Pros Just Want To Have Fun

My blog "Real Life in About Four Hours" generated a lot of interest from those who "get" golf. In it, I stated that the golfer encounters all of the feelings in a round that he/she encounters in real life: frustration, disappointment, joy, relief, anger, etc. I also said that golf itself is not fun. Playing with your buddies can be fun, winning can be fun, but playing golf, hitting shots, is not fun. Why on earth then does every tour pro say exactly the same thing when interviewed, namely that "they just want to go out there and have Fun!" You know, like Rory at this year's Masters. Remember his robust belly laugh when he flared an 80 yard wedge into the water on 13 in the final round? Or when Tommy Fleetwood, as solid a player as there is, hits a thirty foot putt only twenty-three feet on the 72nd hole and then misses the next one to lose the tournament to Keegan Bradley.

It didn't look like either Rory or Tommy was out there just having fun. So what are the tour pros really saying. The sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, says golf is not a game of perfect and that is actually a game of misses. Except for the rare shot that actually goes in the hole, every shot is fraught with anxiety as its final resting place is not certain until it stops moving. Every weekend on TV you can watch a near perfect approach shot just trickle off the green and down an embankment or into a bunker. The player who has just hit what they thought was a great shot now has to regain their composure, reset their attitude and try to hit a great recovery shot so as not to lose a stroke or two to par. A game of inches some say. The stress of playing golf, at whatever level you play, can be mind and heart-numbing. On TV, the two foot putt looks like a gimme. But to make the cut or the FedEx playoffs, it is anything but certain. Just remember Rory at the US Open last year on 17 and 18. Fortunately, he came back from that disaster to win the Masters this year and continue his outstanding career. Greg Norman was not so fortunate as he never regained his place in golf after his notorious collapse at the Masters, won going away by Nick Faldo on the back nine.

Saying they just want to go out there and have fun is the tour player's bid to mange the overwhelming pressure of playing golf. Playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars is understandable pressure for them. But trying to break 80 or 90 has relatively a lot of pressure too for the rest of us. We sometimes talk about learning to win, or knowing how to win, because a relatively easy shot can become a near impossibility when the player realizes that making it successfully can win the tournament or match. This is what we saw with Rory at he Masters or Fleetwood at the Travelers. Managing stress is what it's all about. Fun has nothing to do with it.

I just recently ran across a study of tennis players in which the top five players in the world were compared to the twenty-fifth ranked players on a number of dimensions. Workout regimen, nutrition, coaching, etc. Guess what, there were no differences on any of them. The only difference was in their thinking after missing a point. The top five players thought positive thoughts, things like "I love tennis", "there's no place I'd rather be" or "I'll hit the shot next time". Most of us think we're doing well if we don't let the bad shot lead to another bad one. The top five tennis players take that to another level. It should apply to golf as well. I'm analyzing it as we speak.

Cindy Lauper may have been correct about girls but she was dead wrong about tour pros.