Bryson, Cobra and Mental Drama

This week, at The Open, the drama was all about Bryson DeChambeau and his driver and the “suck” heard round the world.

There were so many valuable takeaways from the equipment drama, Cobra’s comments, and the apology that I sat down to record a podcast over the weekend and put it in the line up to share with you today.

I heard three key sentences or words in interviews that revealed so much about Bryson’s mindset.

I do not pretend to know ANYTHING about Bryson’s life or what he is thinking outside of the statements he made to the media. Nor do I think he is wrong in anyway. Zero judgment.

But…there is so much to dissect and share with you merely to bring light to how thoughts work and show up in your golf game and in your life.

You don’t want to miss this podcast!

The Mental Game Fix
KathyHartWood.com
https://www.instagram.com/p/CRXQY0zrwZe/

https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2021/07/15/bryson-dechambeau-british-open-cobra-driver-sucks/

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it. Hey my gal friends, and welcome back to Above Par. This is Kathy. I hope you're having an amazing day or evening or morning or wherever you are listening to this. Um, I wanted to do something a little bit different today. I wanted to talk about Bryson DeChambeau and the drama about the British Open. And I am recording this literally on the weekend of the British Open or the Open, as it is uh historically called. So I wanted to talk a little bit about all the drama that is going on. And I wanted to highlight some things in the comments that were said and in the media about the his driver and Cobra and his and Bryson's apology. I'll fill you in on the story if you don't know it. And I wanted to see, I wanted to show you how that relates to your mental game and what you can take away from that and maybe help you as you grow in your game and learn to play more to your potential and take your talent out there. And also not suffer and struggle and be so frustrated with the game. So, to recap the story, if you're not aware of it, you can definitely Google it. You will not have a problem finding it. But basically, after the first round, Bryson was very upset with his driver and his performance and his score. He hit 11 fairways, but he blamed the driver, his Cobra driver, on his poor driving ability on the golf course. It's a short course, according to him, and he wanted to take advantage of it. So he had very high expectations of his driver. And his comment that he made in the media was basically heard round the world, right? It was around the golf world for sure. So basically, what he said is that if I can hit it down the middle of the fairway, that's great. But with the driver right now, the driver sucks. It was like the suck heard round the world. It's so amazing that the response to this and how everybody got up in arms, and especially Cobra. They were so disappointed. They work really hard for Bryson and trying to find him the right equipment, trying to find things that match his club head speed, things that will make him happy. He has gotten over seven prototypes this year of different driver heads, where I think that comment, I heard the comment was that most tour players don't get seven in their whole career. So they're working really hard to try and find him equipment that will particularly fit his clubhead speed, right? He is kind of an anomaly on how hard he swings and how much clubhead speed he has and how hard he works on all the analytics and uh of his swing. He's constantly tweaking and tinkering with his swing and equipment. So I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way judging anything that Bryson has said. I never, I never judge people for the way they think because we're always we're just working with our minds, and people are doing the best they can with what they know at this given moment in time. Totally no judgment. I'm just here to kind of expose the thoughts that I see from my coaching and how I see that they're producing some results for him. And I could probably predict results that are going to go down the line for him if he, if things don't change. But I think it's a good example for people, especially juniors and people who take the game seriously, to take a look at the way that he is reacting during the British Open and how that is causing some of his results and certainly the way that he is feeling about his golf game. So let's start with the comment that the driver sucks. Now, in in past podcasts, I have talked about expectations, I've talked about anger, I've talked about frustr, frustration. And frustration, I have noted, is when you have unmet expectations, frustration that which leads to anger is when you have unmet expectations or you have a sense of injustice, like that you were wronged in some way. This is a perfect example where Bryson is clearly displaying that he feels like he's been wronged, like Cobra is not, you know, following suit or up to speed with him and what he needs. He is blaming the equipment and feeling like he has been wronged in some way. This sense of injustice in his mind is definitely going to cause him some frustration. This is definitely one of the components of his frustration, but that is definitely a contributing factor. He's blaming his equipment. I never encourage you to blame anything outside of yourself because you lose power when you do that, right? He's given all his power away to the driver. Basically, he's saying that if it's if the driver isn't up to snuff, I can't score and I can't win and I can't do the things that I want to do. One of the things that he said is it's quite finicky for me because it's a golf course that's pretty short. It's like