Yesterday, I sunk a 30 ft. putt for birdie. This story is not about celebrating a golf accomplishment. It about taking an unconventional, but also effective path and seeing it to the end.
I was a single golfer and paired with two other guys who were friends. They were both retired (73 & 71), played golf frequently and were in incredible shape for their age. They were both very familiar with the course. Great friendly guys. We had a great time. After our round in the parking lot, we found out that we have the exact same minivan, even year and color and shared a laugh.
Overall, greens on the course are average speed, but the slopes and turns on the greens might be slightly above average. On one particular green, the speed is a little faster and the slope is a little bigger. Myself and player #1 both had a putt about 30 ft. away. Player #2 in a very kind way suggested that we have a friendly competition to see who could get closer to the hole. We both agreed.
The putt was fairly straight and flat for about the first 20 ft. After that, it went up hill and then down hill and to the right pretty dramatically. Player #1 left his putt about 3ft. short and 3 ft. to the right. He didn't hit it hard enough and he didn't play enough break to the left. Not a bad putt, but not a good putt either. He self-proclaimed, "average-putt" His friend agreed and echoed "average putt" I watched his entire putt, but didn't say anything. I felt like if I said, "average putt" that could come off as rude.
Now the pressure was on me to do better than his "average putt". My strategy was to hit it harder and more to the left than player #1, which I did. About 20 ft. into the putt, it had the appearance of being way off. It looked way too fast and it was going to end up 10 ft. past the hole. It also looked about 5 ft. too far to the left. Player #1 claimed, "not the right speed" and stopped paying attention to my ball. He went back to looking at his putt. However, myself and player #2 kept paying attention.
After the ball hit the curve, the ball slowed down dramatically and basically took a hard right turn to the hole. After about 2-3 seconds later, it ended up in the cup. Player #2 shouted with joy "NICE PUTT!" Player #1 was completely confused. His remarks were along of the lines of "what happened?" and "how did that go in?"
In life, it's important to follow a plan to the very end. Even if you miss, as long as you are paying attention, you can learn from your mistakes. Player #1 had the opportunity to learn an effective path for a very difficult putt. He missed it because he wasn't paying attention, mostly because he gave up too early. Myself and player #2 saw it, celebrated it and will learn from it.
