The Struggle
At the risk of dedicating an entire newsletter issue to a subject that won’t be valuable beyond this week, I want to talk about Rory at The Masters.
As I was doing some research for an interview episode of The Mental Golf Show, I looked up Rory’s 2011 Masters. He had a 4-shot lead going into Sunday, and had a 1 shot lead going into the second nine. He hooked his tee shot left on 10, made a triple, and wound up shooting an 80, which was the highest score by a 54-hole leader in 56 years (it might still be 14 years later).
For the podcast interview, I wanted to ask the guest about “golf trauma”. Now, yes, that could be labeled as a typical millennial being a little dramatic with their lower-case-t traumas. “It’s just golf, is there really anything traumatic about it?” Well, when you’re Rory McIlroy, and your life is dedicated to the game, and you have one more major to cap off the Career Grand Slam and put a cherry on top of an already hall-of-fame worthy career, it could be considered a type of trauma. Especially considering he hasn’t pulled one off in the 14 years since that infamous 80.
And I think we all have a level of this “golf trauma”. I know I do. I hit a shot in the final round of a tournament in 2013 that I still remember to this day, and it still scares me that it could come back out when I’m least expecting it. It may just be golf, but if that’s not trauma then I don’t know what is.
The Solution
So in order for Rory to break through, or for us to heal the scar tissue and move forward, what can we do? What does Rory need to do to let the past go and be present?
In my experience, we need to sit with our past. We need to actually face what happened. We need to come to terms with how bad that thing felt, look it in the eye, and say “I see you, and it’s ok that you happened.”
In a word: acceptance.
In that Mental Golf Show interview I keep alluding to, the guest said a phrase that I really like:
“That was me. But that’s not who I am.”
If you embody who you used to be, and hang on to it, then you’re living in the past.
In order to let that go, you have to first accept that it’s something you did in the past. Accept the truth.
But then move forward with freshness as who you are now.
One thing for you to work on this week:
To-do: Identify your “golf trauma”, accept it, and move forward with who you are now.