Golf is a Crazy Game, and People Never Seem to Learn

Wow. That’s really all you could say watching Adam Scott’s implosion on the last 4 holes to lose the Open Championship and his best chance for his first major. What a big deal that is, winning your first major. It’s like a huge monkey off your back, a defining moment that promises more great things for the future (although there are many one-time major winners for whom that promise never came to be). Sure, no guarantees, but you have to get that first one in order to get more and be associated with the game’s greatest players. Ernie Els played a stellar back nine and won without a playoff, a 4th major that elevates his stature immensely, considering the amount of time that had passed since his last major win, the Open again a decade ago.
 
The questions arrive immediately. What happened? Did Scott choke? Did he start thinking about winning before the round was over? Is his swing suspect? Is it his coach’s fault? Of course, none of these suppositions is entirely true. The pressure was intense and this is golf, and if you want to find something to do where pressure won’t come into play don’t play competitive golf. The higher the stakes, the greater the pressure, and it is a given that major championships and the Ryder Cup are the ultimate pressure chambers in professional golf. So, why do I say that you can’t pinpoint the cause of Scott’s demise? The answer is a simple word, and that is “tolerances”.
 
The difference between a good shot and a bad shot in golf is so small that it cannot be measured. When the best players, who by virtue of being on television and in the last groups in the tournament are playing the best golf among all the other best players, hit a bad shot, or one that doesn’t quite turn out well, the difference is so slight and the demand for precision so great that those who observe are left with pure conjecture as to the reason for the bad shot. I have always told my students that the level of their technique will determine over the long haul how many good shots and bad shots they will hit. When you add them all up (it is a game of numbers, after all) you are what you shoot, and you shoot what your shots allow for. Substandard technique is measured by the shots it does not hit, and the frequency in which it produces poor ones. Thus, you have a handicap of 10 (or whatever) because that’s all you can muster up. Your technique in all facets of the game allows you to shoot what you shoot.
 
Of course, a guy like Adam Scott or Tiger Woods has technique far beyond the comprehension of the average player. Neither one of them can explain why they fail, other than to mouth the usual cliché’s regarding the inability to win. Everyone who plays in an event and does not win is a failure of sorts, and the search for the reasons why and the way to glory is of the utmost importance and worthy of the highest attention. Scott had to play the last 4 holes in 3 over to tie, 2 over to win, and 4 over to lose. After witnessing his play up to that moment could anyone have foreseen him bogeying the last 4? If you look at the putting strokes on 15 and 16, the iron shot on 17 and the tee shot on 18, could you find a difference from any other shot hit that day or in the tournament?
 
My opinion is that you can’t find the difference because the tolerances are too small to be discernible even to a high speed camera. Those who attempt to come up with reasons (he got tight, he got quick, he got ahead of it, he left the face open, he flipped the face closed, blah, blah, blah) are simply filling air space and trying to appear smart, which is most of the job description of the TV announcer. Adam Scott’s golf swing is as good as it gets, and if you think his swing on 17 looked any different from any of his other swings during the round you would be wrong. When you are a touring professional missing a fairway or a green is not a matter of making a horrible swing, but rather of making a swing that varied just enough to send the ball either off line or curving too much. And that variation is indistinguishable.
 
So did Scott choke? It is impossible to get away from the fact that he failed to close the deal when the heat was on even though he had played well enough to give himself plenty of room to overcome even a fairly serious meltdown. Johnny Miller would call it a choke and everyone would nod in agreement because Johnny “tells it like it is”. Scott simply couldn’t get it done, and the story from the media most likely will revolve around that ugly fact. My thought is that most of the reflection should turn to the difficulties of the game, not on Scott’s failures.
 
TV announcers seem to have no sense of history. While the broadcast team for ESPN was stellar (Azinger, North, Strange, Van Pelt, Alliss are simply the best in the business) Van Pelt made the unforgivable gaffe of handing Scott the title (“It’s only a matter of time”) when Scott was walking to the 15th tee. Surely Scott’s command of his game up to that point gave no one cause to believe that he was about to blow it. But, history has proven that it really is not over until it is over. Never count your chickens when you are watching golf: literally, anything can happen. Lip out a putt, have a shot run off into the deep stuff, have your drive bound into an unplayable lie, any of these things can happen at any time. In fact, they happen all the time. But when they happen to the guy who is leading the tournament on the last four holes it seems very different than when they happen to the guy who is right around making the cut then bogies in to miss it. Scott put himself into the position to be scrutinized because he played so unbelievably well. His only answer to what happened will be to get over the disappointment in time and go out and practice so he can do it all over again. The true champion starts by failing and learns to overcome that failure in order to win. I think that Scott is good enough to do that and expect him to win a major sooner rather than later, as long as they don’t ban his putter.
 
So what is the aspiring golfer to take from all this? One thing to learn is that anything can happen in a golf tournament, and that it is never over until the last putt drops. No lead is safe, no player is invincible, and things can switch around before you even know what’s going on. If you want to see how you do under pressure you have to put yourself there, starting with entering into the tournament, then eventually playing well enough to get to the position where your failure might seem to someone to be a “choke”, or where your success would establish you among your peers as a player to be reckoned with. The idea is to practice so that you can get out there and get into the hunt, then see how your game holds up. When that event is over you go practice what kept you from winning, and you keep practicing and entering events until you win. Once you place well or win you have started a resume’, and eventually this is what you will look back on to measure your career. I continue to work on my game in part because I think I can still continue to add to my resume’. I love to play, but I love to win more, and it is the winning, rather than the sheer love of the game, that has always driven me to get better.

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