Squinting Windows  

There have been a number of incidents lately around professional golf that have served to remind us that professional tour players are also just normal human beings that lead pretty normal lives outside of golf. In a world heading for eight billion people, it is sometimes tough to remember this fact when the reality is that only a few hundred golfers make a proper living from playing professional golf. The rarified air of a successful tour player blinds us to this fact as we are programmed from an early age to aspire to be like our sporting heroes, but just like the fallen hero in your favorite Marvel comic, the crash landing is hard when something unravels in their lives. 

Sergio Garcia, the "enfant terrible," had a meltdown of sorts recently at the latest European Tour pit stop in Saudi Arabia. Video being leaked shows Garcia behaving like a man whose dog had been kicked from pillar to post and back again. How could this be so? All has to be good in the world of the Spanish superstar. Career-wise, he finally nailed a Major in spectacular style, under the cosh and up against one of the best players in the world, he gutted it out to claim a green jacket and a place in history. He got married, had a child and seems smitten. He recently became the all-time leading points scorer at the Ryder Cup and has become an integral part of that team, so much so that Padraig has been quoted as saying that he needs Sergio in the team room. And this leads us to Sergio going off the reservation in spectacular style. I don't profess to know why and a health warning here, I don't condone his behavior but something has happened in his normal life, he like other sporting heroes gets to play out their problems on the stage of life in front of a baying crowd of which some just wake up each day and want to be offended. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Whatever about Sergio's poor dog feeling the bumps and bruises, I think he will be stone free.

Which proves that Sergio is just a normal guy!

Listening to his podcast recently, it is quite evident that this was a man in deep pain, not only from his well documented back troubles but elsewhere. The demons that come with blocking out the pain of reality were ever present as he strode the fairways of the PGA Tour accumulating an impressive six wins on Tour and three since on the Seniors Tour. That shiny veneer betrayed a man who hid drink while playing and yet again leaves you pondering, "how can this be?" The answer is simple, aside from the fact that he is quite good at getting a small white ball into a small hole in the ground around a big golf course in fewer shots than your average Joe, Rocco ain't no superhero.

Tiger Woods is, without doubt, the greatest example of a fallen hero to grace the fairways of golf. His is a story that would have you ejected from the lot of universal studios with a script that would be deemed to be absurd at best. An amateur career followed by a professional career that was straight from the pages of your favorite Marvel comic, he seemed destined to pass the Major record of Jack Nicklaus as he demolished fields in his heyday while changing his swing as he got bored. Beautiful wife, a couple of hundred million in the bank, what could possibly go wrong? It was that good as he raced to fourteen Majors, but then the comet fell from the sky in spectacular fashion. I have to put my hand up here and admit that I never thought he would come back but not only has he won again, but he also seems to be swinging it even better than his best days in the early 2000s and he could realistically win another Major in 2019. Tiger Woods appears to have found peace in his life and is the caricature of a real life superhero that would grace the cover of any Marvel comic book!

All of the above goes to prove that in the Valley of Squinting windows, most Tour pros lead ordinary lives and are very ordinary people with the same cares and worries that we all carry around with us. In saying that, those that make it to the very top have without a doubt some type of X factor that separates them from the population who are on the other side of the Squinting Windows. The ability to enter the "flow state" where time seems to pass without judgement and you can achieve incredible workloads (if you are in business) is what golfers of the highest caliber are able to achieve while also under extreme pressure, a pressure that insulates them from the outside world instead of interrupting their flow of energy. It is commonplace to hear a golfer who has shot a very low score admit they didn't know how many birdies they had made or what score they were shooting. They had jumped on the carousel, recognized those familiar surroundings, and now the trick is to hold on tight. Those thousands of hours of spent developing motor patterns produces the cars of the future; they drive themselves, just be careful not to hit manual mode, it knows where it is going, you just have to pick the ball out of the hole and head for the next tee! And that's the kicker; it's tough to lead a normal life when you have been privy to this experience.