Do you have a why? Why do you want to do what you do? My why found me five years ago…
It was five years ago today, at the age of 24, I was sitting next to my mother as she lay on her deathbed dying of cancer and I watched as she took her last breath. As I sat there, staring blankly at her now soulless body, my mind was flooded with so many thoughts and emotions. Most importantly, at that moment, I truly realized just how short life can be and I now had a deep desire and a “why” to do something great with my life.
She is why I want to go after my dreams. She is why I want to inspire others to go after theirs and she is why I want to work to improve myself each and every day, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
The last words I spoke to my mother were “I promise I’ll make you proud.” At that time, I did not know how I was going to do that, and for the next few years following that day, I had a hard time finding a true passion that I could focus my energy on. I struggled with life; battling anxiety, depression, and a continuously frustrating inability to seemingly get going and a fear that I wouldn’t be able to live up to that promise that I had made.
However, after rediscovering my passion for golf and writing, and starting this blog in May of last year, it has given me the means to keep my promise to my mother. I can pursue my passions and dreams in life, but more importantly, it has given me a platform to help and inspire others to realize theirs and do the same. In the end, if I don’t capture all my dreams in life, but this blog succeeds in helping others to reach their goals in their respective passions…then I know my mother would be proud.
I know a lot of you who follow my blog already have your own “why” for reaching your dreams. But if you don’t, I urge you to find one, and you don’t need a personal or family tragedy to find it. Your why can simple just be you, it doesn’t need to involve anybody other than yourself.
I’m reminded of a speech I heard Les Brown give where he talked about this idea, and it’s been a motivator for me as well. He said imagine if you will, being on your deathbed, and standing around your bed are the dreams given to you by life. The ideas that you never acted on…the talents, the gifts, the abilities that you never used, and there they are standing around your bed looking at you with large angry eyes saying “We came to you, and only you could have given us life, and now we must die with you forever.”
If you died this very moment, what would die with you? What dreams, what ideas, what talents, what greatness that you showed up to bring? Don’t allow the fear of failure or the attractiveness of playing it safe in life to draw you in. Life is short, start now on your dreams so in the end, you’ll never have to ask yourself “what if?” What if I had thrown my whole self at my dreams?
So I ask again, what is your why? Why do you want to do what you do? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below, so please share!
I try to look back at the death of my mother in as much positive light as I can. She was a very special woman, and I’m grateful to have gotten 24 years with her. She gave me the gift of life not once, but twice. First, the day she gave birth to me and second, the day she died…
Got back into the swing of things this week with a range practice session on Tuesday night and then a round with some friends on Wednesday at the Vineyard. Didn’t touch a club since last Wednesday, so I came back feeling fresh, but with an understanding that I’d be a little rusty so I had low expectation. I shouldn’t keep doubting myself as I hit the ball well at the range on Tuesday and actually felt really confident in my ball striking heading into the round the following day. I was most concerned about how the couple week layoff would affect my short game, chipping in particular, as that depends mostly on feel and takes constant practice to keep it sharp.
The round yesterday went great and I shot a solid round of 74(+4). I made a couple of really bad course management mistakes that cost me in what coulda, woulda, shoulda been my 3rd under par round! I made 2 double bogeys on the day, both on short par 3’s and both because I tried to play a cut into flags that really didn’t even call for it. My go to natural shot is a slight draw, but I’ve also been working hard on developing a cut, to give me options, which I can use to take out the right side when needed. I can hit it well a lot of the time, but it’s not as consistent as my normal shots yet. Anyway, both of the par 3’s have hazards in front of the greens and I tried to hit cut shots into both and hit them both heavy and they came up short in the hazards. I ended up taking double bogey 5’s on both the par 3’s. So some bad course management on my part, followed by poor execution and if I had just parred those 2 holes I shoot even on the day…bogeyed the par 5 9th also after being only 65 yards out for my 3rd shot. It’s these little mistakes that I need to work on eliminating.
