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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, June 26, 2000 Volume II Number 26
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FOCUS - One Stroke at a Time
Thursday was a golf day.
Our foursome now has some history. We’ve golfed some good courses in Southern California and in Mexico over the past ten years. The four of us have averaged two rounds every year. One guy runs an investment firm in Orange County. Another is a practicing attorney. The third is a real estate investor. The fourth is me. (Correction: the fourth is I.)
I’m the real hacker in the foursome, which isn’t easy. I’m still competitive enough to hate it when I’m out-classed.
The investment advisor has it all. The equipment. The clothes. The swing. He clocks his drives. Flies his chip shots and lands them gently on the green near the pin. Finesses his puts. He’s a golf package. He’s got the look. And he knows how to deliver. The attorney is nearly six feet four, which means a normal swing gives him an extra twenty percent speed on the club head as he strikes the ball. He hits ‘em long and straight (usually).
The real estate guy, Brad, through sheer determination and grit, has put together an enviable portfolio of properties. He’s married to a medical professional. An Aussie. They have a pair of twins age ten. He’s a consistent thirteen handicapper. He’s an amazing guy to watch.
He swings with one hand, his right.
* * * * * * * *
Brad was nineteen when he suffered a devastating fall while a competing as a "hot dog" skier. In front of a horrified crowd, Brad hit the jump, attempted a double back flip and missed it. He hit the packed snow, hard. Now he’s well into his forties. That nasty fall, more than twenty years ago, broke his back and severed his spinal chord. The injury left him paralyzed from the waist down. He lost the use of both legs.
But Brad is not a quitter.
To stay in shape, he learned to play tennis… from a wheel chair. And golf. Brad loves golf.
Brad drives his cart himself. He has learned to be resourceful. He uses his cane (or more accurately, an arm brace, which acts as a stabilizing stick) to manipulate the accelerator and brake pedals on the cart as he drives. He pulls up to the ball, usually in the fairway, and before he exits the cart, he assesses his distance to the pin. He’s a great conversationalist, but as he addresses his ball, he’s all business.
When he’s got a fix on his lie, Brad swings his inoperative legs out from under the steering wheel of the cart and over the side. Two metal locking leg braces give him stability. In place, the orthopedic devices allow Brad to stand upright with the help of the handheld arm brace, which acts as a third “leg.” After long and hard therapy and stretching and practice, Brad walks. Swinging each leg forward, one at a time, holding the cart with one hand and pressing the arm brace to the ground with the other, Brad moves around the cart to his bag of clubs, and makes his choice.
He pulls out the club, and turns to the ball. Leaving the security of the cart, he moves away one step after the other, self-contained and steady, out to the ball settled in the grass. He assesses his lie. He sets his feet in position, aiming his body so that the swing goes through the ball and to the pin. It’s a three point stand, two legs (paralyzed) locked into upright position, and his left arm in a brace which extends to the ground. Brad holds his head motionless, locked into his ball, as he takes a practice swing with this right hand.
It’s a smooth arch. A natural, easy motion. He makes it look simple. Back to the right, then down and through. He addresses his ball. Arm extended. Then the back swing, and down through the ball. It’s the sound of the strike that tells the story. Most every time, Brad’s clubface connects with the ball at the center. It’s a sweet ping. And even before you look up at the flight of the golf ball, you know from the sound that Brad has done it again.
There is something engaging about a golf ball in flight. It’s a high speed, long distance trajectory. So much can go wrong. If your club hits right of center, the heel of the face, you’ll pull it way left (if you’re a right-hander). If the ball hits the toe, you are way right. If it’s under, you’ll pull up an explosion of grass and good earth, your club will come to a halt and your ball will dribble just a few yards in front of you, and your wrists will snap back in pain. If your club is short on the strike, you’ll put a topspin on a grounder. Any variation on these themes is just as devastating. You lose a stroke. You lose your pride. You lose your confidence. Often, you lose your ball.
But when that clubface strikes the ball in the sweet spot, and lifts it with power and elegance from the fairway, gaining altitude straight and true towards the mark, and lands on the short grass bouncing and rolling towards the green, well, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
That’s Brad. He swings one handed. His Titleist ball soars. You know why he loves the game.
Our foursome played a high desert course on a magnificent day on Thursday. Thirty-five hundred feet elevation. Clear skies. Billowy white thunderheads hanging over the mountain peaks in the distance. I had my best round ever.
I was inspired by Brad Parks. And Tiger Woods.
* * * * * * * * * *
He’s twenty-four years old. And no one, no one, will argue with you when you call him the “best golfer in the world.”
Last Sunday afternoon at Pebble Beach Country Club in Monterey, California, Eldrick (Tiger) Woods wrote his name in the history books. In ink. He is the embodiment of the catchword “phenom.” He was in the zone. In the groove. It was a superhuman effort. It left fifty plus of the best golfers in the world competing in the PGA Major - the U.S. Open - scratchin’ their heads and wonderin’ what happened. Ernie Els, Wood’s partner on the final round, said “I coulda played my best round ever, and still finished six or seven strokes behind him.”
