Goodness me.
My golf has been feeling good, but sporadically. There has been signs of great golf sprinkled with clear and evident signs of inconsistency. Last week it all came together. My golf, my mental state. It clicked.
I’m always the nervous, anxious one. Hoping I’m not going to shoot 100, hoping I’m not going to embarrass myself, hoping I’m not going to let people down. But last week I was so comfortable and relaxed all day, and in the playoff even more so. I seemed to get out of my own way, which I always find so hard to do; I think we all do. Why?
I holed the winning putt and felt so calm and just so chuffed. My best friend Tara Mactaggart ran over to me, sprayed me in water and hugged me, and I cried. It felt like a release of all emotions, a feeling of all the hard work coming together and proof to myself that I can do it. That I can win.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a few years, I fortunately experienced this feeling a few times in 2018, as an amateur, but that was the last time. That feels like so long ago, so much has happened since then. With me, with the world. The journey I’ve been on the last couple of years since I had my hip fixed has been full of peaks and troughs. But quite obviously this peak is the highest, and it feels so rewarding.
As a golfer, a professional golfer, an athlete, you compete for fun yes, but to win. This feeling doesn’t happen often in golf, unless you are Tiger Woods in 2000. Winning happens, but not often. There are too many variables, too many external and internal factors that influence our game.
But why did on one random day in May did it suddenly all click together? What happened in the week between the last event that felt like everything was close but just not there. I couldn’t put a respectable score together. I struggled to have clarity of what I was trying to do with the golf ball, so my ball striking suffered. I struggled to read putts. I struggled to get out of my own head and just play golf.
Golf is that game where things can change so quickly. And I mean quickly. How many times have you heard stories of players who have missed consistent cuts and suddenly won. It’s mad. If that doesn’t make you love this game. I’m not sure what will!
Do you want to know exactly what happened in the space of a week for me? I’m not sure if we will ever know. I can’t pin point it exactly, but I sat in the rain in Forres with my coach, David Torrance, we went through the last couple of weeks and dissected it. We had a deep debrief. Why was I doing what I was doing, why was I thinking what I was thinking. How could we make a couple of changes that would give me a chance to let my golf he see’s in practice come out on a tournament day. It wasn’t much, but it was clearly enough.
I was texting Sean the morning of it, the usual I’m nervous stuff. Why can’t I feel like I do in a bounce game in a tournament. If it was that easy, golf would be easy. He told me to ‘be as deliberate as I can be, and just plod along and see what happens’. I said if only I could get into that state everyday. At that moment, I didn’t realise that subconsciously I must have been. So after a successful day, I asked the same question… how do I get into that state every time I play. How do I replicate it?
It’s not something I’m going to over analyse, but it’s something I’ve reflected on to try and get back into that place in the future.
That winning feeling, it certainly makes me hungrier for more.
Photos: Rose Ladies Series.