{"id":28316,"date":"2022-09-13T16:49:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T15:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/?p=28316"},"modified":"2022-09-13T16:50:49","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T15:50:49","slug":"whose-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/whose-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose best?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1997, Tiger Woods was on a tear. After a stellar amateur career he had just turned pro the year before. He had won two tournaments in what remained for him of the 1996 season. He played in a way that made people question wether conventional golf courses would hold up to what this young man (TW was not even 22 at the time) threw at them. He had signed the – at the time – best-paid endorsement deal (USD 40m with Nike, before even having played a single shot as a professional).\u00a0<\/p>

Everything was going for him. He was on top of the golfing world…well, almost. By May 1997, in merely one year, he had risen to No. 2 of the world golf ranking, but to everybody watching it was crystal clear that it was only a matter of time until he would take the top spot.<\/p>

And then he did something weird with, it would turn out, ground-breaking effects.<\/p>

He had just won his first major tournament (the top 4 competitions of the year), the 1997 Masters. In dominating, intimidating fashion. He played otherwordly well.<\/p>

But when rewatching the tapes of his winning performance, he decided he did not like what he saw. He thought his motion was too loose, that there were too many things that could go wrong if his coordination and instincts would not be top notch across four rounds. Not suitable for what he had in mind (after just having won the most prestigious tournament in an incredible way, mind you). \u00a0<\/p>

He decided to fundamentally and substantially overhaul his swing. Not only that, he decided to do it not in the classical way by retreating, rebuilding and then coming back. Instead, he would do it while playing a full schedule on the professional circuit. While competing.<\/p>

To give just a touch of background. World-class golf is the attempt to hit a stationary ball innocently sitting on or slightly above the grass, using a club that moves at more than 200 km\/h. To say it requires precision and coordination would be quite an understatement (it requires strength and flexibility and 23 other things, too).<\/p>

There is so much that can go wrong and the results of even minuscule things not lining up perfectly can be quite drastic. As a consequence, good players tend to make few and small changes to the way they move their body through space. They fiddle around, sure, but there are not that many tales of successful general overhauls and some absolute horror stories.<\/p>

Undeterred, Tiger Woods went ahead. With his new swing coach and bit by bit, he changed his swing in the direction he wanted to go. He hit an absolutely ginormous number of practice balls. Working on tiny movements or adjustments to movements. \u00a0All while playing a full professional schedule.<\/p>

To me the interesting aspects are not about golf. Instead, these two aspects stand out to me:<\/p>

One.<\/strong><\/em> Being on top, being successful is no signal to take it easy. Rather it is a reminder to see if success is a result of being good enough measured by external standards, or whether one is playing to one’s own potential. In the words of Michael Gervais, it is about becoming „one’s best“, not merely „the best“.<\/p>

Two.<\/strong><\/em> Being fully engaged in a pursuit is no reason not to go for that kind of improvement. The way to do this while performing is as clear as it is challenging. Deliberately and intentionally deconstructing what one is doing. Identifying a sequence of small steps to get closer to the envisaged end state. Making reps after reps after reps until they stick, all while doing outward-facing work. Taking in what works, discarding what doesn’t, always adjusting the plan. Along the way calibrating risk by keeping changes small enough and directing them in a way that the overall game doesn’t fall apart (in my opinion this is one of the most under-appreciated parts of TW’s story). Not going away and then „returning to work“, but using actual work as a testing and proving ground to see if what one is working on works.<\/p>

Few of us are like TW when it comes to our competitive status. But I think this is highly relevant no matter what we are good at. I wish I could say that I have a strong habit of doing this, of both taking the bold leap and then addressing it in such a strategic, thought-out, well-designed way. But what I can say with a lot of confidence is that every time I went for it, every time I even nudged myself into this direction, in whichever part of my life, I came out better for it. Things were more fun, more satisfying. And usually I got substantially better at what I was doing as a result.<\/p>

By the way, Tiger Woods came out ok. The result of that decision in the wake of the 1997 Masters was the most dominant stretch of professional golf in at least a generation, potentially ever. While going through his swing overhaul, TW became No. 1 in the world and stayed in that position longer than anyone before or after.<\/p>

There are discussions about whether subsequent swing changes were necessary, mediated by injury or whether Woods is just a compulsive tinkerer with his swing. The man is no saint and I’m sure he has many flaws we don’t even know about. But that decision in 1997 and its subsequent implementation, made fresh on the heels of great success, without commercial pressure and without the pressure of his later injuries, to me stands out as remarkable in so many ways.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I’d love to hear from you.\u00a0<\/p>

If you see this for the first time and like it, please consider subscribing.<\/p>

And if you know somebody else, who might also be interested, please share.<\/p>

All the best,
Malte<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1997, Tiger Woods was on a tear. After a stellar amateur career he had just turned pro the year before. He had won two tournaments in what remained for him of the 1996 season. He played in a way that made people question wether conventional golf courses would hold up to what this young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized-de"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}