For many of us, Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer we have seen play the game of golf. He has hit many brilliant shots that has won him tournaments all over the world, but when you ask him what is the shot he remembers most his answer is one from a tournament he did not win, the 2002 PGA Championship.
Woods was once quoted as saying, “The greatest-feeling shot I’ve ever hit was the 3-iron I hit at Hazeltine out of the fairway bunker. Wind coming off the left. It was the greatest-feeling shot I’ve ever hit in my entire life. On top of that, I made a 20-footer for birdie, and Ernie Els flipped me off.”
The level of consistency from the likes of a Tiger Woods or an Ernie Els has always been the biggest difference between the good golfer vs the great golfer on tour. The same holds true for the scratch golfer vs the weekend warrior. The margins are not as great as you might think, the top golfers are simply able to and at will, step up, dial in, and hit the shot they want consistently. It is the consistency we seek.
Golf is a hard game, a frustrating game, a metaphor for life as we search for our best self. What keeps us coming back is the fact that we have all hit that one shot that has left us feeling like a rising golf star, our problem is we lack consistency to keep doing so. We are simply unable to, and in some cases incapable of understanding what we did so we can repeatedly hit that “greatest feeling shot,” even a good shot, again, and again, but we keep trying, which means we keep playing this game that has captured our hearts and captivates us. It is an endless search for improvement, a pursuit to perfect your golf swing, an effort to become a consistent player.
There are many reasons why golf is so hard and can easily discourage people from continuing to play. As a matter of fact, only about 40 percent of those who try the game stick with it. However, the addictive nature of the sport far outweighs its discouraging forces for many. The captivating qualities and that feeling of a good shot, a great shot, easily devours the physical and mental challenges the game presents. Let us face it, people hate to lose and the difficulty of golf and our ongoing efforts to conquer it are a significant part of why so many people love the sport so passionately. It represents an unending reservoir of challenges, combined with the excitement and enjoyment of doing well during a particular round. These challenges are what is important to the game itself, they keep new, the improving, and aspiring professional golfers playing for an extremely long time, for some, most of their lives. You can think of a lot of games that you have played, and once you have mastered them, it is highly likely that you stopped playing or have played far less, they tend to lose their luster since we have mastered the complexity, physical, mental, and skills required to play. They become easy and the outcomes are too predictable. There is no such luck with the game of golf.
There is nothing easy or predictable about the game, it simply continues to prove that it is extremely difficult and unpredictable, even for the one percent that is considered the best of the best, of which we are not. Our search for perfection while being our curse, is also our passion, our joy and excitement for playing the game of golf.
The fact is, for the one percent that are considered the best of the best, when golf comes easier for them, there is the issue of golf courses that are setup specifically to test them. There are courses for horses, but even some of the very best have courses that they find difficult to conquor, among them being Augusta National, Bethpage Black, Pinehurst, St, Andrews, Whistling Straights and Carnoustie to name a few. These courses will test all aspects of your golf skills, they not only come for your game, they come for your joy in playing the game. Conquering the course might just be the real challenge?
I have come to the conclusion that we should absolutely push ourselves to be better at the game, but we should not punish ourselves by trying to go beyond our limitations, we should not lose the joy of playing. If a golf course proves to be too much for our skills, you should play more manageable courses or move up a tee box so you enjoy the challenge of some of the more prestigious courses that exist. Championship golf is a cut above what we have in our tool box right now, let us face it.
My lowest score ever has been an even 75, I have gone from shooting in the low eighties one day to over a hundred the next, I suspect our goal is to consistently break eighty. For some the statement goes something like this ‘If I could only break 100, I would be a happy golfer. I have news for you, a millisecond after you break 100, you are thinking, I want to break 90, it never fails.
This quest for improvement will continue until at some point the game forces us to accept or face reality and come to terms with the limitations of our playing ability. We have seen high-profile athletes from other sports take on golf as a way to relax, only to find out how challenging it is to become a good player. For all of us, pros, and amateurs alike, the allure of golf is its difficulty that makes good outcomes enjoyable as well as addictive. So, we keep coming back.
The thing that this game has shown me is that as your skills improve, it is equally important that your mental capacity improves also. The why of that is easy to answer, we find it easy to execute on the range while practicing or when nothing is on the line, but we have a tendency to fold up like a cheap suite under pressure when there is something on the line. It speaks to our inability to deliver under pressure, it goes at the heart of our mental capabilities. One of the greatest gift the likes of a Tiger Woods possesses, is the ability to mentally focus, step up and deliver in big spots on the game’s biggest stage.
Golf is every bit about being mentally challenged as it is about your physical capabilities for both amateur golfers as well as the very best the game has to offer. Golf at any level and on any day is an emotional roller coaster. There is the joy and satisfaction of a great shot that can quickly and easily be followed by a shank at worst, or something wayward at best.
The game is among the few sports where you and you alone must step up and deliver a shot without a teammate. At times you will have to play a draw, or a fade, control the trajectory of your golf shot and dial in distances. There are the challenges of the short game, bunker shots, chipping, pitching, and putting, it is a never-ending effort to achieve success. The failure rate in golf is high, especially since bunkers, penalty areas, and water are designed to test a golfer’s skillset. On the course we must do everything we can to avoid these situations, it seems like the more we try, the worse it gets at times, so we continue to work towards getting better.
Most of us have come to the conclusion that as much as we practice, there is no magic solution to get to the consistency we seek, but we continue our efforts to work towards it with the hope that eventually, the light bulb will go off and we will get it, whatever it is.
I have decided that for my own game, it is me against the golf course. The people I am playing with or against if you choose to see it that way, are passengers on the same bus and are along for the same ride, observers to your successes and failures, just as you are observers of theirs. There is no one to help you with your various shots and all eyes are on the golfer who is playing a shot. For some, that can be unnerving, especially for those new to the game, the spotlight makes you worry about failing vs succeeding.
We need to get past that as a step to getting better. There are holes on a course that can prove to be intimidating, you can be playing with better players who can outdrive you that can be intimidating, but at the end of the day, playing and enjoying the game of golf means gaining acceptance. Accepting the fact that you will fail more than you will succeed when playing golf, but we keep trying.
