#461: LFG - Golf is a Rollercoaster

0:00And welcome back, welcome aboard another part train. I'm one of your hosts, Evan Singer. And this is the LFG mini series. But before we get to that, in case you're new, welcome aboard, we help frustrated golfers enjoy the ride again because if you can learn to smile through bad golf, you can smile through anything. And the LFG series is designed to inspire you and get your game back on track on the way to a driving range session could be even at the driving range on the way to an important round or any round. The point is, is not all of us have an hour every single day to catch you up on a full podcast. So this is a shorter form pod over one central theme to get you game back on track. The only difference between this one is it's not compiled from past popular episodes. So we will start to do these where we will take a single concept and create new LFG type episodes. So I hope you enjoy it. DM us at the part train on Instagram and give us feedback if you do. If you don't,

1:01otherwise, hope you guys can go the ride. Take care. You ever notice how we expect golf to feel like a calm little boat ride when it's actually space mountain? You don't go to Disneyland, get on space mountain and expect it's a small world. You're signing up for chaos. Twist turns, drops darkness. That's the whole point. And yet every time we tee it up, we kind of expect the opposite. I had this realization filming a podcast on the course the other day. That's coming out this week actually. You hit a perfect drive to ball plugs in a bunker. Double. Next hole you think you lost your drive off the tee. You find it. You end up making birdie. No logic, no fairness, golf, and somehow every time we're still surprised. We all want that steady, eddy golf, fairways, greens, two-puts, sprinkle in a few birdies, but that's not the game. And the faster we accept this, the better we get. There's a great moment in Rory's master's documentary. He references that Muhammad Ali quote, that everybody has a plan until

2:05they get punched in the mouth. And Dr. Barbara Tella, his sports psychologist, also alum of the show, talks about how they don't just plan for things to go right, they plan for things to go wrong. Because they will. Bad bounces, missed putts, weird lies. Instead of fighting that reality, they prepare for it. And more importantly, they shift the focus. Not did everything go perfectly, but did I compete? Did I stay present? Did I have fun with it? Did I give it my all? That's the shift. You know, the problem isn't that golf is unpredictable. The problem is expecting it not to be. Because when you expect a roller coaster to feel like a boat ride, every bump feels like something just went wrong. But when you expect the chaos, you stop resisting it. So the next time you tee it up, try this. Before the round, remind yourself, this is going to be a roller coaster. But the excitement of waiting in line to go ride the roller coaster at Disneyland, right? Something weird's going to happen. A bad break's coming. A great break is coming too. And instead of

3:06judging around by the score, judge it like Rory and Rottella. Did I compete? Did I stay in it? Did I enjoy it? Did I give it everything? Golf isn't a calm ride. It's space mountain. And the goal isn't to avoid the twists and turns. It's to stay strapped in when they come. Let's fuck go. As always, guys, thank you for hopping aboard. Before you hop off the train, a couple final things for you. First, if you want a little bit of a inspiration at the start of your week every Monday, just hop aboard our free email newsletter called the train of thought. Just go to the part train.com, enter your email in there. It's totally free. I send a mental nugget reflection insight every Monday, either from our episodes or mostly otherwise, just from my life and things I've noticed that should get your week off to a great start. It's one of my favorite things that I do. And also, I know a lot of you are listening on Spotify and Apple podcasts, but a lot of you aren't following us or subscribed. I recently just

4:08learned eight years in. You think I would have known this, but I just learned it that when you follow us on Spotify or subscribe on Apple podcasts, the algorithm recommends our show to more people. We want to further our mission of helping frustrated golfers enjoy the ride again. So if you can do us a very simple free takes two second favor, tap the follow button on Spotify or tap the subscribe button on Apple podcasts. It really does help. And we really appreciate it so that we can help more people. All right, guys, that's it. Hope you guys enjoyed the ride. See you next time.