Unburdening Himself of Pressure, Bleier’s Game Strikes Lightning
Strong sophomore season has helped lift the Rams
Mike Brohard
The accolades were on paper.
He was the highest-ranked player ever to sign at Colorado State, holding a world junior position of No. 121. At 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, Christoph Bleier would not look out of place in the Colorado State football locker room, but he came to the Rams to play golf.
He had a string of strong finishes in European tournaments, and he can wield his driver as if he were carrying Mjölnir in his bag. The only setback – if one would like to consider it such – was the native of Linz, Austria somehow felt he had to prove he was worthy.
“It’s a little bit of experience. There were a lot of expectations on me, being the best-ranked recruit or whatever it was, so everyone was expecting me to play well,” Bleier said. “That got into my head a little bit to be honest. Now, I just play more freely. That’s the big difference.”
A huge difference. Not that his freshman season was bad by any stretch. He posted a respectable stroke average of 73.42 with a pair of top-10 finishes at tournaments. He was a major part of Colorado State qualifying for the NCAA Regional in 2022.
This, the sophomore season for the 22-year old, has been simply fantastic. The Rams head to the Auburn Regional as the event begins Monday, with Bleier playing a leading role as one of three players on the roster ranked in the top 150 by Golfstat – Davis Bryant at 47, Bleier at 126, Connor Jones sitting 147.
Some of the numbers suggest Bleier has had the best overall season. He leads the team in stroke average at 70.87, .10 ahead of Bryant. His six top-10 finishes lead the team, and his 19 rounds of par or better over the course of 30 is one shy of Davis’ 20, but his 12 rounds in the 60s lead Davis by one. He owns the team’s best round of the year, a 63, which he’s done twice. The most recent was on the final day of the Mountain West Championships, which gave him a share of the individual title at the end of regulation, dropping a one-hole playoff to Dylan Oyama of San Diego State.
To lead the team, Jones won two tournaments in the fall.
To the outside world, it would be fair to look at Colorado State at the outset, currently ranked No. 24 in the country, as a team with a Big Two and a strong roster to back them.
First-year coach Michael Wilson saw something else.
“I think he can be as good as he wants to be. I think he can play at the highest level of the game someday. He’s 22, but he’s young still,” Wilson said. “The thing I admire about him is he’s really self-aware. He craves feedback, even if it’s negative. I’ve seen that in most great players, they need that feedback because they know it makes them better. If he needs to go and work on something, he’s excited about that. He’s a hard worker and he has a lot of skin in the game, coming over to the United State to play and get a degree. He cares deeply.”
In a way, all Bleier needed to do was care less.
If you see the shot … Golf is so visual. If you see a shot you like, you feel comfortable with it, and when you feel comfortable, you feel confident.Christoph Bleier
About the score he was aiming for. About the aesthetics of his swing on a given day. What people thought of him and his game. Once he removed those items from his mental checklist, his season really took off. He had told Wilson he felt mechanical the first tourney of the year. He came back the next week at the Ram Masters at the Fort Collins Country Club and closed with a 63.
“A big part of it was mental last year. I feel like my game, my technique and everything is OK. There’s nothing I would say it really needs work because it’s bad, or that I don’t have the potential to get better,” Bleier said. “I feel everything is coming together now. I know what I have to improve, but my mental game has been better.
“I don’t feel any pressure anymore. My first year, I was thinking more about the score and that I wanted to contribute to the team. Now, it’s more I know I’m good and let’s see what happens. You never know if you’re going to have a good day or a bad day, but I know I’m good enough to contribute to the team and I don’t have to worry about the scores. It’s just going out there and having fun.”
Bryant, set to finish out his fifth season, is just a year older than his teammate, one who he finds engaging and funny. What he noticed right away was what everybody does.
A serious skillset.
“He has a lot of talent. Even when he first started last year, I thought he’s got a really good game,” Bryant said. “I think it just took him awhile to put it all together, and he’s figured out how to play better and play mentally, too. I think it’s been an adjustment. He knows if his putting is off to not get too down on himself and still put three good rounds together. If his driver is off, he knows how to put his game together to play well. What’s unique in our sport is every day there are different elements you have to adjust to, and he’s adapted really well.
“He's such a special talent.”
Bleier called getting to this point, where he’s consistent each week, a process. He recalled his junior days back home when he was just letting his game flow and taking each round as individual strokes. Coming to Colorado State, he felt he needed to add a little extra juice to his game. It just took him a while to figure out the added pressure was unnecessary for him to be successful.
