“I wanted to ask every male player I bumped into at the Scandi Mixed what they thought about the merger news… but I left Sweden far more captivated by why the men have better short games than we do – confidence? Forearm strength? Exposure to those kind of courses? Black and white technique? – than whether they thought Richard Bland would be able to play on career money in 2024. “
“Reality doesn’t give a f*** about waiting for your process. It doesn’t wait for you to figure out which pieces you want to see more clearly and which pieces are still part of the wrong puzzle. Reality doesn’t hold your hand and tell you it’s getting better.”
“How do you spend that time when thinking about it might be what helps you climb you out of it? But it also might dig you deeper into it? That quote about hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train is a fun way to spend your weekend when you’re not getting paid.”
“It’s the one that threads the swing changes and the fatted wedges and the yipped three footers and the inferiority complexes and the Wednesday evening anxiety together with a poison that tastes like the medicine you’re supposed to drink to get better. The mind.”
“But then I watch the US Open, or the KPMG, and share that experience alongside gifs on my Twitter feed, or fellow players on a buffering stream on a 4 hour bus journey across two European countries and I wonder… whether I win or nearly win tournaments because I find the zone, or whether I find the zone because I win or nearly win tournaments.”
People will tell you that success isn’t about inspiration. Success is about discipline. Doing what you need to do even when you don’t feel like doing it. That truth is one of the things that nearly kept me in America, battling 40mph winds in the mountains of Utah, instead of lifting a trophy in Australia. But success is also about intuition.
“You had it in your hands – after a year of sacrifice and improvement and doubt and trust and loneliness and pride – and two weeks of the same – and in a 45 minute window so quick I’m still not sure it happened and so slow I still feel like I’m living it – you give it back.”
“All those stories – however long or short in the making – only mean exactly and only what you decide to tell yourself over a two week period. Professional golf is about playing well at the right time. However much or little goes into that is the unique part.”
