Entry 25.14

Lately I have been doing a lot of abnormal things. Probably doesn’t surprise any of you who know me pretty well. I’m kind of abnormal. The polite ones among you might call me “quirky”. But I know I am an odd duck and I’m ok with that fact. Just happens to be who I am. Abnormal for me is any time I willingly put myself in front of a group of people to talk. Now sometimes I’m ok with that. For example, when I’m teaching a clinic for my PGA HOPE veterans. That’s not abnormal for me because it is out on the practice facilities. Doesn’t mean I’m not quaking in my boots. Well, in my Barestep shoes which are so thin, you may actually see me shaking. Now put me in the classroom and that is a whole different animal. I am way out of my element. But in the last few weeks I have found myself in a classroom standing in front of a group of students teaching. Definitely one of those things that I specifically told my boss that I had no interest in doing. But when one of my colleagues was out coaching the Women’s Golf Team, another one stepped up to teach his 0800 class on Facility Management 1. But an accident on the roads got him stuck in traffic. So, I sent it. Without any warning, the poor first years had to put up with me trying to help them understand budgets and forecasting. Thankfully that experience was only 30 minutes or so before I was rescued and the correct person for the job showed up. The following week I was asked to help teach the section on club fitting and repair for the Teaching and Coaching level 3 class. Definitely more in my element there and this was the second time that I taught that section, so it was a little more comfortable. Then I volunteered to help cover a period in our Rules and Technology class with our sophomores. Again, more in my element and as this was a practical application, I felt a little more at home. But in less than two weeks I had found myself standing in front of three different classes. While all that was going on I was still teaching lessons and working with my intern. My intern is a great dude and is really making the most of his time with me, soaking up all the information that he can and bombarding me with questions. One of the topics that we have talked about several times is what path to take as he moves forward in his journey into golf. I want to share some of my thoughts on the matter, and this can apply to way more than just becoming a golf professional.

My first piece of advice for anyone who is interested in becoming a golf professional is to learn as much as you can about everything. As a PGM student, it may feel like you really don’t get much choice in the matter. You have to take certain classes covering all the different tracks the PGA has. And frankly that isn’t enough. But it is a good start. When I was going through the program, I definitely had questions about why I needed to know certain information. I had the same question in high school. Why do I need to learn biology, English, speech, physics, etc. What I thought was just a bunch of extra information that I would never use again. But here I am, over twenty years later, still using a ton of that information. I may not remember all the parts of a cell, or where I am supposed to use a colon versus a semi-colon, but the general knowledge is still there and being used. The same happens with all the information that we learn. Did I think I would be venturing into physics and biomechanics when I first decided that I wanted to be a teaching professional? Nope. Did the seniors in that Teaching and Coaching class expect me to start throwing out words like “moment of inertia”, “coefficient of restitution” and “conservation of angular momentum” when they sat down that day? I think I can safely say no. But do I think those things are important to know? Absolutely. Hopefully I did a good job of breaking those things down and making them easy to understand. Do I know all the ins and outs of those principles? No. I probably know just enough to be dangerous. Because while we hear about MOI all the time when it comes to clubs these days, MOI applies to us as the golfer as well. While we want a high MOI in our club heads to help with miss hits, we don’t always want a high MOI in ourselves as we make the motion. MOI is basically an object’s resistance to rotation or twisting. A low MOI in our bodies allows us to move all our segments and get them up to speed quickly. Definitely needed in the golf swing to satisfy fundamental number 2: Hit the ball far enough to effectively play the game.

One of the other educational areas that golf professionals really need to understand is the mental and emotional side of golf. When Mrs. McGillicudy comes walking into the shop after her three hours on the golf course with a total of 94 strokes through nine holes, she is going to need some words of encouragement. We have been programmed to give thoughtless answers and cliché phrases in these situations and frankly, we should be embarrassed. But many times, the reason is because we don’t know any better. And I’m not talking about the words that we are saying. I’m talking about our inability to truly see the person in front of us. You see that isn’t just another frustrated, worn-out golfer standing in front of you. It is a unique individual who is searching for help. When we throw out those cliches, a few things are probably going through our heads. I’m at least going to give you what my initial reactions have been in the past and what I fight internally each and every time I’m faced with this situation. First, annoyance. This might be the first time she has come into the shop or the nine hundredth time with the same complaint. But it isn’t the first person looking for some answers and it won’t be the last. We deal with the same thing day in and day out. Because of that, it is easy for us to get annoyed. Second, fear. What if I can’t find the right thing to say to help? Or fear of dealing with people in crisis mode. A lot of us are afraid of emotions. We have been brought up in a society where some emotions are supposed to be hidden and not talked about. Third, laziness. It is just way easier to throw out phrases like “tomorrow is another day” than it is for us to come up with something truly thoughtful and meaningful. Fourth, a lack of empathy. This is one that I really struggle with sometimes. Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of others” (New Oxford American Dictionary). We tend to learn towards sympathy or “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortunes” (New Oxford American Dictionary). While we tend to think of them as similar, they are nothing alike.

