Both of the following paragraphs are true
Yesterday I played my first round of golf this year. I lost ten (TEN!) balls during my round, if I’d added up my score it would have been nearly 100 shots total, the worst round I have played in several decades.
Yesterday I had a truly wonderful day, walking around a spectacular golf course with a friend on a gorgeously warm and sunny day (on October 10th, no less!). I also hit the centre of the green on the long par 5 ninth hole with my second shot, an immaculately hit four wood that followed a drive crushed down the middle of the fairway. Oh, that was my second drive on that hole, my first one went way right into the trees, so hey, I didn’t have an eagle putt, but it felt like it at that moment!
When I am playing good golf and seeking to hit a good score, I play the percentages, I play it safe and manufacture a good score. Yesterday, however, I was simply so grateful to feel fit and strong after my cancer journey this year, so every time I got the chance I thought to myself “go for it” and went for the low percentage shot. On the several occasions where the low percentage shot came off for me, those moments were joyous, particularly that four wood that pinged off the club and went about 230 yards straight to the centre of that green.
There is nothing like a purely hit 1 Iron
There is a time to play the percentages, to optimise for a good result, but sometimes you just want to go for it, to play for the perfect shot, the memorable, the lifetime memory. All of this takes me back to a memory, a memory of a shot with a “1 iron”. There is a famous golf joke from Lee Trevino, who was once struck by lightning on the golf course. When asked how to avoid the same fate, he said:
When caught on the golf course in a lightning storm, always pull your 1 iron from the bag and hold it over your head.
Not even God can hit a 1 iron.
The club in the photo above is my own 1 Iron, a Titleist DCI 962, part of the set I bought in the mid-90s, and yes, I still play with those clubs today.
Probably less than 1 in 100 golfers have ever carried a 1 iron in their bag, and far less than that now, when golf clubs are sold on the basis of being “forgiving”, focussing golfers on playing the percentages all the time.
I like to score well when I play, but I also love the joy of a pure strike with a club I can fee, so I play with purists’ clubs and I still carry my 1 Iron, That “driving iron” is fiendishly difficult to hit on the sweet spot, but a purely and squarely hit 1 iron is a rare and beautiful thing and, particularly on really windy days, sometimes a driving iron is the only choice.
Going back over 20 years, I was playing in the biggest club tournament of the year in Cayman, our version of the “Ryder Cup”, where the top players all played in a three-round, two-day tournament. The course was set up to be as tough as possible, including the monster par 3 eleventh hole, where the tee was right at the very back and the flag set way back on the green. It was roughly 220 yards into a swirling wind from tee to green.
On the final day, in my singles match, I was several holes down as I walked onto the 11th tee. I knew I had to “go for it”, playing it safe was not the choice, and the correct choice to win back a hole was also the lower percentage choice. I took out the 1 iron and hit the best shot of my life, to within 8 feet of the hole. Twenty years later I still remember the feeling of pure elation at that moment. Reader, I missed the birdie putt but I will always have the feeling of that pure and beautiful strike. Oh, and I won the hole with a par on that windy day and that brutal pin placement.
Sometimes it is best to play the percentages, sometimes it is time to “go for it”.
Going for it – betting on SpongeBob Squarepants
A business story to close. Around the same time as I played in that tournament, 9/11 happened. I was on the group that decided where to allocate the c$20m annual tourism marketing budget for Cayman. At the time we had a brave and visionary tourism leader, Pilar Bush, who recommended we pull out of almost all our advertising for 2002 in the aftermath of that horrific attach (as American tourists would not want to travel for some time). We focused some of that money on the most detailed market research we had ever done, then reserved the rest to focus on 2003.
When it came to where to market in 2003, we had a memorable meeting where the recommendation was to pull out of much of the conventional advertising but instead focus on a marketing partnership with a movie (the ‘Spongebob Squarepants” movie) focussed on family and with a very hot title that year. I and the other private sector leader in the group knew that we had to “sell” this idea to the private sector, yet we knew it was time to take the “1 iron” and go for it, not because we were being reckless, foolhardy or just seeking the big win, but, as in the case where I took that 1 iron in the tournament, because the bold choice was also, in that moment, the right choice.
The results were transformative, 2003 was the best year Cayman had had for many years and also started the process of shifting the brand perception for the months of the year focussed on the family market. Prior to 2003 the “shoulder season” months were week, but now just try to get a hotel room there during the summer when all the families come.
Sometimes the right choice is to go for it.
Memorable or serviceable
Of course, sometimes it is more questionable. I leave you with the wince-inducing final hole scene from “Tin Cup”, where the protagonist could have simply played it safe and won the US Open, but that was not who they were, they had to try (again and again) to hit the perfect shot, even though it cost winning the tournament. The video begins after they already hit the ball in the water FIVE times, and now down to the last ball in their bag, which had to work else they would be disqualified for being unable to finish their round.
Watch and enjoy, and consider, if this was real life, who would be remembered more, the one who won, or the one who insisted on pursuit of perfection?