Written by Golf is the antidote to our anxious western culture. To be successful at golf, you have to unlearn many habits that have been drilled into us in school and later as we worked our way up the corporate ladder.
Frederick Winslow Taylor and his scientific management style have turned us into independent beacons of efficiency pursuing the “one best way” to complete tasks. By doing this, we have bred generations of perfectionists. Perfectionists hate making mistakes. We stew and fret over them. We analyze what happened and struggle to let go. We rationalize our mistakes against those of others. Golf eats perfectionists for breakfast.
The title of this article is the name of a book by sports psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella. It is required reading if you want to be a golfer. As a recovering perfectionist, it has helped me understand what I need to unlearn to be successful at golf. You have to adjust your mindset to realize that all that matters is your next shot.
Rotella’s book has many anecdotes that are easy to remember but are often easy to forget when you find yourself in pressure situations on the course. He teaches the importance of confidence, decisiveness, and having fun. According to his teaching, hitting your drive into the trees isn’t a problem. It just allows you to be creative to make your par. Even the best golfers make four or five bad shots each round. Acceptance is the difference between tour professionals and everyone else—their focus on their next shot. You hear them say this all of the time in interviews. The pros have all read his book.
However, you can throw the book out the window on Sunday afternoon at The Masters. Even the professionals succumb to the pressure. We saw it on display last weekend at this year’s tournament. Hideki Matsuyama was cruising going into the back nine with a 5-shot lead. It was rather dull to watch. But things started falling apart after that, and he had to hold on for dear life to win. Matsuyama did, and we got to see him take the green jacket to Japan as a carry-on item. Lucky for him, he wasn’t alone in forgetting Rotella’s rules.
“Train it and trust it” is the rule from the book that I remember most. Some days you are training, you focus on correcting your weaknesses on the driving range and putting green. Other days you are competing. Rotella teaches that you must trust what you have learned when you are on the course and avoid overthinking. Just look at your target and launch your pre-shot routine. Matsuyama and playing partner Xander Schauffele went away from that completely, taking numerous practice shots before each shot. While Matsuyama bogeyed four holes on the back nine, Schauffele made a run and got within two shots of the lead after the 15th hole. Then he tried to make the perfect shot into the par-3 16th hole and dunked it into the water.
Meanwhile, rookie Will Zalatoris calmly clawed his way into contention to finish one shot behind Matsuyama. He lost because he broke another of Rotella’s rules on the third hole. He had the wrong game plan. Today’s game is all about hitting your drives as long as you can and taking your chances from there, even on short par fours. The data backs this up. Zalitoris’ game plan followed Taylor’s scientific model of efficiency on the 350-yard par-four. He hit a beautiful 325-yard drive in the fairway just short of the green. He was going with what the data says.
Zalatoris was coming off of birdies on the first two holes. Matsuyama had just bogeyed his first hole. The four-shot lead that started the day had evaporated to one in a few minutes. Three-time Masters champion Nick Faldo, now CBS commentator, immediately saw the danger caused by this plan. Sunday at the Masters is not Thursday at the Valero Open. Data should be the starting point, an anchor, in the decision-making process. Experience provides the rest, which the rookie had little. His pitch shot sailed over the green, leaving a downhill chip that sailed past the hole. He missed the putt for par and took a bogie. Matsuyama birdied the second hole and took par on the third, where he hit an iron off the tee.
Golf is hard. That’s why I like it so much. It’s a cruel beast that finds your weaknesses and exploits them. Perfectionism makes golf harder. You can’t always make the perfect shot. Learning how to accept the one you made and move on to the next one is even more difficult. As I learned from Brené Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection, you have to understand that we are all doing the best we can. Being able to remove the judgment of yourself allows you not to judge others. That’s hard, too. We live in a world of judgment. Golf requires you to set it all aside and enjoy the view down the fairway as you search for your ball in the rough.
Matsuyama, Schauffele, and Zalatoris were doing the best they could on Sunday. They had gotten into contention by working their way up the leaderboard on the first three rounds by outplaying all of the sport’s big names. Then they gutted it out when the pressure hit, destroying the game plan, just like the rest of us do every day. Matsuyama, bearing additional weight as he was trying to become the first Japanese Masters’ champion, endured by conquering the mental demons.
This year’s tournament will not go down as the perfect Masters. Tiger Woods wasn’t there. Last year’s champion Dustin Johnson failed to make the cut, and many of the betting favorites were absent from the leaderboard. Three guys with odds of 22-1, 35-1, and 66-1 stumbled their way to the finish.
It was a great thing to watch.