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-Johnny Miller |
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I was driving in the mountains years ago with friends when we had one of those discussions that can only happen on a long road trip. Our debate was fixed on the most important attributes of being a great person. Words like honesty, fidelity, ambition and positive mental outlook were among the ideals that bounced around the car. In the end, we agreed that patience and humility were the two most important attributes when defining great people. As someone who has been in and around the game for nearly 40 years, we often try to draw a parallel between golf and life. I have the good fortune to work with a number of talented players and the underlying theme of our conversations always comes back to patience and humility. They’re key elements of playing great golf. The act of patience in golf allows our ability to unfold naturally and in an unforced way. On the other side of the coin, there’s an overwhelming human tendency when things aren’t going as scripted to settle into a panic mode. We want to force the action, but we must employ patience. Likewise, when things are going well, there’s a tendency to become expectant and anxious. You have to push the patience button in this circumstance, too. When you think about the nature of golf, there are a lot of outside stimuli to test your patience. It takes more than four hours to play a round. You’re playing on a field where weather and terrain can affect your shot. You have to wait for the group ahead of you. You have to wait for the other players in your group. The professional player has to deal with even more factors, including weather delays, waiting for rulings and waiting for the gallery to settle down. Golf is unlike any other sport. In football, you get to hit other players for 60 minutes. In basketball, there’s perpetual motion. There’s a lot of explosive adrenaline going on in those sports. Golfers use what I call “poised” adrenaline versus explosive adrenaline. They have to know when to apply the accelerator and when to back off to avoid a crash. It’s even tougher on the casual golfer. Unlike a professional, the casual golfer is just trying to fit the round into his day. They race to the course talking on the cell phone all the way. They may be sending e-mails from their Blackberry while they should be warming up. They force down a hot dog and a soda before heading to the tee and then lose patience when they hit the first bad shot of the day. It’s not a plan that breeds success. It’s a recipe for failure and frustration. We’ve been watching David Toms a lot lately. He earns on average just under $100,000 per tournament — a result of his steady, patient play. He also takes what the course gives him and understands the limits of his talents. One of our young players, John Merrick, played with Toms in New Orleans and said he learned more about patience during their round than he had from any other experience in his career. Merrick noticed that immediately after Toms made a frustrating double bogey, he walked to the next tee and matter-of-factly asked Merrick where he was from. His demeanor never changed, and it made quite an impression. Later in the round, Merrick made an equally frustrating bogey and decided to employ Toms’s strategy. On the next tee, rather than let frustration take over, he asked Toms about his kids. They had a nice conversation and Merrick was able to regain his patience. He went on to birdie the next three holes. Golf is a humbling game. It’s filled with slopes, bumps, bunkers and hazards that are unrelenting in their desire to teach you humility. Some of the most successful professional athletes in the world are golfers. The patience and humility they employ during a round are essential to their success. Those same attributes are integral assets of all of the truly great people I know. SG Jamie Mulligan is the chief operations officer at Virginia Country Club. |
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