Losing and Learning

Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph said:  “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.  Nobody goes undefeated all the time.  If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.”

Only one player wins a golf tournament.  The others "do not win."  In that respect, golf is different from so many other sports.  In college football, which may not happen this fall, the national champion normally at best finishes 15-0, and often loses a game along the way.  A great season is 12-2.  

In a normal PGA tour year, a great player like Justin Thomas might go 5-20 - five wins in 25 starts.  The player finishing 125 on the money list usually has zero wins and will lose to as many players as he defeats in 20 to 25 events over the course of a year.  His record might be 1600 "wins" and 1600 "losses" against every player in the 25 or so events he plays.  But that same No. 125 on the money list will earn over $1M and be exempt for the following PGA tour season.

If you measure golf performance by wins, it is easy to become frustrated.  A great player measures performance by whether she executed her Process on every shot that day and on whether she was able to learn something that day.  If we focus on learning to be a great player, rather than on whether we won or on our score, our mindset changes.  The path becomes the goal.  That is where we find mastery.

Focus on learning to be a great player today.