“It was awesome, I mean, it was the first time I’ve ever seen a setup like that in my life, especially being that hard and under that USGA bracket. So, it was definitely really tough, but it was cool to see. It was a good perspective on golf. It’s a lot different.”

One of the biggest perspectives he walks away with was that no matter where you play, golf is still the same game. While certain strategies and statistics can help make sense of a course, overanalyzing courses can sometimes create anxiety or tension, and Kyes’ biggest goal of the week was to just stick to what he did best and what got him to the U.S. Open.

“It was just another week of golf,” Kyes said. “It was just super special, obviously, but I mean, a 180-yard shot in a fairway is a 180-yard shot. You still got to execute and go through your process. So, I think that’s another thing it proved, honestly, is that you just got to stick to your process and play your game and see how you stack up at the end and not really get too caught up in all the analytics and other stuff.”

Kyes chooses to look at the positives from the weekend. He saw it as a learning experience to measure his game against the best in the world and one of the toughest and most prestigious golf courses in the country.

He knows he has some work to do to be as good as the PGA Tour pros, but he is also more aware of the little things that he needs to work on to reach that level.

“I think there’s a few ways you could look at it,” Kyes said. “I feel like you could look at like the 12-over-par and be like, ‘Well, you’re very far off,’ but to me, honestly, that kind of just proved to me that I’m not that far off, honestly. Just little things here and there that kept me from a better score, but like, yeah, that’s the main takeaway. I feel like I would not say I’m right there, but I think I’ve got a lot of things in my game that can match up very well out there, and it was just really cool to see where my game is at this current moment and where it needs to be. And it was just a cool comparison.”

Now as Kyes goes into his sophomore year at Tennessee, he said that facing a challenge like Shinnecock only makes him more confident because even the hardest college tournaments are easier by comparison than the U.S. Open.

“It definitely helps like with confidence and stuff, knowing that I just got done playing the hardest golf tournament of my life and will be the hardest golf tournament that I play,” Kyes said.