“I thought it’d feel different than this.”
Golf is hard.
PGA Tour golf is harder.
On most general weeks, 156 players tee it up in a tournament. That includes one, maybe two, of the hundreds of aspiring golfers attempting to gain full-time status on the PGA Tour. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it must be for one person to outperform everyone else to win a tournament.
Scottie Scheffler has achieved that feat in three of the last seven tournaments. He’s only played in five. He’s also become the #1 ranked golfer in the world.
It’s a truly astonishing accomplishment.
When asked if he had realized how amazing this run has been by Frankie Borrelli of the Fore Play podcast, he replied, “I could not be happier with my life on the golf course… [but] at the end of the day, even if I win The Masters it’s not going to perfectly satisfy me. Your life’s not different just because you accomplished something. You’re still literally the exact same person you were the day before.”
It’s an unbelievable perspective. It seemed to make him believe in his chances so much more.
It seems to be human nature to believe that things will be better when something big happens. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, “I’ll be happy when…” or, “How awesome would it be if…” We’re convinced that everything will change once we cross that finish line.
How many times though, have you heard someone say that they weren’t happy even though they’d achieved the objective they’d set out to accomplish?
“I thought it’d feel different than this.” Aren’t we supposed to feel as if we’ve reached the mountaintop?
It isn’t though. No matter what you achieve you can always do better. That’s why we never feel fully fulfilled. The journey continues on. There’s always more work to do.
I find myself staring at my driver, a Taylormade M1. Smoke billows from my ears, as I contemplate chucking it into the pond adjoining the 9th tee. Maybe, I should just snap the shaft over my knee. It’s definitely not doing a good job of doing its job.
I took my first golf lesson this morning. My teacher changed a couple of small things about my swing and boy was it a fireworks show on the range. Now, almost to the turn, I’m barely keeping my herculean streak of 478 rounds of golf without a broken window alive. Things aren’t good.
What the heck happened? I thought for sure this lesson was going to tidy up my game and bring me to the next level. My coach and I discussed how to analyze what’s going wrong while I’m on the course, now why can’t I figure it out?
I guess I forgot that just the accomplishment of swallowing your pride enough to take a lesson isn’t really reaching the mountaintop, but it is a good step in the right direction. Climbing a mountain takes time and practice, not just the snap of your fingers.
You’re going to climb and fall and climb and fall, and you’re going to have to keep getting back up each time you do. One day at a time, one step at a time, you get higher and higher up the mountain.
No one accomplishment will get you to the top, but it should give you the confidence to take another step.