The Other 90 Percent

Make the Commitment

There’s always time for latebloomers to grow

by dr. bob rotella with roger schiffman

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hen you look at three of the greatest athletes of the modern era—Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady—only one was destined to be dominant in his sport from an early age. Tiger was a child prodigy: He was shooting par at age 5, and he was winning tournaments soon after. He continued to win early and often, capturing three U.S. Junior Championships and three U.S. Amateurs before winning the NCAA individual title at Stanford and then turning professional. He seemed a lock for greatness almost from the beginning because he combined his giftedness with passion and ambition. Now in his 40s, he has amassed 15 major championships and 82 PGA Tour victories.

Jordan didn’t make the varsity basketball team as a sophomore, then he started getting good his junior year in high school. Coach Dean Smith was criticised for taking a chance on Michael and offering him a scholarship at the University of North Carolina, where he became a star. While playing for UNC, he made a shot that ended up being the deciding basket in an NCAA Championship game. MJ said that really lit his fire and helped him realise he could become great. And he truly dominated the NBA for more than 10 years.

Then you have Brady. Unheralded in high school, he was barely decent enough to get to the University of Michigan, where he hardly got any field time the first two years. He improved enough in his last two seasons to catch the attention of the pro scouts, but even so, Brady was only the 199th pick in the NFL draft. Six other quarterbacks were drafted before he was that year, not exactly something to cheer about. His first season with the New England Patriots was nothing special, either—the team finished 5-11. He had to be patient, and he had to have faith that his day would come. It finally did, but it took a while. Things started to fall into place for Brady during the next season. It was a grueling year with five losses, but the Pats pulled it together in the playoffs and managed to make it to the Super Bowl. There, Brady didn’t have his best game against the St. Louis Rams, but it was good enough. New England squeaked out a win, 20-17, on a 48-yard field goal on the final play of the game, and the victory launched an amazing career for Brady. During the next 18 years he went on to play in nine more Super Bowls and collected a total of seven Super Bowl rings.

Whether you are a late bloomer or a late starter, you would do well to keep Brady’s story in mind, as well as Jordan’s.

It is possible to get really good at golf, or reach whatever goals you’ve set in the game, at just about any age—if you put your mind and soul into it. Others certainly have done it. One of the great qualities about golf is that it’s

It’s possible to get really good at golf at almost any age.

not necessarily a young person’s game. It’s truly a game for all ages. There are numerous examples of top golfers who took a very long time to get to the top.

Many late starters are people who have been successful in other endeavors. Whether you are getting into golf later in life or haven’t had much success so far, you are ready to make a major commitment now. You need to sustain a commitment. Ideally, your practice will be efficient, and you’ll put the most time and energy into the parts of your game that are the most important to lowering your score. For many, that means concentrating on your short game and spending quality time rehearsing all the short shots on and around the green—pitches, chips, bunker shots and, of course, putting.

Legendary player Paul Runyan understood the importance of mastering all the shots around the green and wrote a book about it. One of his two PGA Championship victories came against Sam Snead, who was outdriving him by 50 yards in their 36-hole match-play final in 1938. I worked with Paul for years in the Golf Digest Schools. He had big dreams well into his 90s and amazingly played in the Par-3 Contest at the Masters at 91! “Ninety-nine percent of the time, I beat my age,” he once said when he was in his 90s. “I can still have a terrible game and beat my age.”

According to Golf Digest, Bob Charles holds the record for most strokes under one’s age in a tournament. He shot 66 at age 76 in a European senior tour event. The record for a non-tour event is held by John Powell. At 86, Powell shot 64—22 strokes better than his age—in a Southern California PGA section senior tournament in 2017. Walter Morgan is the youngest player on record to shoot his age in a tournament. He shot a 60 at age 61 on the Champions Tour.

These feats point to the fact that you can always keep aspiring to lofty goals in golf. Take the story of Larry Nelson. The three-time major champion and Ryder Cup star didn’t even touch a golf club until he was 21. He was busy playing other sports in high school, going to college and serving in the Vietnam War. He started playing golf after returning to his native Georgia from Vietnam. While finishing up classes

at Kennesaw State, he fell in love with the game—there was a golf course right next to campus. He never played junior golf, never played collegiate golf, didn’t even play much amateur tournament golf. He taught himself by reading Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, worked on his game with a fellow veteran and golf instructor, and practiced long and hard every day. Though he broke 70 within nine months, he didn’t qualify for the PGA Tour until he was 27. (By comparison, Tiger had won 39 PGA Tour events and eight majors by age 27.) But Nelson became one of the game’s most feared competitors, winning the 1981 and ’87 PGA Championships and the ’83 U.S. Open. In his first two Ryder Cups, in ’79 and ’81, he compiled an unprecedented 9-0-0 record. Later, on the Champions Tour, he won 19 times. Nelson didn’t care that others had a massive head start in the game. He set his sights high, dreamed big and believed in his destiny. Then he decided to do what was necessary to make it happen. As you can see, some athletes and a few golfers who made it big were prodigies from an early age, but many struggled and got good later in life. The point is, it’s never too late. It’s about where you go with what you’ve got and finding a way. These players all found a way. To do that you have to go on a mission. But it’s important to have fun on your mission, finding out what you can do with your talent at a game that you love. Understand that there are expectations you put on yourself and those that other people put on you. You should care only about the goals and expectations you’ve set for yourself. If you’re a late bloomer, you have to believe you could beat some child prodigy who maybe beat you for years in an earlier life. But now you’ve improved your skills, and part of it is realising and telling yourself, Hey, when they play you, they have unbelievable pressure because they think they’re supposed to beat you, and they’re going to really look bad if they don’t. Sure, they might have had success against you and others, but they also have pressure now. Remind yourself that the pressure is really on them, not on you. It also goes back to remembering to be process-oriented and not outcome-oriented. Make sure you’re living your own expectations and not the expectations of others.

From Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot: The Secret to Playing Great Golf by Dr. Bob Rotella with Roger Schiffman to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2021 by Robert Rotella. Printed by permission.