You have a choice: listen to your story, or keep swinging
Photo by Josh Hemsley
I play in a punk band, but I get a big buzz from Frank Sinatra, the king of the crooners.
I’m especially fond of his swinging mid-60s stuff, including That’s Life! with the immortal lines:
“That’s life, that’s what all the people say
You’re ridin’ high in April, shot down in May
But I know I’m gonna change that tune,
When I’m back on top, back on top in June.”
More than a few baseball writers have borrowed these lines early in the season, but they apply to golf anytime.
In golf, you can be cruising along nicely, make one bad swing and suddenly you’re spiralling.
Is it possible to prevent crashing?
We’ve witnessed a few folks level out recently. On the weekend, Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick blew their big lead in the Zurich two-person team event, but thanks in large measure to Matt’s incredible sand shot on 18—candidate for shot of the year—they scratched out the win.
The win was Matt’s third in six weeks and earned Alex status on the PGA Tour.
Surely, Fitzpatrick believed he had caved. Perhaps. Or maybe he just hit a bad shot. It happens. Fitzpatrick said he stayed cool after regulation play, telling himself he was playing well and that silencing the homer crowd would be fun.
Surprisingly, Scheffler duffed his approach. The Englishman flushed an epic 4-iron to 13 feet and converted the birdie for his second win at Harbour Town.
One could argue that Rory McIlroy could be the most fragile major champion in golf who ultimately became one of the grittiest players in golf history. After failing to win in 16 previous Masters, it would have easy to imagine Rory telling himself, “I’ll never win this thing.” But he kept showing up and finally won in 2025.
At this year’s Masters, Rory built a six-shot lead after 36 holes even though his ball-striking was wonky. He admitted that over the years, he tended to become tentative and “guided” when his swing was off.
Not this year. “My little mantra to myself was keep swinging; keep swinging hard at it even if you’re not hitting fairways, just keep swinging,” he said.
On the weekend, Rory again appeared fallible but, staying true to his intention, he kept swinging, combining brilliant and wobbly shots to win his second green jacket in a row.
Like all golfers, Rory has crashed far more than he’s won. As humans, we are blessed with brilliance but we’re also fallible and flawed. We fall down, lose the deal (or the girl or the boy), overwater the flowers, strike out, misjudge, over-promise, under-deliver, hit it out of bounds, and get shot down a lot.
Some falls are more painful than others. We smack the ground hard. That’s when the story roars in our heads: It’s not to be, I’m not good enough, I can’t close, I’m unlucky … fill in your favourite here ___________________.
The errant shot is not the problem. Everyone hits bad shots. Weekend warriors hit oodles of bad shots. Matt, Rory and Rosey mishit far fewer than us, but they mishit most of their shots. Golf is a game of mishits. As the book said, it’s not a game of perfect.
The challenge of golf isn’t our “bad” shots; the challenge is dealing with our stories.
We’re all prone to it. I coached a D1 college player who skulled a wedge over a green out of bounds in a tournament. She pronounced it “unacceptable.”
It took a few weeks of coaching for her to understand that she had a choice in the matter: Hitting such a shot was disappointing, but it was indeed acceptable. Stuff happens.
We’re human. We make mistakes. The story will always play in our heads.
But you have a choice: you can listen to the story or keep swinging.
That’s what Frank was singing in That’s Life:
“I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king
I’ve been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race.”
***
My most recent book is Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, which is now available in both soft cover and Kindle formats.
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