airball7

Played Winged Foot West 18 years ago with a college friend whose family had a membership. I was better then - a state tournament tested +2 or so. The course, of course was set up nothing like it would be 14 years later for the US Open with ribbon fairways and freeway grass rough. I played well and shot 80. I feel pretty confident that with 156 tour pros playing 312 rounds on that identical course the cut would have been at least a couple under par. Forgetting the pressure of hitting a golf shot with a few hundred or thousand people watching, I think 150-152 would have been a reasonable expectation for me. So I'd only miss the cut by somewhere between 10 and 15 strokes. The USGA makes clear that handicap is primarily an indicator of potential, a fact which seems lost on a whole lot of people. Around the same time of the Winged Foot story above, there was a member of my club - Jim - who was in his mid-50s and had been an outstanding collegiate player at Colorado. This was before PCs had replaced the state golf association's handicap printouts we'd receive once a month - they were like a biblical scroll of giant green and white sheets on a continuous feed folded one page over another. During a rain delay I looked through - who'd shot the best round of the year (it had every member's last 40 scores), who'd turned in the worst, who was the worst sandbagger, etc. I then looked at Jim's index, looked at mine, and for a moment swelled with pride - I was half a shot lower. Then I looked more closely, not at the asterisked scores that counted for handicap, but for the lousy rounds that didn't. He could have made almost the same index out of his "bad" scores - 74s that didn't count and nothing above 77. Me? A whole bunch of 80s and 81s. 67s are nice, but the more salient question for us amateurs is how bad are we when we're bad? Coyne has that line in the book "scratch is shit". He's only partly right - so is +1 +2 and +3. If you're a +4 or better, can do it when the lights are on, and shoot 75 when you explode, now you've got a shot at receiving a check somewhere for your golf - maybe the Gateway Tour. Want seven figures and you'll need to do a lot better than even that. Reminds me of average driving distance - even forgetting the typical inflation, remember the 3 woods, the smother hooks, the ones that land three inches behind their ball mark after an inch of rain overnight. Then try and average 275. Not so easy.

Yeah, it's not a heartwarming story . . . factual ones often aren't. Tolliver can count. He can also play with the lights on - he's won the CGA twice and while it's not the US Open, it IS a nationally televised event. The Michael Jordan line is stale - he was a 15 year old kid. He turned into an adult, and by 19 he was capable of playing in the NBA - by age 21 he was. Stories like Poulter or Wi or Larry Nelson, contrary to what you believe, actually reinforce the fact that these guys are special. Their talent laid inchoate; once tapped the sky was the limit. Because we've all hit the perfect shot, it's easy to get the misimpression that hard work alone is the answer to making it repeat. Hard work IS a big part of the answer - the poster who talked about Chris Mullin was dead on. He outworked everyone; if I'm not mistaken he'd pay off his high school janitor to let him in at 3am and shoot jumpers in the gym. Mullin was driven. So are tens of thousands of other 6'7" slow white guys that aspire to play shooting guard in the NBA. Don't be fooled though - beneath an unexceptional physique and ruddy complexion was a guy born with more natural talent and hand-eye coordination than anyone you've ever met. It may not look like track-and-field, but the same principles are at work; a handful of people can simply do stuff that we can't by virtue of their genetic composition. It may have taken Zach Johnson or David Toms a little longer to figure themselves out, but their limitless natural ability gave them a 25 foot ceiling where ours are five. Nobody is making it without hard work; I want to be careful not to be misunderstood on that count. Perseverance and determination is a skill also - it's silly to me when I hear this or that guy would be better if only he put in the hours, as if those things don't require tremendous discipline. However, when everyone is doing the roadwork, then what? When every single guy to your left and right has put in his ten thousand Gladwell hours - 20,000 more probably, then what? I've watched this stuff, up close and personal for sixteen years now. The only thing I've learned is that as blessed as I thought professional athletes were (with respect to the mastery of their skill), I was wrong - I grossly underestimated it. They're even more preternaturally gifted than I thought when I got into the business. This is no debate; these are just cold, hard facts. For those who think it's just dedication, I'm reminded of the Noah Cross line in Chinatown: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't."

