Golf Flow

Championships, had 11 successive wins in the Dunhill Cup, and won the Novotel Perrier Open). Retief also won the 2001 U.S. Open and has a total of 4 career PGA wins.
In 2005, when deciding whether to turn pro, LPGA player Julieta Granada’s car broke down. The repairs of $600 cost more than all the money she had in her bank account. She had to take a taxi to the golf course each day. Had she not earned enough that week, she would have been stranded in a small town with no money and no car. She finished 2nd, earning $6,500 (and her car back).
At the Milwaukee Open, Tiger Woods’ first tournament as a professional, he recalled being so scared he couldn’t breathe. He parred the subsequent hole, finished tied for 40th, went on to win 6 Majors in 4 years (14 overall) and broke a host of PGA records. As of this writing Tiger has 74 career PGA wins.
As a sophomore in college in 1979, Fred Couples made the cut in the U.S. Open and was paired on Saturday with Lee Trevino, then the number-one player in the world. Of the experience he said, "I was so nervous I couldn't even see my ball on the first tee." Fred shot an 80 that day, but has since gone on to win 14 PGA tournaments, including 2 Masters.
After a stellar 1994 season in which he won the Masters, Jose Maria Olazabal was forced to withdraw from the Ryder Cup due to severe foot pain after which he was diagnosed with rheumatoid polyarthritis. He was unable to walk without excruciating pain for 18 months and was forced to miss the entire 1996 golf season. After months of treatment and therapy, Jose came back to win the 1999 Masters and has a total of 5 PGA wins.
After emerging as one of golf's brightest stars, Hal Sutton went winless for eight years after 1986, with his low point coming in 1992, when his earnings fell to $39,324. He then won 6 tournaments between 1997 and 2001 and has 14 PGA wins to his credit.
Bob May's life in golf began inauspiciously as he bounced around from tour to tour, failing to qualify for the PGA Tour 7 times. He went to Asia, then played the Hogan tour, got his tour card, lost it, went back to Asia, then spent three years on the European Tour. He kept grinding, practicing, and competing and finally, in 2000, played against Tiger Woods in one of the greatest finishes in Major Golf history at the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
    Your growth and development as a great competitor essentially mirrors the process of the growth and development of muscles when you engage in weight training. To grow, muscles have to be pushed to failure. In sport, as in life, the natural consequence of pushing your personal limits is the risk that you will fall short of what you’re trying to accomplish. But by falling short we come to learn the methods, strategies, and techniques required to propel us beyond the edge of our limits. This advanced understanding that setbacks, failures, and lulls in performance are a key part of ultimate excellence is what prompted Jack Nicklaus to coin the term
so-called failure
.
    One of the best self-assessments on the subject of failure comes from Michael Jordan (Goldman & Papson 1998, p. 49):
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been entrusted with the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.
    I cannot overemphasize the importance of looking at golf as a game of continual learning and thus embracing failure as “so-called failure” and ultimately as a valuable teacher. Bad golf is not the golf gods picking on you. Bad golf doesn’t mean you stink. Bad golf doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. And bad golf ought not to be frustrating. What is commonly thought of as bad, or sloppy, golf is typically the game giving you objective feedback, telling you, “Hey, you’re not doing something properly here. Reflect on your game and figure it out.” Through such reflections growth occurs. Ultimately, golf is the fairest of games. It punishes you when you do a thing wrong and rewards you when you do it right. What could be fairer? Although there is a degree of luck in golf (a bounce here, a breeze there, the occasional ball in a divot), as in all of life’s endeavors, it evens out in the end.
    Sometimes I’ll say to a golfer, “The game is giving you exactly what you need to improve.” This line usually comes after they’ve played a poor round of golf or are otherwise experiencing the