The Five Inch Fairway
“Golf is mainly played on a five inch course
– the space between your ears.”
-Bobby Jones
The topic of mental health has come up a lot lately in sports. Bubba Watson was one of the first in the golf world to speak on it. Rory McIlroy was extremely candid about his struggles after the Ryder Cup. And who could forget the media storm Simone Biles created when she put her mental health first during the summer Olympics? Even as recently as last week, Bryson DeChambeau (of all people) was the first to voice concern for Antonio Brown when the rest of the world just wanted to make memes.
Most of the conversation surrounding mental health in sports these days centers around strategies to improve your game - how to drown out the crowd noise, how to stop overthinking your swing, etc. It’s great that the conversation is starting somewhere, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
Tiger Woods was all I knew about golf growing up. My introduction to Tiger Woods came at the same time as my introduction to the game of golf - at the 1997 Masters Tournament with my grandfather. Over the years of attending the tournament together, I meshed together an emotional connection between the Masters, Tiger, and the game itself. Golf had become more than just a Sunday afternoon sport. Tiger had become more than just a famous athlete. At the end of the day, it was all tangled up in my relationship with my grandfather.
He passed away unexpectedly in 2019 shortly after Tiger won his most recent green jacket. I never really had the opportunity to process the grief of that loss, at least not then. I was nine months pregnant when he died. I was so pregnant, in fact, that I was scared I would go into labor before we could get through the memorial services. At the funeral, I tried so hard to be invisible. But that was difficult to do when I was the same size as the hearse. Every guest in that church thought my about-to-pop-belly was an invitation to strike up a conversation, or worse, touch me. As much as I wanted to run away, talking to strangers about how dilated I might be or if I was planning to breastfeed kept my mind off of the reality of the situation - that my grandfather was gone.
Fast forward to February 2021.
We are a year into a global pandemic and everyone is burnt the hell out. In that year I had a baby, went on maternity leave, came back from maternity leave, lost a job, & started a new job. I was constantly on the move, trying to busy myself with as many distractions as I could. The sports world came to a crashing halt - cancelling most events or postponing them to a weird time of the year, like the November Masters. Everyone seemed to be hanging on by a thread. And then came Tiger’s accident.
I was pulling double duty that day working from home at my grandparents house, helping my mom clean out some of their things in the attic in between meetings. I was away from the TV and my computer so the first news I got of the crash was texts from friends. “Have you seen this?” “NIKKI, OMG!!” “........this is bad.” The pictures gave me instant flashbacks to Kobe’s helicopter crash. For the first several hours all we knew was Tiger had crashed and it didn’t look good. I made a split-second decision and emailed my boss. “Something came up, I need to take the rest of the day off.” Thank GOD by the end of the day, word was sent from Tiger’s team that he was alive and recovering.
A few days later, in the Sunday round of the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship, several golfers including Rory McIlroy and Tony Finau sported red and black to honor Tiger and send him a “Get Well Soon” message of support. While I sat watching the final round, I got a text from a friend. He mentioned he had never seen anything like it and how this unifying gesture showed that Tiger was bigger than the game of golf. I replied that I agreed and told him how much anxiety I had over it earlier in the week. I even told him that I took off work for the day and was really struggling over it.
His response was jarring. “You took time off work because Tiger Woods crashed his car?” he texted. “Socialized identity is a serious problem. You have a husband and a kid! Tiger Woods is not your life. Grow up.”
To be fair, he was right. From his point of view, I looked like a lunatic for freaking the hell out and completely stopping my life just because a famous athlete flipped his car a few times. But from where I was sitting, Tiger’s crash was the final straw that pushed me over the edge. I had been running away from and holding in a lot of pain for a long time. I had avoided facing grief over losing my job, anxiety over a never-ending pandemic, fears of inadequacy in being a new mom, and the stress of trying to juggle it all.
I had also given birth only five days after my grandfather’s funeral. The flowers from his service were still fresh in my kitchen when we brought the baby home from the hospital. I didn’t have time to accept the reality of his loss and grasp what his absence meant for our family before jumping headfirst into motherhood. I ignored that grief and shoved it down to focus on other less painful things. I had a lifetime of memories that entangled Tiger Woods with my grandfather. So on that February morning (standing in my grandfather’s attic of all places) when I saw Tiger’s crumpled car on the side of the road, all of that ignored pain that had been bubbling for over a year rose to the surface and spilled out.
I’ve suffered from anxiety my whole life. It’s taken a lot of therapy to help me realize my triggers and learn helpful coping mechanisms. But even with all of those tools, life is unexpected and sometimes you get caught off guard. You can revert to old unhealthy habits, like bottling your emotions. Even Bubba Watson has admitted that he, too, used to struggle with trying to keep it all tucked away. “I held things in for so long that it hurt me,” he said. “Now I’m at a point where I can say, let's just talk about it…it’s OK to not be OK sometimes.”
It’s easy to head into the new year making resolutions or goals like lowering my handicap or increasing my swing speed. But as we enter our third year of a global pandemic with burnout and depression at an all time high, I encourage you to put more effort into your mental health. For some that might mean learning to set healthy boundaries. For others, that might mean learning to finally accept and feel your emotions.
Ben Hogan said, “As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” Can you focus on improving your game? Absolutely. Can you make goals to have a better career or make more money? Yes, those are great goals to have! But don’t forget to set goals for your mental health this year as well. You only get one-round in life, there are no mulligans. So don’t forget that five-inch fairway between your ears - it needs love too.
