The Evolving Definition of Hard Work

When it comes to golf, I’ve always had a complex (see instead twisted) relationship with hard work. When the emotion of a low point subsides, it transitions into a sort of sick enjoyment of being ready to figure it out. It’s a strange place to be when your feet suddenly hit the bottom of what you thought was a black hole of despair and realise there’s a ladder waiting to be climbed back out again. I think that’s actually always been one of my favourite places to be in this game. Recognising that there’s work to be done to improve. The work has always been the most satisfying part of golf for me. Seeing it pay off is probably the most enjoyable, but losing yourself in the work that takes you to that point is I think where you feel most at one with what this game is all about. Getting blisters on your hands from hitting balls or forgetting to eat lunch. Promising yourself “just one more” 100 times in a row. It isn’t always healthy, and it isn’t always what’s necessary, but there is satisfaction in the grind.

But that’s when it’s the kind of grind that makes inherent sense.

Golf is what it is precisely because it doesn’t make sense. That’s why so few players out of the millions that pick up a club make (or desire to make) it to the top. It’s why success in this sport must be more unpredictable than in any other. Because the challenges change. And you change. Physically, emotionally, psychologically. Somewhere along the way, it becomes a different kind of difficult. A kind of difficult you no longer recognise, which can make it feel like more of a challenge to get through. There isn’t a formula that makes sense anymore… sometimes because you’ve scribbled over the formula so many times it’s become illegible. Sometimes because you think there’s another one that might work more efficiently. Sometimes because it never felt like a formula in the beginning.

The beginning is almost visible in other players, often younger, fresher, more naive. The way they walk, the way they swing, the way they communicate. The way they play. The way they practice. And a lot of that is littered with mistakes and bad habits and future consequences. But for a lot of those players, if they’ve reached a certain skill level, the sum of their talent (and their belief in it) is greater than the weight of their ignorance. I don’t know what exactly starts turning that ignorance into doubt and I don’t know what exactly shifts that doubt from something that pushes you further down the path of progression and clarity into something that pushes you down a path of fragility and uncertainty. I do know that those two paths often look exactly the same.

Of course, there is always the trap of rose tinted glasses. Those younger players ask questions; they do want to know more. It’s very easy to look back at anything and assume it was easier than it actually was. When you’re removed from the emotion and complexity of the present, the weight of it becomes significantly less heavy. The fact is, every hard moment you ever endure feels like the hardest moment you’ve ever had to endure. I guess in a profession like this the difference becomes purely time related; future related. It feels easier to pick yourself up when the future still feels more promising than your past – a fact that is true by the nature of whether it crosses your mind or not. And maybe it’s easier to be resilient when your layer of scars is shallower. But equally, the scars remind you that you’ve been here before. They might be caused by different weapons: more of them are probably caused by your own doing. But the ones that remain simply show you you’ve always been able to carry on.

This might sound way too self important anyway. Golf is just a game, and there will always be more important things than it. But for every well meaning psychologist that tells you your self worth is not defined by your score (and I’m well aware it isn’t), there’s another practice session that rests on the knife edge of piercing satisfaction and despairing uncertainty. It’s hard not to be defined by a game that represents so much of life’s best and worst, when you put most of your life into it. I still wouldn’t have it any other way. If it wasn’t hard (whatever that represents today), it wouldn’t be worth it anyway.