almost 7,200 yards. And so when I hit driver and it doesn't go in the fairway, the first cut of rough or whatever, or it's in the hay, it's tough for me to get it on the green and control that. Like once in the middle of the fairway, like I had it on 18, I was able to hit a nice shot to 11 feet and almost made birdie. It's kind of living on razor's edge. Oh my gosh. I really think that's a horrible thought. I don't think anybody wants to play golf or live their life feeling like you're living on Razor's edge. Yeah, I don't think that thought serves him at all, right? That's just like you're going out there looking for things to kind of fall apart. The other thing that I want to take away from that comment is that he's he's making it mean that he doesn't know how to score without hitting the fairway. And there's a lot of guys out there not hitting the fairway. He's putting so much pressure on his driver to make sure that's in the middle of the fairway. Is it an advantage? Yes, of course it's an advantage. But should you be able to score when your ball is not in the fairway? Yes. I mean, it's been if it's in the hay, that's a problem for sure, right? Because you can't get your club face on it. But if it's in the rough or it's in the short rough, he's a strong guy. He just played in the women or the women's open. I hope not. He played in the US Open, right? Where the rough is super high at Torrey Pines, right? And he just tried to figure things out. It's almost like he's saying that he needs the equipment to fit the golf course so he can score because he can't score without that. You know, I would be, I would love to ask him, I'm like, can you figure out how to hit your ball in the fairway and then hit it on the middle of the green and score? Is that a possibility for you? Or was he so stuck on hitting driver that there was no option, right? That he didn't give himself any other things to try or do, right? So you get stuck. If that's your only thing, thought, right? That's your belief that you have to hit driver because you're a long guy, right? You hit the ball long and short, the course is pretty short, and he wants to take advantage of that, and then he can't take advantage of it. Could he adjust? I think so. I think you would want to have that ability. You want to be able to adjust to how you're hitting the ball. If you can't keep your ball in play, that driver goes in time out. You take a club that you can keep in play because the goal is to score. The goal is to turn in a score that is going to help you, you know, win the tournament in this case and make money in this case. Though at this point, he's not worried about the money. He just wants the victory, right? He wants the win. So at what point do you sit there and go, you know what? I think it's time to put my driver in time out. And he seemed like that was just not an option for him. So, two things in that. One is that he's giving away all his power to his equipment. He's blaming his equipment, which I'm going to talk about again in a second. And he has a sense of injustice that he has been wronged by this equipment equipment, right? Which causes a lot of frustration for him. After this happened, after that comment, Cobra came in and called it a stupid comment. And I'm going to say that part I don't think I disagree with them about because Cobra is working really, really hard to help him find equipment to match his clubhead speed, which really technology really hasn't caught up with. They're putting in a lot of effort. They're working round the clock to help him out. And I'm sure he gets paid a lot of money. So from their sense, and that doesn't help their publicity, right? I mean, they're marketing. Right now, all of a sudden nobody wants to buy that driver that's suited for a guy who has a 200 mile per hour ball speed, right? It's like nobody else has. It's probably great for the average golfer, but he kind of hammered that product when he said that the driver sucks. So let me talk about some of the things that Cobra said. So Ben Schoen, who has been with him a long time, as uh I think catty for him a couple of weeks ago, it said it's like dealing with an eight-year-old when he gets mad. Ben went on to say he has never really been happy ever. Like it's very rare where he's happy. That's kind of sad to me, right? Because it's like he's he's looking for outside things to help him be happy. When your happiness with golf, your frustration is all your responsibility. This goes back to the emotional adulthood, right? Or the emotional childhood that we most people are in. And I want to tell you what the difference is. Emotional adulthood is where you take responsibility for how you feel, always. Right. And the reason that you take responsibility for how you feel is because it's driven by your thoughts. When you give it away to something else, being a circumstance, a situation, something outside of you, golf equipment, people, the course, the weather, your score. When you give it away, you give away your happiness and how you feel to that. When you blame it, right? Definitely when you blame it, you are being an emotional child. Nothing insulting in that. It's just terminology. It's just, it's just that we want to constantly be in pursuit of being emotional adults. Not many of us are. I'm sure you know plenty of them. We run into them on a daily basis, overreacting, whether we're in stores or on the golf course or on the road driving, right? We feel we see people reacting and blaming other people constantly and other things constantly for the way they feel. Right. It's like Timmy said mean words to me and now I'm sad. You give away your power to Timmy. It's not that, it's the words that you think about Timmy, that's what Timmy said.

