Life and Business Are a Lot Like Golf

Over the past 20 years a lot of my leisure time has been spent at Quail Ridge Golf Course. It occurs to me that success in life or business is similar to success in playing golf. Golf pro Mike Hammond told me that to play a good game of golf depended upon grip, posture, tempo, and a lot of practice. Grip, posture, and tempo are basic fundamentals and practice develops the ability to use the fundamentals over and over, producing a quality game. Life and business are the same as golf. There are basic fundamentals that must be learned and then practiced consistently.

Early in my business career I was told proper practice produces pleasing performance. Another concept I was exposed to was that “People don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan.” So then planning is an important ingredient in any life success. Planning in golf is the grip, posture, and tempo that then must be practiced. In golf, as in life or business, not everyone has the discipline to stay with the plan, practice, and ultimately be successful. Not everyone has the same ability or level of accomplishment. Only a small percentage of those starting to golf ever score lower than 100 strokes, even fewer break 90 for 18 holes, and a very small number become par (or scratch) golfers. Just as two people can take the same golf equipment and the same instruction and get far different results, two people can get the same training in the same organization and end up with differing performance records.

The goal then should be maximizing our skills to get the most we can from golf, business, or life. Accomplishing this goal of excelling is dependent upon continuing the fundamentals. Planning and practicing are just the beginning. An equally important concept is having the focus to remain with the task no matter how the early results go. When the plan doesn’t work out adjustments must be made. In golf it is called “the rub of the green.” You hit a good shot and it takes a bad bounce. Life can sometime give us the same. We do things right and it just doesn’t happen. Keeping our eye upon the goal and continuing to move toward it is important. As has been said, “ the race doesn’t always go to the fastest, or the strongest, but to the one that keeps running.” Remember Aesop’s fable of the hare and the tortoise. Insurance millionaire W. Clement Stone had it right, “success is achieved by those who try and keep trying.”