7/25/18 - A New Path

After careful consideration, I've decided to call it quits on full-time competition. The opportunity to chase the dream the past two years profoundly improved my life and I will carry the accompanying revelations with me forever. I am fortunate to have had the chance to momentarily distance myself from the hustle and bustle of the "real world" to experience some seriously life altering insights. Being the recipient of this priceless gift of time opened a door to a peaceful perspective which might have gone undiscovered had I not given professional golf a go. As my full-time competitive journey ends, I now see a completely different person in the mirror. I see a person who will have no regrets for never having chased the dream, someone who has learned what is important and unimportant in life, as well as a much better golfer and children's book author engaged to the love of his life. 

Going forward, I plan to keep my golf game sharp and continue competing on a more flexible basis. Melissa and I will be getting married next June and we plan to hopefully move to the Greenville, South Carolina area sometime thereafter to continue our lives together. Until then, we will stay in the Dallas area. Melissa will continue to grow her business, "Sunflower Convenience Services", and I will build my "Clay Wonnell Golf" teaching business at the Marsh Lane Golf Center in Carrollton, TX. My teaching philosophy will focus on helping golfers play better with their existing capabilities via principles of Steven Yellin's "Fluid Motion Factor Program" as well as some personal gems discovered while grinding on the mini tours.

I got emotional writing this post; not for regret of the ride coming to an end, but rather for true gratitude of the opportunity. I want to reiterate how positive of an impact this period has had on my life as a person as well as a golfer. Thank you to my fiancé, parents, sponsors, family, friends, instructors, and all the folks who welcomed me into their homes while on the road. Playing competitive golf on a full-time basis requires a strong support network and I am so fortunate to have been the beneficiary of your help and encouragement. An additional thanks to my parents for consistently encouraging me to pursue my interests and find a job I enjoy so it doesn't feel like work. I learned a lot playing mini tour golf but I think the most important lesson is that life is short, if you've got something you really want to do, do it.    

I rarely share inspirational videos and realize I am doing so from a position of extreme privilege but I think it is worthy of consideration:

7/12/18 - Ideas vs Actions

IDEA WORLD VS ACTION WORLD

Sports are a display of ideas becoming actions. Athleticism is a sliding scale measurement of one’s ability to bridge the concept world and the occurrence world. The better the athlete, the more consistently actions will mimic intentions. The more experienced the athlete, the better tailored the intention will be to address the problem at hand.

In some sports, superior athleticism is enough to allow the cream to rise to the top. The fastest, best conditioned runner will usually win a footrace over a slower opponent with more experience. If a footrace is ninety percent physical and ten percent experiential, golf is nearly the opposite. Golf is different as it is a test of accuracy over physical dominance.

Accuracy is a measure of proximity from an intended target. Our golf score is essentially a representation of our proximity to a series of intended targets. An intended target requires intent by definition, so this is a logical place to explore if we are trying to play better golf.

Our intent for a golf shot is an idea based on experience. Intent resides exclusively in the idea world and can never cross into the action world. Actions can be a near perfect copy of intentions given the right conditions, but as with a Xerox machine, the original will always be a little sharper than the copy. Luckily for us, the quality of the copy is largely up to us.

There are five scenarios when we use the “Ideas to Actions” copy machine on the golf course.

1.      The rarest scenario is getting a perfect copy of our intent. We put a circle in the copy machine and we get a circle out the other end. These are the one or two “perfect” shots we hit during a round if we are lucky. In order to create this perfect copy, the original intent has to be clear, the glass surface on the machine has to be clean and flat, and the machinery needs to be working properly.

2.      A more common scenario is when we put in a circle and out comes a blurry circle. We put together a good plan but our result is not quite the same as our intention. Instead of casting a perfect copy of the original image like a reflection on still pond, the glass surface on this copy machine is slightly marred, acting more like a prism than a mirror. Although distorted, our result is an acceptable version of our intent. These are the “ok” shots we hit during a round, the meat and potatoes of consistent golf.

3.      Sometimes, we put in a circle and out comes a triangle. We had a good plan, but our result looks nothing like our intent. From my experience, this is pretty rare and suggests a catastrophic mechanical glitch out of our control. These are the uncharacteristically bad shots we hit despite feeling comfortable over the ball. Part of the thesis of the Fluid Motion Factor program is to forfeit the concept of control, and instead aim to operate from a place of comfort. The cost of this freedom is accepting the inevitability of hitting truly horrendous golf shots despite your best intentions.

4.      Other times we put a blurry circle in the copy machine and get an even blurrier circle out the other end. A vague plan implies doubt which further corrupts an already flawed image like ripples on a pond. Since golf is a game of accuracy and a copy will never be clearer than the original, the importance of forming a good plan on every shot should be obvious. Putting a noncommittal plan into play is the laziest and most destructive thing a golfer can do. In a game where so much is out of our control, it is unacceptable to not take advantage of something we can control, our honest intent.

5.      Sometimes we don’t put anything into the copy machine but still expect a result. These are the shots we hit with no plan at all, betting on cosmic randomness to get our ball close to the hole. This is a poor long-term strategy and is unfortunately the way a lot of people play golf. Assuming a golfer wants to shoot lower scores and has some basic skills, we have to do better than total randomness.

The next time you play golf, aim to minimize the scenarios you face. We can eliminate scenario four and five simply by putting together a good plan for each shot. Even the greatest of all time only hit a few shots perfectly per round as many of the requirements to do so are beyond our control. With scenario one, four, and five out of the picture, all we are left to manage is circle to blurry circle vs circle to triangle. As mentioned, the circle to triangle scenario is both rare and ultimately beyond our control, so in essence, it is not worth worrying about. Even starting with a perfect plan, we have no real control over the outcome given the body we are working with. Our intent stays in the idea world and the outcome roams the action world. We work hard on our fundamentals to try and make sure our circles come out as slightly blurry circles but we don’t allow the fear of triangles to eliminate the possibility of perfect circles.