Calling Mulligan

The world population can be split into people that orderly follow the instructions when building IKEA furniture and the rest, who like me follow our gut even when sometimes we end up with a few extra pieces.

When I took up golf at the age of fourteen, I never took lessons and instead learnt through practice and observation. Had I gone on to win the British Open, it would have made for great headlines, but instead it resulted in a killer slice, a 24.5 handicap and came at great cost in lost nerves and astray golf balls.

2018 started by putting to good use Father Christmas’s coaching sessions voucher, as I figured that three forty-five minute lessons would be enough to set me on my way to golfing glory. Like with IKEA however, it seems that a few extra pieces are not a good thing when it comes to golf, and when that happens there is no other way but to swallow your ego and humbly start again from step one to see where it all went wrong.

Five minutes into the first session, I was learning a new grip, adopting a new stance and taking an advance course in dynamics. I was finally going places, even if the little ball managed time and time again to dodge the face of my club. Always the optimist, I congratulated myself on ridding of the slice and simultaneously realized that this was going to take a bit more patience and grit.

The next forty days would prove to be my very own early version of lent in the dessert. My confidence and morale had their living daylights beaten out of them as every shot started to feel like the confirmation of my incompetence. For someone who is not process oriented, I had devised a six step routine to check that all body positions where right before every strike, so that by lesson two it was now taking me two minutes to take a bad shot. I was hating every bit and started to feel like Wile E. Coyote as he runs of the cliff and half way through realizes he cannot beat gravity. There was no way back to my old bad golf, and I was not about to stop, gulp and fall.

The old maxim that old habits are hard to break is much more than a popular saying. In fact, "old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behaviors that we most often repeat become imprinted in neural pathways". Science has discovered the root cause of human stubbornness and single-mindedness, luckily we are much more malleable that we believe and we can form new imprints through repetition.

The ability to change any habit, can never be an imposed obligation. While habits do not define us, they are part of who we are and what we have become. They are as responsible for our strengths as they are for our weaknesses. Changing them therefore, is one of the most personal decisions that we will ever take, one for which we must know our why and to which we must be ready to commit. Master Yoda is right; Do or do not, there is no try!

As I wrap up these lines, I am a long way away from playing any Open at any point in time. The new grip, stance and swing is starting to feel more natural and intuitive as I regularly hit the driving range and go through multiple buckets of practice balls. Beyond golf, I am learning to play the guitar and this is proving to be even more frustrating, with the D-chord emerging as my new slice to beat. Through April I will be trail-running in the Himalayas and kicking of a new project that will support school kids in Nepal. Come September I will stand at starting line of Tor des Geants, determined to once again conquer the amazing Val D’Aostan trails.

This year I am calling mulligan and taking a few repeat shots to improve my score. This may be considered cheating in golf, but is often needed off the course. Worry not that you will stop recognizing me, I intend to remain myself throughout it all, if only because everyone else is already taken. IKEA you might as well save a few pence on my manual as I will likely not be needing it.