FARMINGTON – The physical aspects of sport and competition can be grueling on bones and muscles that are vital for our everyday lives.
The emotional and mental toll that sports and competition can put on an individual athlete, regrettably, is often overlooked by spectators and fans.
Team sports, where individual athletes are within shouting distance of a teammate or familiar face for a majority of the time, can provide many with an outlet to get past an emotional moment of a game. The same cannot be said for individual sports where an athlete might feel like they’re on an island reserved for them alone.
This week at the San Juan Open, with more than 40 professionals lined up to compete for a grand prize of $15,000, spectators could see firsthand the peaks and valleys of what a golfer goes through during a round of 18 holes.
Even on the best of the days, the pro golfer has time to consider the ramifications of a shot they just took, or the next shot or the next hole. Unlike a team sport, the golfer doesn’t have an army of resources to unload those thoughts or feelings.
In the best case scenario, the golfer will find their caddy who’s job it is to move onto the next shot in the bag.
“The trick is to not get caught up in the moment,” said Griffin Barela, who overcame a first round score of 1-over 71 with a 6-under round score of 65 on Friday. “If you try and stay even, that helps. I may not have done such a good job of that on Thursday. I had some putts that got away from me on the back nine, and I got a little ticked off and that carried over the rest of the day, but now you come back and try and keep it on an even keel.”
Barela finished the tournament in ninth place with a final score of 12-under par.
Jared Sawada, who wound up finishing in a tie for third overall at the event, talked about coaching help he’s received in the past year. He came into the tournament off a strong effort the week prior, finishing in a tie for third in the Navajo Trail Open in Durango. Last year, Sawada finished second behind AJ Ott in the San Juan Open.
“Since last year I’ve got a new coach – he’s in Colorado, his name is Riley Andrews, he’s fantastic,” Sawada said. “I also started working with a psychologist. Once you get to a certain level, your skills are all the same and it’s all mental.”
Other golfers expressed how they’ve received assistance from sports psychologists and counselors who have helped them with directives on how to stay focused during the highs and lows of tournament play.
That solution isn’t for everyone however. Josh Anderson, who entered the weekend with a score of -9 under par at the San Juan Open, said his mentality comes from playing competitive sports all his life and what he calls a “tough love” mentality.
“I just try and treat every shot the same. When I get upset, it feeds into the next shot and if I get excited, it feeds into the next shot,” Anderson said. “If I start the day all amped up, I have to stay that way all day and that’s hard to do. Something funky is going to happen and it’s going to happen to everyone. You just have to suck it up and get better.”
Anderson finished second, just one shot behind two-time San Juan Open champion Sam Saunders.
Bobby Jones, a legendary American amateur best known for achieving the Grand Slam of golf in 1930, winning all four major championships in a single year, famously said: “Golf is played mainly on a 5½-inch course … the space between your ears.”
At the end of the day, as much as we load our own personal expectations onto the shoulders of athletes we’ve never met and have little to no knowledge of their personal lives, they’re not robots or characters in a video game.
Their efforts on the course, the court, the field or the diamond, which are in fact, yours in a video game setting, cannot simply be turned off and restarted again.
You never really know what makes an athlete do what they do at the end of the day.
Perhaps that’s a good thing.
