Have you ever stood on the tee box with something on the line? In the group you're in, each one of the others steps in front of you and just rips the drive right down the pipe. You're standing there thankful that you won't have to follow the first or second one and then the next to last guy rips it just as good if not best of all.
It's your turn. You can feel their eyes on you as you approach the tee and stick your peg in the ground, slowly placing the ball on its pedestal. Then what? Where do you go from there? It's an infinite field of possibility as to where you can go with this and it is sometimes the best place to look upon if you are not playing to your fullest potential.
There are those days where these circumstances magnified under some pressure can send you into terror -- oh how we all dread those feelings. A flip side of this state of affairs is remaining calm and patient, letting it go right through you and drawing from the moment. Rise to the occasion and enjoy it for the pureness of what it represents for that moment in time. What is in the air that those other guys are breathing? It's no different for you.
I would have to say that those who find a way to draw from the moment are incredibly centered in the situation at hand. It is a bit eerie how the game's greatest players seem to will and display these moments of brilliance, yet they some how allow a distraction to interrupt the pureness of the moment.
It was difficult to watch the end of the 2006 U.S. Open for me. The great play of those guys at the top all week was golf at its best. To watch the distraction of what it would mean to win the Open slither into the minds and bodies of those great players became difficult to swallow. They were patient until the final holes and once the end was near the distraction was obvious.
Patience is a prickly fixation that is a necessity at the Open for survival. It was a fleeting 1-for-4 of the games great players.
I sometimes like to play the "what if?" game. I then realized that under the conditions that these guys played under, cracking is to some degree inevitable. It is interesting though how the one guy that was thinking, "I will just try to get into a playoff," ends up the winner. It was almost as if no one wanted to come back to play another day. They just wanted to end it. Where is the patience in that? But really, who am I to judge what it must feel like to make a clear headed decision under those circumstances on the last day of that event when you're just fried from the week?
So, I won't judge. I am going to learn from it instead and I hope that you will call upon your patience to make your decisions on the course.
Patience, persistence, perseverance and diligence -- they all point to attention in the now moment. Although there may be huge differences between a major and the club championship at you course, there is similarity to your approach. When the pressure seems to build, thinking and decision making is hard. There is a great deal of heart that is involved and an even greater deal of ego that has to check out. Empty you of yourself and the decisions will make themselves.
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