Cycles

It’s a lot of hours to be awake for. It’s nine hours since I finished my round and it’ll be another five before I’m home in my own bed. I should be re-watching episodes of The West Wing but somehow my golf thoughts won.

9 hours removed from holing a 7 footer for par on my 18th hole to ensure the double on 17 after a gently-positive-ebby-and-flowy kind of day didn’t completely define it instead.

There was something about where we played in Italy this week that I loved. There’s something charming about Monza, with its authentic Italian mannerisms. An Italian might not say the same thing, who knows, but two weeks in different European cultures was a reminder how lucky I am to get to enjoy travelling in a horribly turbulent world. Maybe it’s just because I can order a double espresso at 9 in the evening and no one bats an eyelid.

People read my blogs and tell me I need to think less, but the whole point is that I only write when I think the most. And I usually only write when I’ve reached some sort of conclusion, even if it does doesn’t come written under a subtitle at the end.
I could write about every tournament if I had the energy, but each round and each tournament in isolation are often mundane in their results, even if the emotions are relentless.

I could tell you (or the void) about how confident I was on Thursday of this week, because for the first time in quite a while I felt like I had some answers to long running questions, in a way that also seemed transferable to immediate performance. And then I could tell you how I hit my layup on my par 5 first hole in Round 1 approximately 50 yards right (to a fairway only about 20 yards wide), somehow making a miraculous par to cause no scorecard damage- but the mental ramifications of the shot led to two quick doubles before half the field was even out of bed.
But who wants to hear that when it’s just an average LET event (albeit a very enjoyable one) that says “T-43” at the end of it? What does it mean? Every tournament has a story, but every player in a 144 player field has their own one too. Without doing any of us a disservice, none of those stories are special or significant to anyone outside their inner circle.
(I’ll be honest, even if you do want to hear about those, there’s no way I have the energy or the inclination each week).

If I’d solved the inconsistencies that have plagued my year maybe I’d have written about the breakthrough, but my thoughts on what it all means have been basically the same with every week I miss the cut by one or make it on the number. Living on the edge of the cut line every week in professional golf is catastrophic for an overthinker and requires an acceptance that is hard to navigate when you know your capability but can’t find it.

One shot seems so causal, so careless, so unworthy. Plugging in a bunker, hitting your tee shot before the horn sounds for lightning. The difference between no points or a couple more than none. Between being in the red by a lot or a little bit less than a lot. I’ve done both enough times to understand that the weight of both bears almost no significance to your actual ability as a golfer. There are undoubtedly things I have been proud of when I’ve made cuts on the number, perhaps even more than during tournament victories, because handling your stress and emotions and game when they are scattered all over the course is far more difficult than when you are playing well and with a confidence underlying the situational stress.

The intangible difference to making a cut on the number – particularly when it’s a 3 round tournament and you only have one round to try and claw your way up the leaderboard – is that you have another chance to reclaim the narrative. Another chance to turn your feedback loop into something positive, and something that doesn’t just end with ‘MC’. There’s not a lot to lose when tied 45th is also tied 65th, even if throwing away 20 places and a couple of grand on your second to last hole makes you want to go and walk a few hundred yards to the middle of the Monza race track until the cars come round.

35th or 45th or 55th or 65th (assuming the cut isn’t exactly 60, which is a rare and sickening part of professional golf that those not immediately within this world may not appreciate) still give you a chance to understand a little bit more. A chance to recommit to technical feels, or mental discipline, or an uncomfortable tee shot, or a thousand other things that you can’t do when you’re trying not to think about golf on an unplanned Saturday off. A chance to understand that holding frustration and satisfaction in the same breath is how it’s supposed to feel. To understand that your strengths and weaknesses will always interact together both seamlessly and recklessly, however hard you try to isolate and distinguish one from the other.

I think understanding that is the reason we keep going, day after day, week after week, year after year. It’s why I can get a notification that I have written several blogs on this particular week over different years, and even though they are all different they are also all the same. These feedback loops that seem mind numbing in their repetition contain fragments of understanding that are everything. So here’s to moulding those fragments into better versions of ourselves, day after day, week after week, year after year.