I thought the McNabb contract was the dumbest thing I'd see all day (or decade). I was wrong - the above quote wins. Answering someone's question, the golfer I was writing about was Tommy Gillis, for whatever that's worth. When I got out of law school I went and worked in 1995 as an attorney for a very bad team in the Canadian Football League. We'd signed an NFL QB as our "marquee" player (each team could contract one player who would not count against the salary cap). His name is Billy Joe Tolliver and we became friends, both playing out of Southern Trace CC. Tolliver grew up in a tiny town in Boyd, TX and never held a golf club until being drafted by the Chargers in '89. He said he played about 8 rounds of golf his first off-season and became an 8. The next summer he played a bit more and got to scratch. The summer after that he was well into the plusses. He's nowhere near a tour-level player, but with another five years of play and practice I'm sure he'll give the Champions Tour a try (if it even exists by then). I have worked both for teams and as a player agent, and there is one constant. These guys aren't like you and me. They're freaks of nature. They possess a degree of hand-eye coordination which you or I will never, ever know. Thinking it's all about determination or hard work is as silly as believing you will run a 4.35 40 yard dash or have a 43 inch vertical leap if you just try a little more. Most of these guys ALSO work harder than one can possibly imagine, and in tandem with ridiculous God-given talent, they perform at levels that mortals cannot comprehend. Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods didn't become the very best because they worked harder; they became the best because they had the most innate talent by light-years AND worked as hard or harder than the rest of the field. There are guys that can hang on the work ethic side, but as gifted as Jim Furyk is, he's one in twenty million and Woods is one in a hundred million. When everyone works equally hard, it boils down to raw talent. I'm a good athlete and work harder than Tolliver at golf. It's irrelevant; his coordination is simply better - way better - than mine. Enough that he can become a legit +4 in three off-seasons. Trouble for him in golf is the same as it was in football; there are the tiny handful of guys walking our planet whose natural talent and desire/work ethic is even greater than his. It's hard to accept the fact you just aren't as good at something and never will be as you'd like, but it's just a fact nonetheless. Same goes for Gillis; he is NOT outworked on tour. There are just 100-150 guys who are blessed with greater natural gifts. He can make a terrific living these next few years if he can keep it up, but he will never, ever be a top ten guy. Hopefully he'll have a lot of cash to assuage his disappointment.

Grew up playing a fair amount of junior golf with a guy who was ridiculously talented. Long story short is he's basically a journeyman; played the Euro Tour for about 5 years, came back to the states and made it through Q school at least twice, but with mediocre results the following year on tour once he'd earned the card. Screwing off playing twilight at my club in 2008 he was something like -10 through 15 not paying any attention and the track is no joke - 72.8/142. Quit because it was getting dark. At that time he had absolutely no status on any tour but in 2009 Monday qualified into a NW event and finished solo 2, then won one shortly thereafter and in 2010 had a very respectable year back on the PGA Tour. He's never going to be a big name but he's one of the best 80 or 100 players on the planet right now. To see him play is to wonder how there could possibly be anyone alive better, but they're out there. His talent and ability is one in ten million, where the guys at the top of the money list are one in a hundred million. Tom Coyne's talent is one in fifty thousand. His book is a terrific read and he's got it right; these guys - even down through the mini-tours - are frighteningly good at golf. I know part of his purpose in doing what he did was to write a book and he wrote a really good one, but I knew how it would turn out before finishing the first page, not because anybody told me but because the premise is insane. He's a really good golfer but he could have taken ten years instead of fifteen months and never gotten close to qualifying for the Nationwide. It's not for mortals, no matter how hard they work. Elkington can get as mad as he wants, and I understand that he's offended by the notion that he falls out of bed and shoots 63, but in addition to putting in his ten thousand hours he was born with qualities that enable that work to pay off on a level that is unreachable for all but a handful of men roaming the earth. To deny that is about as silly as arguing about someone's eye color.