Jon Rahm, David Duval & The Lessons of The Players Championship

Anyone who watched the final round of this year’s ‘fifth major’, The Players Championship, will have seen the ascendant Spanish golfer Jon Rahm make one of the worst decisions I have seen in my years of watching tournament golf.  Holding a share of the lead when he came to the par 5 11th hole, his drive found the bunker on the left side of the fairway.  He was blocked from a straight line to the green by trees on his left sight line, but he decided—against the counsel of his caddie---to go for the green.  The shot required him to hook a shot out of the bunker, against the prevailing wind, over water, and to a pin that was on the right side of the green.  His shot did not hook enough, found the water, provoking a temper tantrum, as he swore, “I was so fu**ing sure the first time,” implying that it was his caddie’s fault for instilling the fatal dose of doubt to the shot, and revealing he had way too much going through his head to do anything well.  Probably an imprudent shot under any circumstances, but with one of his biggest wins on the line, it was downright self-destructive.  The commentators: Hicks, from the booth: “That is very, very perplexing;” Maltbie, from the course: “Really a poor decision;” and finally, lead announcer Paul Azinger, the new Johnny Miller: “You know, when you’re nervous, you don’t just hit poor shots, you think poorly.”  His comment supports the point I made in my post “Mastering the Moment.”  One of the reasons that players play and think poorly in pressure moments is because everything has sped up in their body and their mind, and they are not doing enough to counteract the very normal hastening that comes with elevated nerves.  In that piece, I lay out some protocols that will help slow everything down the next time you are nervous.  Furthermore, Rahm and his caddie need to do some serious processing so that they are not at odds the next time a big moment comes along.  As I have said in yet another post, that processing should start by reviewing tape of this incident multiple times, and for Rahm to be brutally honest with himself to see if he felt in his right mind, and to be honest about all the physiological reactions he remembers having, so he can use them as cues next time to slow down and rely on his caddie more not less.  The sad thing is that, even after his bogey on 11, he was still in the tournament, until three bogeys later when he wasn’t.  Sadder still is that golfworld magazine had written a piece after his Saturday 64 saying that he had overcome his temper tantrum days and would be very difficult to beat on Sunday.  It looks like there’s more work to be done.*

In a lead-up piece to the tournament, PGATOUR.COM ran a piece about David Duval’s win at The Players in 1999 during a dominant period when he had a 30 percent win percentage in his tournament starts, a remarkable statistic.  Duval speaks of that win as one of his most special because of how difficult the course was playing (e.g. highest winning score in the event’s history), and how much patience he had, and how he “held it all together.” And what he said about that tournament and that period is, “It becomes pretty easy.  There’s a hyperfocus…There’s an emptiness in your mind, if you will.  Some clarity.  It all kind of ties together.”  Here, too, he is validating a point I made in these pages (“Think Like Dustin: A Lot Less.”), and while you might not be able to play like Duval at his prime, you can certainly practice getting into that mind state.  One thing such practice does is slow down your subjective experience of time.  I know it will help you, and I certainly know it could have helped Jon Rahm last weekend in The Players.**

*Powers, C., “Players Championship 2019: Jon Rahm Claims he’s a changed man.  If that’s the case, watch out.” Golfdigest.com, Mar 16, 2019.

**Martin, S., “Duval’s Win at Sawgrass: an extreme test of patience,” pgatour.com, March 10, 2019.

Lessons From A Loss

Because I try to practice what I preach, I want to share with you some lessons I learned from a tough loss.  In an earlier post (“On Rivals and Rivalry”), I introduced you to a team I coached that was involved in a very unpleasant rivalry.  Without rehashing the details, I am going to tell you about a moment that I have reflected on a great deal since leaving that team.  We were going to play our rival for the last time in the season at their home courts, and when I pulled the van into the parking spot at our rival’s venue and was going to give some words of encouragement, my captain said that she had a request.  As it was her last match, I acquiesced, not knowing what it was.  Then, she pulled out her smartphone, plugged some portable speakers into it and played for the team Al Pacino’s inspirational speech from “Any Given Sunday.”  It was a difficult moment for me, because, having agreed, I didn’t feel as though I should turn it off, and yet it felt strange to me that we were listening to a fictional coach give a fictional speech to a fictional team.  Wasn’t I supposed to be giving a speech?  Wasn’t the captain?  Was this a referendum on my motivational speaking abilities?  Either way, I had a bad feeling in my stomach, and was not surprised to come out, yet again, on the losing end of an encounter with our rivals, finding that Al Pacino hadn’t worked his magic on our squad.

        But, it is not their fault.  In all arenas, but perhaps the athletic more than any other, we have become entranced by the power of the pre-game speech to inspire bold performance in players.  And although I am a big fan of listening to and delivering a good speech, I would like to dispel the notion that a good pre-game speech makes much of a difference in performance during the game.  In particular, I do not think speeches are a good way to overcome performance anxiety, and I would urge athletes and coaches alike to adopt a different approach to peak performance on any given Sunday other than relying on speeches.  And so, my advice to coaches when seeking peak performance from their players is to keep the pre-game words to a minimum and follow some simple steps:

Clarity of plan: Most coaches have devised fantastic practice plans throughout the season.  Game day is no different.  And big game days even more so.  That pre-game plan should be extremely detailed, including when people should arrive at the venue (or departure) site, what they should have eaten, what and who should speak before the event, how the warm up should proceed, and, who should watch and coach which players.  Finally, this plan should consider all contingencies as the match gets toward its decisive points.  As you can see from the vignette above, one problem was that I had not communicated with the captain as to who was going to speak when.  Thus, the plan, just like any other kind of training, is seeking to control as much as possible before and during the event and avoid all surprises.

Clarity of Communication: Pre-game speeches are nice, but the most important form of communication--other than discipline in practice--is the kind that happens during the game.  If a coach says something to his/her players, it should be brief (“hit to her backhand,” “volley more”) and digestible.  A good technique is to ask players to repeat what they heard before they go back into the melee.  There is nothing worse that adding to a player’s muddle with muddling words.  And remember: raising your voice, or even worse, yelling, is not a way of being more clear.  It is likely to contribute to rather than reduce performance anxiety.

Clarity of Role: One of the problems from the example above is that there was a lack of role clarification.  The captain was doing something I thought I was going to do, and, perhaps the players thought I was going to do something I didn’t do.  In any case, being very clear with a team about who does what and when is a key aspect of any successful team endeavor.  Its opposite, role diffusion, leads to confusion, poor performance, and potentially deep rifts among team members, as people are not giving and getting what they need from each other.

        Perhaps this is a problem of Hollywood’s making: when we think of good coaches, we think of them delivering rousing speeches.  But, really, the main job of a coach is the quite difficult task of fostering group cohesion in order to create the conditions under which each player can grow as a player and person and give her best up for the common good.  The three steps I’ve offered here will help.  And maybe you don’t want to take my word for it, but just please don’t take Al’s.