Breaking the Slump: How Great Players Survived Their Darkest Moments in Golf—and What You Can Learn from Them pot

[...]... know how else to describe it Mentally I was in a better place.” Once again he was full of confidence He won the tournament by seven strokes, the questions about his fitness stopped, and Azinger learned a lesson: “Confidence is something that when you have it, you never think you re going to lose it, and when you lose it, you never think you re going to get it back The best thing you can do in your... answers would shine a light for me on the path out of the darkness Maybe they will for you too Chapter 1 PAUL AZINGER “Confidence is something that when you have it, you never think you re going to lose it, and when you lose it, you never think you re going to get it back.” I t is a sunny late September morning in Bradenton, Florida, and I am standing in line at Starbucks with Captain America I go... was uplifting for a lot of people.” Eight days earlier, using a blueprint for team building that might wow the people at Harvard Business School, Azinger engineered a win for the United States at the 12 breaking the slump Ryder Cup in Louisville, Kentucky It had been nearly a decade since the last United States win, and America’s fortunes in the competition had become something of a hyper-scrutinized... would do so 30 breaking the slump By the late 1960s, he was battling a far more insidious problem than a cockeyed grip After winning the 1967 U.S Open at Baltusrol in New Jersey (breaking Ben Hogan’s seventy-two-hole scoring record for the championship in the process), he went a stretch of twelve consecutive majors without winning “I think it was just laziness,” he says, “not working very hard at... obsession in the insular world of golf So instead of sipping coffee with me on a lazy Monday morning on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Azinger could be in Los Angeles doing the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, or taping a guest spot with Ellen DeGeneres or Jimmy Kimmel, but he has turned it all down to come back home and just let it sink in “I feel like I spent the last two years slowly pulling back the string of... but rather doing it himself In 1987, he was the PGA of America’s Player of the Year It was the start of a muscular seven-year stretch during which he collected eleven wins on Tour and finished every year except one in the top ten on the money list The year he didn’t, he finished eleventh “If I wasn’t the best player in the world, I was certainly the hottest,” he says He might have also been the biggest... happened to Azinger and his wife, they had made arrangements for their children to be left with the Fraleys) were killed when the small private plane in which they were flying crashed on the way from Orlando to Dallas “I’ll never forget that day,” says Azinger He had been at Disney World with his family and had turned off his 22 breaking the slump cell phone Driving back across the state late in the afternoon,... “It was over in an instant,” he says “Just like that I Paul Azinger 19 went from the most confident player, the hottest player, to just trying to stay alive.” Plagued by almost constant shoulder pain, which had started in 1987 and had him living on anti-inflammatory medication, Azinger finally submitted to a biopsy in the fall of 1993 The test revealed cancer: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma “They told me it... sick for the first time Every fifteen minutes for the next nine hours, his body convulsed Azinger had six months of chemotherapy in a hospital twenty-five hundred miles from his home “I always flew 20 breaking the slump to L.A to do them because I didn’t want my kids to see me sick,” he says The routine was always the same “I’d fly out there to do the chemo, stay sick for two or three days, and then fly... I can t beat this thing by myself, maybe I can learn from somebody else I went knocking on the doors of not only golf’s legends but also those enormously successful and celebrated in other endeavors who also just happen to be obsessed with the game as well What was your worst slump? Did you ever lose hope? How did you pull yourself out of it? How long did it take? I had a million questions Perhaps the . Breaking the Slump How Great Players Survived Their Darkest Moments in Golf—and What You Can Learn from Them Jimmy Roberts Breaking the Slump How Great Players Survived Their Darkest Moments. we all stand on the range looking into each other’s bags to see what type of equipment the next guy is using, I want to know what kind of voodoo others have summoned in their darkest hours Survived Their Darkest Moments in Golf—and What You Can Learn from Them Jimmy Roberts To Ralph and Betty for showing me the way. To Jackson, Aidan, and Daniel for filling each step with such joy. And