Once he did, he said it felt like a switch was flipped. All’s been good since then.
As teammates, they don’t get to watch each other during rounds, but they do take particular interest in each other during practice. Wilson’s structure has been to add competition to everything, a tactic Bleier appreciates. He breaks down his sessions into three parts – the technical, variation on shot making and competition. Everything for him is competition.
Davis sees it in the results, as well as all the feedback the team has accumulated through 30 competitive rounds this campaign.
“Instead of shooting 75 this year, he’s shooting 72. Instead of shooting 72 or 73, he’s shooing 70 or under par,” Bryant said. “Consistency is one of the biggest factors I believe in college golf, because you have such a big body of work at this point of the season. There is so much data to look at with your driving, your approach, your short game, your putting. Having six top-10s versus two, he’s starting to figure it out. That gap between shooting 65 and 76 is now 65 and 72. He’s just matured and gotten used to college golf and how to play smarter.”
Smarter is relative when it comes to Bleier on the tee box.
He can do things there other players cannot. When he’s right, he can hail thunder and lightning with his swing, giving him an advantage. When it’s not, it can lead to trouble. The skill automatically makes him one of the more aggressive players on his team.
He fully understands the risk-reward, understanding it will probably yield him more birdies than some of his teammates, but probably also a few more bogies. Give and take sometimes becomes time and place.
“It’s tempting for sure, being a long hitter because you can hit lines no one else can hit,” he said. “You can give yourself a big advantage, but then again, there’s also a risk. If you hit it far, your dispersion is going to be wider and if you miss it it’s going to be worse. Part of it is where I am right now, situational awareness. If I feel good with my driver, it’s my strength, so I don’t mind taking on risks with my driver. But on my bad days, I need to know maybe this is not the play right now because par is a good score on any hole, and I don’t need to force anything if I’m not playing my best.
“It's all about the vision. If you see the shot … Golf is so visual. If you see a shot you like, you feel comfortable with it, and when you feel comfortable, you feel confident. It’s all interrelated. If you start off a tournament and you hit three good drives in a row, you feel comfortable and confident no matter what. Sometimes, even on a bad day, you’ll have that one hole, this shot, I like how it looks and it just fits my game so well, so I still feel comfortable even on a bad day.”
Wilson is not the type of coach who will tell his players to put a club in the bag. What he will do is share his thoughts in a situation and let it marinate. The final decision, however, belongs to the guy swinging the club.
Because their opinion matters, and because as Wilson noted, he may not see it the same way. Such was the case with the ninth hole at the Omni during the Mountain West Championships. Wilson told Bleier the par-4 was the third toughest hole on the course. It was going to even out the field, and with a 5-iron/9-iron combination Bleier could play it par over the three days and remain out of trouble and in contention.
Wilson also made it very clear he’s never been able to drive the ball like Bleier, and in the end, Bleier went with his plan. He pulled out the driver all three days playing the hole 1-under.
“He’s fearless, which is something you see in the best players. It’s something that can hurt him at times because he’s not afraid to pull a driver when other guys are thinking about holding back,” Wilson said. “He knows it’s an advantage when he pulls off of the shot, he has an edge. I think he’s getting better when to pull it and when not to pull it. Bottom line, he reminds me of Jon Rahm a little bit. I got to watch him a fair bit in college. He’s hitting drivers where other guys aren’t, and he’s taking on lines with drivers other guys aren’t. With a player like that, you want to help them the best you can, but also, they have some genius in that, things I wasn’t able to do that as a player, so it’s getting out of the way and letting him hit those shots.”
Playing without pressure has been an awakening for Bleier his second go-round. The game appears wide open for him moving forward, beyond what will happen the three days at the NCAA event. His first thought is he hopes to reschedule his flight back home because the Rams advance to the NCAA Championship field as a team.
Wilson is thrilled with the progression, too. The best part is he gets a front-row seat to watch it grow for the next two more seasons. Already a great teammate, Bleier will become even more of a leader for the team in the next couple of years.
There’s just so much for the Rams to anticipate when it comes to Bleier. Himself included.
“It's always more fun to play good,” he said with a grin. “I wouldn’t say I didn’t have fun last year, but it’s more fun to play good.”
Especially when you can wield a hammer like he can, knowing you are more than worthy to carry the weapon in your bag.