Golf Flow

assessment, they all conclude that patience truly is a virtue. This philosophical buy-in leads to better golf by enabling the cognitive mechanism required for optimal performance.
    Consider Tiger Woods’ observation on patience. When asked his strategy for closing the gap on the leaders of a tournament, he replied:
As I said, the art here is just letting the round mature, and there’s no need to force it. Just go ahead and just capitalize on certain holes, and just because I’m at 1-under par doesn't mean I need to go force things. As I said, let the round mature. I had plenty of holes left, but the conditions were benign and just go ahead and get it done, and it happened.
    I like to use a Taoist parable with my golfers to help them understand the manner in which our reactions play out over the course of time and why underreacting to situations can often be beneficial. The story speaks to the idea of control, but most important, of letting go:
An old, poor farmer in ancient China worked a small plot of land with his teenage son. During this time, horses were considered a sign of rare wealth; the richest person in the province owned no more than a few of them. One day, a wild horse galloped into the town, jumped the old farmer’s fence, and began grazing on his land. According to local law, this meant that the horse now rightfully belonged to him and his family. The boy could hardly contain his joy, but the father put his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “Good luck or bad luck, who knows?” The next day, the horse, not surprisingly, made its escape back to the mountains, and the boy was heartbroken. “Who knows what’s good or bad?” his father said again, with the same composure. On the third day, the horse returned with a dozen wild horses following. The boy could hardly believe his good luck. “We’re rich!” he cried, to which the father replied, “Good luck or bad luck, who knows?” On the fourth day, the boy climbed on one of the wild horses and was thrown, breaking his leg. His father ran to get the doctor; soon both of them were attending to the boy, who was moaning and complaining about his miserable fate. The old farmer wiped the boy’s forehead with a wet cloth, looked deeply into his eyes, and said directly, “My son, who knows what is good or bad? It’s too soon to tell. Be patient and we'll know in time.” And on the fifth day, the province went to war, and army recruiters came through the town and conscripted the eligible young men—except for one with a broken leg.
    As the parable suggests, it is true that we rarely know the full value of an experience while the experience is taking place, or even shortly thereafter. Many experiences that we initially interpret as bad turn out, in the fullness of time, to have been a blessing. The terrible summer of golf may be the very thing that propels a golfer to find the proper teacher. An abysmal grade in college may teach a valuable lesson about accountability and rigor.
    The opposite is also true. Those experiences that feel like great blessing can, in the fullness of time, backfire if not put into the proper context. Nowhere is this more apparent than in studies of lottery winners. Although the numbers vary depending on which study you read and how you define going broke, estimates are that roughly 70 percent of those who win the lottery or encounter significant financial windfalls will squander their winnings within 15 years. Compounding their financial problems is the fact that they are also likely to alienate their families and lose friends along the way.
    Ultimately, the true significance of an experience is always contextual, always to be made sense of in distant time, and as true in golf as it is in life patterns. A wayward drive on Thursday may be precisely what’s needed to uncover the swing flaw that allows for the good drive on Sunday. Missed putts may teach us how to be patient or how to monitor grip pressure. Being sidelined with injury may be the thing that provides us motivational fuel for the rest of the season, reminding us how much we love to play the game. Knowing the value of an experience is almost always difficult while, or even soon after, the experience itself has taken place. For that reason, my golfers and I root our philosophy in patience and learning.
    There is something freeing about trusting in your life path, and that perspective makes all the difference to golfers both on and off the golf course. You