Sympathy is like throwing up a wall to protect yourself. You have been made uncomfortable by the emotions of someone else and so to stop being uncomfortable, you try to move them along as fast as you can. Or moving to the other side of the road when someone you don’t want to deal with is coming down the sidewalk towards you. So, to make yourself feel better, like you are a good person, you sympathize with them. To me, that is what that conglomerate of golf cliches is: an attempt to make yourself feel better because someone else is making you feel bad. You aren’t saying those things for that person; you are saying them for yourself. And I’m not separating us right now. I am definitely guilty of that and way more recently that I want to admit. I still remember the last time that I did it. I said something to a student in passing and then a couple minutes later realized what I had done. I hate when I do that because I remember what it was like to come off the golf course and feel drained, scorecard in one hand, dragging my golf bag behind me by one of the shoulder straps looking for help and getting the “There’s always tomorrow!” after one particularly harsh round I was talking to my wife when I got home and complaining about the “very helpful cliché” that I had been given by someone else. As she so often does, she gave me some words of wisdom. I can’t remember exactly what those words were, but I do remember feeling like I had just been struck by a bolt of lightning from Thor’s hammer. She made me realize that what I was complaining about, I was probably doing to other people. That’s when I made the conscious decision to stop being sympathetic and start being empathetic.

One of the best definitions of empathy that I have ever heard is that empathy is getting into that person’s shoes. You are doing your best to feel exactly how that person is feeling. Once you understand how they are feeling, you will realize how worthless those cliches are in that moment. This is what it means to truly see the person in front of you. I can tell you how powerful it is to empathize with someone. But not from the perspective of the person doing the empathizing, but from the person in crisis mode. After my last deployment, I was struggling emotionally and mentally. While I was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I saw a host of counselors and therapists. Each one told me they understood what I was going through but when I asked questions, it became apparent that none of them had ever been in the military or had never seen combat. I was passed on from one to the next while they tried to connect with me. In one of these meetings with a new therapist, he explained that they were concerned that they were unable to connect with me. I was growing tired of this repeated back and forth and blatantly told the guy that they didn’t understand and neither would he. He calmly then told me about his time in the Army as an infantryman in Iraq. How he struggled when he came back and how he decided to become a therapist to help others with their struggles. That was a turning point for me. I tell this story in the first session of every PGA HOPE class. I felt like all the other therapists had the greatest intentions, but the advice they gave wasn’t coming from my viewpoint. I was in a pit of despair, and they were standing at the top. They would give me words of encouragement and tools to help me. But the pieces of rope and ladders they let down into the pit weren’t enough to reach me and let me climb out. Along came this guy and in seeing me hopeless at the bottom of this pit just jumped right in. He stood up, dusted himself off and looked up towards the opening of the pit. The only thing I could do was ask him if he was crazy and tell him that now we were both stuck. His answer was the turning point for me. “I’ve been in this pit before, I know how to get out.”

Now I know we can all relate to that story if it was about golf. I think we have all had rounds where it feels like we have no idea what we are doing and are left dazed, stunned and confused. Just left with the question of how to play better and enjoy the game more. The good news is that some of us have been there before and know how to get out. But it is on us to recognize when others have fallen into their pit of despair. On us to have the courage and vulnerability to jump into the pit with them. It is on us to go beyond the normal cliches to learn how to truly see people and how best to help them. It is as simple as asking questions. Ask yourself first to see what the root of your crisis was. Then ask those same questions when someone is in their own crisis. Clamber down into the pit with them. That is empathy. And this goes beyond golf. Everyday put yourself in the shoes of the person in front of you. It’s how I made it through those classes. I put myself in their shoes so I could best understand how to help them. That effort will not go unrewarded. Without knowing it, those students engaged with me, then encouraged and empowered me to be able to help them. Empathy is how you make a difference in someone’s life. It is how we can change the world.