Golf is a game that humbles the best of the best. It is unpredictable. Every stroke a new challenge. The slightest subtle mishap can lead to disaster. Golf is the cure for overconfidence. Cockiness comes to its knees on the fairway. Presumption of victory on the golf course is a pipe dream. On Thursday, when the pros of the PGA pros take to the tee box for round one, no one knows who will rise to the top of the Leaderboard after four rounds on Sunday afternoon. Seventy-two holes – any one of which can knock out the leader. A single missed put. A water hazard. A bunker. A bounce into the rough. A shanked hit. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, whamo.
When Tiger Woods stepped up to the tee on Sunday at the Pebble Beach, the site of this year’s U.S. Open, he enjoyed a commanding lead. An astounding twelve strokes ahead of second place Ernie Els. But this is golf. There is no assuming. Eighteen holes can bring anyone, even Tiger Woods, to the indignity of a crushing humiliation.
So I taped the final round on my VCR. And with my trusty remote, fast-forwarded my way through every one of the sixty-seven strokes of Tiger’s brilliant finish.
I didn’t know the outcome. Every hole had its hazards. Every stroke, a precarious step towards the finish line, could be easily misdirected. Would this march toward Golfing immortality be derailed off the next tee? The next fairway drive? The next short iron? So I watched every silk smooth swing with anticipation. Could he hold on?
As the round progressed, something of the poise, the focus, the class, the determination - emerged, and like his three hundred yard drives, straight and true, his final game took flight.
Not one of the other champions finished
four rounds of Pebble Beach 2000
under par.
The best finished three over. When
Tiger dropped his last put at the eighteenth green, a whole list of long
standing records was smashed to smithereens.
Twelve under par for the match. Fifteen
strokes ahead of his nearest competitor. Tiger
Woods, at age twenty-four, left them all in a daze of bewilderment.
This amazing performance didn’t come out of nowhere. This was not a fluke. You don’t “get lucky” for four straight rounds of a U.S. Open. Certainly, this was the culmination of a gargantuan concentration of the finest training, the best coaching, deliberate high-grade nutrition, physical conditioning, and psychological and mental preparation. Books abound. Videos, training camps, audiotapes, and workout rooms… all utilized to contribute to this level of play.
But there’s more. Tiger has gone on record. Here’s how he answers the myriad of people who want to know – “Tiger, how do you do it?”
- “I always have an inner peace on the golf course. I try and stay calm and never let anything get to me.
- Golf is not everything. It never will be. The most important thing is furthering yourself, making yourself a better person.
- My father has always instilled in me there are only two things in life that you ought to do. You gotta care and you gotta share.
- I don't consider people like Jack Nicklaus as heroes. I admire them for their golf. I guess my own role model is my dad.”
Tiger was two years old when he appeared with Bob Hope and a putter on the “Mike Douglas Show.” At age three, he shot a forty-eight on the front nine of the Navy Golf Club in Cypress, California. At age 5, he wowed the television and studio audience of “That’s Incredible” with his now legendary golf swing. By the time he was thirteen, he showed off his swing on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and his resume boasted appearances on ESPN, CBS, NBC and ABC.
He shattered records as a Stanford University golfer. At age nineteen, he was invited as an amateur to play the U.S. Open, the British Open and the Masters Tournament. At twenty-one, now a professional, he won the Masters.
Next month, he’s got a shot at the coveted Grand Slam of Golf as he competes in the British Open – the only “major PGA tournament” he has yet to win.
You wonder, like I do, if somehow Tiger bypassed childhood. He’s rich. He’s young. He’s accomplished what most of us will only dream of. But there’s a lifetime ahead. How will he fare?
We’ll all be watching.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I’ve been tryin’ to figure out what it was that made Thursday my best day on the golf course… ever. I took four strokes off my previous personal best. And twelve strokes off my average.
Golf is a mental game. After the big win, Tiger Woods said, “I took it one stroke at a time.” When I asked Brad Parks how he scores so consistently well, he said, “I take it one stroke at a time.”
I guess on Thursday, I took it one stroke at a time.
* * * * * * * * * * *
You are a leader this Monday morning. You may be a scratch golfer (that’s a golfer’s way of saying you are really good). You may be a duffer. A hacker. You may not be a golfer at all.
But if you don’t know it from experience, you’ve heard it said that the primary attraction of golf is that it is such an apt metaphor of life.
In the game of golf, it is unlikely that you will ever find yourself on the top of the top of the heap. There will always be someone ahead of you. Better than you. But you aren’t competing against anyone else, really. You are competing against yourself. Sometimes you will miss your shot. You’ll set up. Aim. Practice swing. And miss. Sometimes your shot veers off course, into trouble.
But then again, sometimes your ball hits the sweet spot, and it flies to the pin and sets down on the green like a skydiver sweeps in from the sky under the lines and colorful canopy, hitting the bull’s eye. Dead center.
Maybe you’ve stumbled. You were blindsided by tragedy. And you think you can no longer play the game. Ask my friend Brad. Is your excuse good enough to cause you to drop out? Is your excuse any better than Brad’s?
Maybe you’ve been on a winning streak. You're thinking it just can’t go on. And maybe you’re thinking that it’s all getting rather tedious. Even the winning. Ask Tiger. Is it worth it?
This morning, this Monday morning, as you tee it up one more time, take time to set up. Think it through. Take your aim.
Then, swing away. One stroke at a time.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
The Tiger Woods quote is taken from the official Tiger Woods web site.
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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