For Sacramento State men’s golfer Owen Taylor, golf is a sport that can turn him from confident to angry in a matter of seconds. He has spent countless hours this summer working on his game and not letting his emotions get the best of him.

Taylor is playing his best golf of the season with only one finish outside the top-15 this year back in October. In fact, in the five tournaments he has played this Spring, he has had three top-5 finishes.

Call it confidence, call it hard work, but his teammate and roommate freshman Cody Bates believes both are leading Taylor to his best year of golf so far.

“He definitely puts in more time than anybody else on the team,” Bates said. “[Owen] is playing with so much confidence right now. I would say that golf is 90 percent mental, so if you have that confidence you should be posting good scores.”

Along with good scores, Taylor is currently ranked 68th in the country. He has averaged a 70.2 in his second rounds of golf, a number that is nearly two strokes lower than his average in rounds one and three.

Taylor has gone from 0-of-11 top-15 finishes last season to 8-of-9 top-15 finishes this season. Taylor said it was the extra practicing in the offseason that made the biggest difference.

“This summer I just had a reality check,” Taylor said. “All the good players are leaving and someone is going to need to step up and I’m going to be that guy to step up. I changed my complete practice routine.”

The summer was spent playing golf seven days a week for 12 hours each day. Taylor would get to Cameron Park Country Club at 6:30 a.m. and not leave until the sun went down. Extra practice as well as spending more time with his swing coach gave Taylor a newfound sense of confidence in his game.

Head coach Chris Hall said he can notice the confidence Taylor now has in his game and feels the biggest changes he has made are in practice, which has transferred over to tournaments.

“Confidence is one thing you can’t necessarily convince yourself of,” Hall said. “I think [Owen] is getting to a place where he has unconscious confidence all the time.”

In addition to being confident, Taylor has made it a staple to move on from mistakes he has made and use a quote to reinforce that anytime he needs a friendly reminder.

“My number one phrase is to accept the result and move on, ‘you can’t do anything about it now,”’ Taylor said.

According to Bates, Taylor considers himself a “zen” golfer and part of his success is being able to move on from mistakes.

The Hornets have hit a rough patch of tournaments as of late, finishing sixth in the Sacramento State Invitational and placed 12th and 11th in the Fresno State Classic and the Lone Star Invitational, respectively.

“It’s hard to see [the team] struggle, but in the end it’s an individual sport and all you can worry about is yourself,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty selfish of me to say that, but that’s the reality of the sport.”

One of the things that has been stressed for the Hornets is going out and having fun in practice. The season is a long one and can weigh on the players, so taking time to enjoy golf is something Hall has been encouraging the players to do.

“We are preparing a little different now than we were in the past,” Taylor said. “We are trying to make it a little bit more fun because it has been so grueling lately. It has been nice to be able to enjoy golf a little bit more.”

With two more tournaments approaching before the America Sky Championship at the end of the month, the Hornets still like their chances to make the postseason.

“I think we were picked as the favorites to win our conference and I still like our chances,” Bates said. “We have all been playing pretty well, but we haven’t really put anything together in tournaments. In qualifying our scores are low, the lowest they have ever been in Sac State history coach [Hall] said. We just need to figure a way to do that in tournaments.”