Golf Flow

a par for his first major championship victory, Garcia had a 10-foot (3 m) left to righter for his first major title. As he had been doing all day, he hit a perfect putt. The high-definition coverage captured every moment of the ball’s journey as it came off the putter face perfectly and rolled on a direct line to the hole. The ball rolled closer and closer to the hole and began to disappear. It seemed certain that Sergio had won his first major championship! But then the ball that was halfway into the hole hopped back out. Again, golf allowed Sergio to taste the thing that he wanted most, a major championship, but then kept the full satisfaction of the win just beyond him.
    Great careers in golf are characterized by close calls and near misses. The game’s greatest, Jack Nicklaus, is known for winning 18 major championships. More interesting from a psychological point of view is that he was able to cope with many near wins. The numbers are telling; over the course of a 45-year career, Nicklaus played in 163 major championships. He finished top 10 in 73 of them. Although he did win 18 of those, he also came close to winning 55 other times. Of those 55 top 10s without a win, 19 were second-place finishes. It is the coming close, the Tantalus, that so often causes golfers to drink too much, get divorced, change their swings, fire their coaches, or quit the game altogether. I’ve seen my share of all those reactions.
    Arnold Palmer lost three playoffs in the U.S. Open alone! One of those was when he took a seven-shot lead into the 1966 U.S. Open and lost. Forty years later, Palmer recalled how that tournament still kept him up at night. Ninety-four professional wins. Seven major championships. Thirty-eight top 10s, 19 of which were top 3s. And yet the thing that stays on his mind? “It hurts so much to come close and not win,” he said.
    Greg Norman’s career was defined by its own version of Tantalus’ punishment. Norman finished in the top 10 in 30 major championships, more than 30 percent of those that he entered. Despite his two major wins, historians of the game universally see his dramatic failures as being the distinguishing features of his career.
    In 1986 Norman went into the final round of every major championship with the lead, a feat now often called the Norman Slam or the Saturday Slam. At the Masters that year, needing only a par to secure a playoff spot, he made a bogey. He shot a final-round 75 at the U.S. Open and a final-round 76 at the PGA Championship to fall out of contention in both tournaments. Even more characteristic is Norman’s record at the Masters. In 1987 in a playoff, Larry Mize chipped in from 45 yards (40 m) away to snatch a victory from Norman. In 1989, coming into the 72nd hole Norman again needed a birdie to win and a par to get into a playoff. He teed off with a 1-iron, made bogey, and again fell a shot short. The epic, and most memorable failure in his career (and some would argue in the history of golf) came at the 1996 Masters. He opened with a course record 63 that propelled him to the top of the leaderboard, where he remained for three days. With five previous top-five finishes at Augusta and a six-shot lead, Norman seemed like a sure thing. The media were convinced that even someone with luck as bad as Norman’s could not lose a six-shot lead. Norman’s long-awaited Masters victory was about to materialize.
    Rather than take you through every cruel moment of that round of golf, I’ll let you consult the history books. I will leave you with a paragraph from the
Sports Illustrated
column, April 1996, written by Rick Reilly:
Golf is the cruelest game, because eventually it will drag you out in front of the whole school, take your lunch money and slap you around. Golf can make a man look more helpless than any other sporting endeavor, except perhaps basketball when you air-ball a free throw in the clutch, and nobody we know has air-balled free throws for an afternoon on national TV. Norman shot 78. He had taken his glorious victory parade and driven it off a pier.
    Thirty top-10 finishes in majors: 2 wins, 28 near misses. Nine top-10 finishes at Augusta: no wins. Temptation without satisfaction.

Removing the Straightjacket
    Long before I knew Sean O’Hair personally, I had formed an impression of him. Every time he was paired with one of my clients, he displayed the quiet confidence of a champion. Every time his name came up in conversation among other Tour players,