I’m proud of the way that I bounced back though mentally after my two mistakes on the par 3’s, I had a birdie the next hole after the first par 3 double and then on the back after the second, I rattled off 6 straight pars to end the round. I feel like I’ve made some great strides in the mental aspect of my game, I’ve been able to move on quickly from disappointing shots and stay focus on the next shot at hand. I lost track of my score again during the round and didn’t know my final score till after the final putt on 18, which is something I love doing. It’s not always the easiest thing to achieve, but I’ve been able to do it a lot in recent rounds, it really keeps you focused when you get in that zone. My chipping and putting surprisingly were solid despite the couple week break, zero 3 putts and had a lot of close chips, even chipped in for birdie on the 5th hole. Will most likely have to wait till next Monday to play again, but in the next few days I’ll be practicing short and long game.
Total stats for the round were as follows:
The Vineyard Escondido Par 70 71.0/126 6,531 Yards
Got home from the annual Palm Springs tournament on Sunday night and I am so happy to report to you all that I have won the tournament for the 2nd consecutive year! Back to back championships now and I’m so thrilled! Unfortunately, I didn’t shoot that under par round that I was hoping for and I did make some uncharacteristic mistakes (I’ll get into that later), but overall, I played some real solid golf and in the end I accomplished the main goal of winning the tournament.
For those of you who didn’t follow me or read my posts from last year’s Palm Springs tournament, it is a 3 day event where we play courses at both PGA West and La Quinta. This year we had a field of about 90 golfers and although most of the field was just hacking it around, there are some really solid players that play in this event. On the final round, the top 4 leading golfers in the tournament all play together and this year’s final group found me playing against some extremely good players. It consisted of one who played at a division 1 college team, another who qualified for the Buick Invitational PGA Tour Event here in San Diego at Torrey Pines a few years ago (it’s now called the Farmers Insurance Open) and another a scratch golfer, who plays in many USGA events and was leading me by 3 strokes…not to mention it was about 110 degrees every single day. This was now my 4th year attending this annual tournament in the desert and I had won it the year before so I also had that little added pressure of being defending champ!
The first day we played at the Greg Norman, a course I had never played at before and it was extremely challenging. I’ve never played a true “desert” course like that before…it was basically only fairways and desert. Not much rough at all, but the fairways were narrow and you had to be deadly accurate both off the tee and on your 2nd shots or you were playing from the rock hard desert or losing your ball in the shrubs. Playing any course for the first time is always difficult, obviously why pros play practice rounds, but I played some solid golf. I ended up shooting a 78 (+6) with only 1 birdie, but was still only 2 shots off the lead after day 1. My ball striking was really solid, but I was disappointed in my score, I just could not figure out the Bermuda greens and putted terrible. My lag putting was horrid! Left countless putts 3-4 ft short, but was making most of the 2nd putts, but I did end up 3-putting twice. I’ve never played on Bermuda greens before and it’s something totally different than what I’m used to…so slow!! I also bogeyed two par 5’s, something I almost never do, both as a result of tee shots that found the hazards. So that is 4 shots right there that I should have the skills to avoid, so I left a possible low score on the course, but was still right there at the top of the leader board in 3rd place.
I’ve played this course each of the previous 3 years, so I have some course knowledge built up by now. I absolutely love this course; it’s challenging yet fun, beautiful and well maintained. This only problem this year was that the greens had been aerated, must have been a few weeks prior, they weren’t sandy, but the punched holes still slightly remained, certainly enough to affect putts. Nonetheless, I was most confident to play this course of all the 3 because I like the layout, my scores have improved every year here and I looked forward to trying to go low on a real difficult course. My ball striking remained solid, but I just could not take advantage of ANYTHING all day and didn’t have a single birdie, yet was still able to shoot only a 75(+3). 15 pars and 3 bogeys, one of the bogies was another 3 putt and I again bogeyed two par 5’s!! What?!? I seriously never bogey par 5’s and I had now done it 4 times in 2 rounds, was frustrating beyond belief. With my length, I expect to be making birdie on a lot of them and certainly never making worse than par. As I had talked about in my previous post before I left, my wedge game from 100 yards and in was my main concern and it came into play big time during this round. I had 5 shots from the range of 90-70 yards during the round and I only hit the green once!! That is really really bad and I was left having to scramble for par (which I did successfully) rather than having a solid look at birdie and a par almost guaranteed with an easy 2 putt. If I want to shoot under par, I must improve that part of my game, I’ll be sure to dedicate a lot more time to that area going forward. The low round of the day was a 73(+1) from a guy who shot 77 the first day. The person who was leading after a first round 76 ended up dropping back quite a bit and I jumped into 2nd place heading into the final round trailing by 3 strokes.
