning AJGA player of the year, even higher on Crosby’s “watch list” for the Walker Cup, which will be played Sept. 7-8 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England.

“Oh my gosh, it would be a dream come true,” Bhatia of Wake Forest, N.C., said of a chance to represent the 10-man U.S. side. “You just don’t get that opportunity too many times. Just to be part of the practice session was unreal.”

But Bhatia was even more overcome by the fact that joining a prestigious list of Jones Cup champions – including Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas and Beau Hossler – also earned him a berth in the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic this fall.

“I’ve worked so hard, and that’s one of my dreams to play a PGA Tour event while still in high school,” Bhatia said.

Bhatia won’t have to wait much longer to fulfill his dream of playing in a PGA Tour event. Bhatia tells Golfweek he has accepted a sponsorship exemption into the Valspar Championship on March 21-24 at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course in Palm Harbor, Fla.

Bhatia has played in Thursday and Monday PGA Tour Qualifiers, further confirmation that he intends to skip college and turn professional in January when he turns 18.

“It’s made me stronger mentally,” Bhatia said of trying to earn one of four available spots at qualifying. “Once I get through one, I think I’ll make a bunch more. I’m just lacking experience.”

He showed he’s more than capable of holding his own against the game’s top amateurs. Beating a field consisting of top collegians at the Jones Cup in his first start back after nursing a back injury suffered in late November during the AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions helps validate Bhatia’s decision to forgo college.

As much as Bhatia would like to make the Walker Cup team – and he plans to play the European and British Amateurs this summer in preparation for links golf – he sees it merely as a stop along his journey to making the PGA Tour. He has tunnel vision, his eyes locked in on a pro golf career.

George Gankas, one of his team of instructors, described Bhatia as mature beyond his years and noted a surge in his confidence and self-belief. Gankas recounted a telling conversation he had with Bhatia at the U.S. Amateur in August.

“He said, ‘I guess I have to start acting like ‘The Man’ because I’m pretty much ‘The Man’ among the juniors,’ ” Gankas said. “Since that point, his walk is different, the way he talks is different and the way he carries himself is different. It’s not in a cocky way; he’s just a more confident player.

“He’ll win a tournament and ask, ‘What needs to be better?’ How many kids his age do that? He’s trying to figure a way to get better to win by more.”

Bhatia, who crushed the field at the AJGA’s Polo Golf Junior Classic by 10 strokes in June, has a home putting studio and a TrackMan, and practices at TPC Wakefield playing two-ball, best-ball and from the front tees to ingrain shooting low scores and two-ball, worst ball and dropping a ball behind trouble (such as a patch of trees) from a par-3 distance away and trying to make no worse than par as games to improve his scrambling skills. He is a lanky lefty weighing only 129 pounds, but he has the flexibility of Gumby.

“Every time I put him on my Instagram everyone goes, ‘Eat a cheeseburger, dude!’” Gankas said. “He says he’s trying to get fat, but he can’t do it.”

Bhatia may be thin as a rail, but pound-for-pound he’s maximizing his swing speed, averaging 119 mph, and recently sent Gankas a video where he hit 124.8 mph.

“I couldn’t even believe it,” said Bhatia, who credits the gain in velocity to his workouts and is striving for his swing speed and weight to equal the same figure.

As for his upcoming PGA Tour debut, he already arranged to play a practice round with Spaniard Jon Rahm and has his sights set on meeting Australian Jason Day, another of his heroes. And Bhatia’s not shy about how he might do. When asked if he thought he could win, he said, “I don’t see why not. As long as I can treat it like it’s just another event. It’s all about mindset, really.”

SOURCE: Golfweek

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nationalgolfclub · 6 years

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He showed he’s more than capable of holding his own against the game’s top amateurs.