WEBVTT
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Probably the best tool you can develop is what I
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call the golden rule, take the fault and try the opposite,
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which sounds so mindumbingly simple to people that most people
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have never tried it. In fact, I get emails daily
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from people saying, you know what, I played years and
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I never tried just doing the opposite of my fault.
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I had a guy maybe a couple of days ago, said,
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I suffered with shanks for almost a year now, I
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was almost quitting the game. I'm a three handicap, and
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he said, I watched one of your social posts and
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it fixed it for me.
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All Right, Well, today my guest is Adam Young from
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Adam Young Golf and he's in Las Vegas and welcome
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to the show.
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Adam, nice to be on, always happy to check golf.
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Well, thank you for taking the time to do it.
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So let's start a little bit talk about you know
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your background. You you grew up in Britain.
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Yeah, so play golf in the rain and the wind constantly,
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got pretty good at that. Played a lot of links golf,
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which I know the Americans love and I hate the
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side of a Lynx golf.
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Wait, you hate lenks courses?
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Oh, it's I like very stable environments, so I like
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to know that if I hit a good shot, it's
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going to be out a good outcome. In Links, there's
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a lot of luck involved. You've got to get the
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right bounce, you've got to I mean obviously if you
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if you play really well, you're going to get good
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outcomes as well, but there's more, there's more luck to it.
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I prefer Parkland, point and shoot style golf, but yeah,
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it's nice to get a good mix. I probably appreciate
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a Links course now after not seeing one for many years.
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Right, right, So how old are you when you started playing?
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Quite late actually, as I was fifteen, very analytical kid,
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so I just get a bunch of books out of
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the library and start learning golf that way. So my
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first books were like led Better and fal Though, so
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it was all a position based and my brain just
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matches onto that completely. So anything that's like mechanical and
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it's like if you do this, you will get this.
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I love that, but unfortunately I found that it was
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chasing my tail for a.
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Yes, So now did you were you kind of self
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taught before you started reading those books or.
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Yeah, well those books taught me so it wasn't a
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lot of self teaching. I was hitting balls on the
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football field soccer field for quite some time, and then
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when I felt ready, I went out on the golf
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course and I think my first, yeah, my first round
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of golf, I shot three over par on a nine
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whole course. It was easy. But my friend who I
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was playing with had played for years and his best
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was forty five around there, nineteen over pa. And he
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was like, I can't believe you just did that. And
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I was like, I'm hooked. Now, I'm in on this.
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And it took me a while to do anything like
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that again, but yeah, that really was a hooking situation
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for me. It really latched me on the golf.
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Oh my god. Yeah, no, I mean so that.
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I've heard so many people talk, guys for pros talk
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about how oh yeah, you know, it took me, you know,
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nine months, and I was, you know, a three handicap
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or you know, a scratch golfer, and the rest of
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us have been slaving away our entire lives to shoot
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the forty five on the nine. So what's I mean
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I've other than talent and drive? Is there something else
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in there?
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The kind of practice obsession I think that I when
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I started golf, I just I wanted everything to absolve
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everything about it. I was drawing lines on the television
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for Tiger Woods is Swing, analyzing it. I was reading
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all these books. I was videoing my swing as a
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fifteen year old and we didn't have iPhones back then.
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My dad's video camera, our JBC video camera, and you know,
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record it and then run back into the house and
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have a look at it and then come back out again.
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It was. It was crazy, but I absolutely loved it.
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Any any moment there was light, I would head down
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to the football field and hit balls until it was
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dark and then come home and just repeat. On summer's
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my parents would drop me off at the golf course
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at seven in the morning and pick me up at
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when it was dark at ten at night. In Britain,
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it gets dark, right, was constantly, so I think it's
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just obsession. And when I wasn't playing, I was thinking
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about it as well. I was writing stats like fairways, greens.
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I was going through imaginary rounds of golf in my
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head with a notebook, saying, oh I'd done that differently,
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I would have scored this. Then I'd write down predicted
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scores like, oh, if I play, if maybe in three
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years time, when I hit it farther, I would imagine
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and like hitting to these different spots. Yeah, now I'm
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saying it out loud. I sound like a crazy person,
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but absolutely crazy for golf. And I think when we
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talk about practice, we often don't talk about the mental
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part of it, like the rehearsing of swings in your head,
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you know, just imagining being on the golf course and
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playing the rounds of golf. Those don't get logged as
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practice hours, but I believe they they have something to
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do with improving as well.
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Yeah, well, talk a little bit about that kind of
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mental side of of game improvement, you know, not just
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on course, but you know, off the course, like when
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you're thinking about it.
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That's not my area of expertise. I'll be honest.
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I know what you're saying. You're saying that you thought
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you know that was helpful, right, I mean, is that
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I think?
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So? I mean I can't see I was it was harmful.
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I mean, if I have the choice, if I've got
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an hour of practice, I'm going to do physical practice
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over over mental practice. But when I couldn't practice physically,
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I would be mentally doing it just thinking about the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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And I think it's interesting. I did find the old books,
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and I had books book after book. Book is proper
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crazy stuff, predicted rounds of twelve, like best case scenario,
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current scenarios, and everything in between. And what's interesting is,
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I'm sure you've heard of a vision board, just like
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writing down a vision board. I've achieved those things. So
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my best case scenario is things like, oh, imagine if
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I hit the ball two hundred and sixty yards and
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my seven nine goes one hundred and seventy yards, which
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was crazy at the time when I was writing it,
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But now all those things have come true. And you know,
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I play, I think off a plus two right now.