**Here is a video of my tee shot on the par 3 17th hole. You can’t really see the ball flight from the video, but I hit a 9iron that I tried to draw back to the flag…it finished about 15 ft pin high left. 2 putt par.**
Day 3 Final Round – La Quinta Dunes Course
This was a big day for me, all the work I’ve been doing on my mental game was going to come into play today. I’ve never been in a tournament final round pairing before, last year I played in a pre set up group, so this year I had some nerves cooking. I’ve never been in that type of situation before and I knew it was going to be great experience for later on when I play in bigger tournaments going forward, like Golf Channel Am Tour Events. I studied my yardage book the night before, devised a game plan and visualized playing the course in my mind. I even visualized them calling my name as champion at the banquet because I believe in the theory that if the mind can see it and truly believe it, then you can achieve it! I went in with the mindset of keeping my emotions in check and trying to just focus on playing one single shot at a time. I wanted to get lost in the game and try to go unconscious…I wanted to be in the “zone.” I knew which player it was that I was 3 shots behind and I knew at some point if I looked like I was gaining ground or in the lead that I would be watching his shots thinking “ok, now I must make this putt to stay 1 down or 1 up” so I tried to make sure I didn’t fall into that trap. In a sense I didn’t want to score board watch, I wanted to come down to the 18th hole not knowing if I was leading or not. I just wanted to stick to my game plan I set up the night before and play my game, that’s all I can do and in the end if it’s not enough to be the winner so be it.
I’m so proud of myself, I honestly kept focused on one shot at a time, when my mind did wander a few times, I recognized it and snapped back out of it immediately. I let go of any bad shots, maintained a positive attitude and neutral emotions and got into that elusive “zone” that golfers strive for. I honestly had no idea of my individual score I was so much in the zone, let alone where I was in relation to the lead. I could sense that I was probably in the lead, but wasn’t sure by how much if at all. They set it up so that our 18th hole was the 17th hole(pictured below) which is the #1 handicapped hole and I have heard the 1st or 2nd hardest hole in all of California! It is a long dog leg left holes with water all down the left side, extremely intimidating, but I didn’t think twice and stuck to my game plan of hitting a 4 iron off the tee. I hit it right down the middle of the fairway, where as the person I was battling the lead with took driver and hit it through the fairway into a bunker. He had an almost impossible 2nd shot and hit it into the water. He later told me that he was thinking in his head as he saw me pull 4 iron “wow he’s going conservative and playing it smart” He talked himself out of doing the same, it was nice of him to tell me how impressed he was with my mental attitude, my game and how I went about playing the course. I ended up winning by 4 strokes after being down 3 strokes going into the final round and accomplished my goal of back to back championships!! Now my mind is already set on that 3-peat next year and shooting an under par round. I want that under par round at that tourney, it didn’t happen this year, but I will have it!
I know this is a really long post, thanks for sticking around and taking the time to read it, thanks for all your support guys! You are all helping me make my dreams become reality one day at a time and I hope that I can help you all go after and accomplish your dreams as well…we are in this together, you all motivate me to be better and live a life which I have imagined. Thank you, hope you enjoyed this tournament recap! They haven’t posted any pictures from the tournament yet, so I’ll post a few when they get released.
Do you have a why? Why do you want to do what you do? My why found me five years ago…
My Journey 2 Scratch 