Sometimes you just know you are going to have a bad day. That’s what Tyden Wilson suspected on the second day of the Massachusetts Junior Amateur Championship, which is sponsored by the Massachusetts Golf Association, one of the last tournaments of last year’s season.
Tyden, who has been playing golf since he was five and playing competitively since he was ten, had shot a 79 on the first day of the tournament and knew he had to score no more than a 75 the next day. He even showed up early to practice with a friend, but on the first tee he carded a dreaded double bogey (two strokes over par on an individual hole).
“It didn’t bode well for the rest of the day,” Tyden said, whose Senior Reflection was about the lessons that imperfection can teach us.
Tyden didn’t make the cut at the tournament, and he was disappointed in himself. But later he was listening to “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me," the current events radio show on NPR, when a contestant lost, but instead of feeling badly he told the emcee, “I may have gotten two questions wrong, but I learned two new things today.”
That comment resonated with Tyden, who told his audience in Ward Hall, “I realized you can learn a lot by not doing well."
Tyden picked up the game of golf when he was a small child visiting his grandparents, who lived at the time on a golf course in Arizona, he said in an interview after his Reflection. A self-described early riser, Tyden had "nothing to do" when he got up early in the morning so he went outside and hit golf balls. Now he competes often, with a tournament coming up during March break in South Carolina, where his grandparents now live. More tournaments are scheduled for next summer in New England.
A baseball and basketball player at Fenn, Tyden is a Big Brother to a Lower School student; the two often play football together out on the green. He also helps out in the school store, where the clamoring of younger boys seeking snacks can often get a little crazy, he says with a smile.
At home, Tyden has two older siblings—a brother at Bennington College and a sister at Vassar--and a younger sister at Shady Hill School. A Samoyed named Keeka is the family pet, but she is partial to Tyden’s dad, he says.
Tyden, who has attended Fenn since the sixth grade, says that when he graduates he will miss having friends of all ages, “knowing that I can play with anyone here, whether he is a fourth grader or a ninth grader.” After he graduates, he hopes to be remembered as “a good, all-around athlete.”