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I've been as low as a plus five momentarily. But yeah,
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these things, you know, you surpass where you think you're
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going to get to as well.
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Now, so when did you, I mean, did you immediately
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know this is what you wanted to do with your life?
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You know, since you're thinking about it all the time,
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were you like, I'm this is it?
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Or was it just an obsession at the time?
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Interestingly to me, yeah, when I started golf. Probably about
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a year in I'm like, I want to be a teacher.
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I didn't even think of playing the game professionally. I
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watched them. It didn't occur to me, Oh, maybe I
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could be like like them and play. I don't know
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why I don't. I didn't dream big enough as a kid,
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but I loved the mechanical side and the problem solving
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side of it so much that it was always like, oh,
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this is my dream job. And I used to watch
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my local professional he come in. He'd have a completely
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flexible schedule. He'd come in and just like, I'm going
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to cross these hours off, and I'm like, this is
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the life. I want flexible hours. He was earning what
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I thought at the time was a ton of money
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as well, and this is this is the life for me.
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And so yeah, that's kind of where I set my
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brain is, Okay, I'm going to become a coach. Now.
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Well, at most people, I mean most people who become.
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Coaches at one point aspired to be players, right, I
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mean that's yeah, and that so did you I mean
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did you enjoy the competition when did you play competition
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a lot when you were a kid and stuff, or
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did you just love the game.
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Not really because because I started at fifteen, by the
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time I was eighteen, I was I got to scratch ish.
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Then I think it is too handicap, and that was
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the point where you could start to enter these bigger tournaments.
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But by that time I kind of burned out a
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little bit. On the playing side, I mean, we can't
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talk about that. A lot of that was to how
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I was trying to learn golf. I was trying to
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learn it purely mechanically, mechanically, so you know, I was
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putting myself into positions and not understanding why if my
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swing was looking better, why am I not playing better?
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Why am I not scoring better? So there was there
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was a big level of frustration at that point because
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it's like, well, I'm putting all this hard work in
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my swing is looking exactly like everybody says it should look,
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and I'm hitting it worse, so why and no one
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can explain to me why, and so it's hugely frustrating.
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Caused me to burn out a little bit. On the
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competition side, I didn't enjoy it. I still to this
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day don't really enjoy competition that much. I love just
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going out on my own problem solving, figuring it out,
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competition against myself, trying to improve my own stats, my
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own game. I love that side of it, right when
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I'm competing against others and there's a level of lack
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of control over it. You know, you can't shoot, you
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can't control whether someone else goes out and shoots a ten.
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Underpart my brain doesn't like those things as much. And
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so I mean, I like a little bit competition. When
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I go out with the boys, is like, all right,
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let's play for five bucks, let's make something out of it,
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and that's enough for me to get, you know, inspired.
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But you know, once we stop playing for big money,
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I'm like, I'm not enjoying this now because you hit
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a good shot and it's like, okay, I should do that.
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You hit a bad shot, and then you get upset
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because it's like it means, it means so much, and
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it's just I know a lot of people will be like, Okay,
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that's that's weird to not enjoy competition, and.
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I don't think it's weird at all.
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Yeah, honestly, you know, because it really I mean, you know,
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I mean, there's so many reasons to beat yourselfself up
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on a golf course that like, I don't need another.
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Yeah, Like you know, like and I love playing.
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I like playing with my friends, and I don't mind
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playing competition with them.
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But I mostly I just like.
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Playing, you know, I just like you know, the playing
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playing the game, and like you said, playing against yourself,
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playing against the course, like that's enough for me most days.
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Like I don't know, you all want to play better, right,
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we all want to hit well, enjoy the game, so
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they is, there's still motivation to improve, but going out
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and saying, right, I want to beat these people. And
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it's like if I play, if I play poorly and
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win against someone, I have no that that doesn't do
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anything for me. But if I play really well and
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I'm just playing on my own, I go off a
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very happy person, like even if I don't win anything
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as a result of it. So it's more about playing
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well for me.
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And I think you know, to be in competition, I mean,
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I think you have to be wired for that too, right,
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I mean that has.
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To be something you like.
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You know, you just have to love going out there
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and not just playing the game, but like testing yourself
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against Yeah, I mean, if you're on the pjatur. I mean,
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I can't imagine, you know, having all those people there.
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It makes me sick to my something to think about
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the pressure they go through. And yeah, it's it's not
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something that you look at most tall players and do
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they really enjoy what doing a lot of them?
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That's an interesting question. Well, yeah, it's funny.
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There was a book and this is kind of getting
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off track, but there was a book about a fromer
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NBA player wrote and he said, you know that the
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difference between a great NBA team and a bad NBA team,
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or the six guys who aren't the starters and the
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sixth man, he goes because those guys don't love basketball.
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He said, they are just really frigging good at basketball,
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and they're built for it, and it's a job. And
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there's got to be guys on tour for are so good.