unknown 10:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

This is what we're taught when we're a kid, like apologize for making your child angry or upset. We're not teaching them emotional adulthood when we do that. We're totally teaching them to be emotionally mature. You are responsible for your own emotions. And that is good news. So you're not giving away all of that power and control to something outside of you. Bryson at this point, this is why he's not happy. He doesn't realize that he's in charge of his happiness. He thinks he's not happy, which I'm gonna talk about in point three. He thinks he's not happy because other things are controlling it. If I was coaching him, I would ask him what what would make you happy? What do you think happiness comes from? I'm gonna tell you it has a lot to do with what happens on those numbers on the track man and his score and the amount of times that he wins and all of that. That's totally fine. I just, you know, he I just think it would help him if he realized that, right? Like dealing with an eight-year-old when he gets angry. I totally not emotional maturity. That's a little bit of the problem. I'm going off on a tangent here, but that's a little bit of the problem when junior golfers are really becoming very good at their skill and they need to have emotional adulthood on the golf course, but they're still emotionally immature. I think this is why what I teach and coach is so valuable for junior golfers, serious junior golfers, because I teach them how to be emotional adults right away, right? Which most of us aren't ever taught how to do. Some of us never evolve into that. Bryce is in a Bryce is a great example of that. He's a super successful guy, right? But he's suffering and struggling. He's frustrated and he's unhappy a lot because he gives away that power. He doesn't realize that he's in charge of his emotions. Now, some of you say, okay, here's a guy who's like, you know, very, very popular, making tons of money. How is he suffering? I don't know. I think, I think most of us, we could have all the money in the world, but if we're miserable, I don't know. You get to decide. I don't I think that's suffering to me. I think it's suffering when you don't really know how to control your emotions or manage your emotions. And that is one of the things that he said in his apology. Okay, so let me read that. If you haven't seen it, you can check it on Instagram. I have it in the show notes, but let me go to it. The comment I made in my post-round interview today was very unprofessional. My frustration and emotions over the way I drove the ball today boiled over. I sucked today, not my equipment. Cobra and I have worked together for over five years, and they are some of the hardest working people in the golf industry and make an incredible product. Totally back pedaling, right? He's got he's got a safe face here. Their team is like family to me, especially Ben Schoenman, who I just mentioned a minute ago, who has been there for my for me every step of the way since I started my career. I deeply regret the words I used earlier. I am relentless in pursuit of improvement and perfection. Part of that causes me to become outwardly frustrated at times. With the new speeds I'm attaining, my game is a constant work in progress, and so is controlling my emotions. So this apology just shows me how much, how little he knows where his emotions are actually coming from. And the thing that I wanted to highlight out of this is that his constant pursuit of perfectionism. Now I've talked about perfectionism before, and perfectionism is just not attainable. So perfect in golf is eagling every hole. And maybe double-eagling some holes, it's just not obtainable. And then after that, let's say if you did it, then we could go down to critiquing the perfectness of each shot with the ball flight and the trajectory and the solid contact. And did it land right in the cup, or does it hit right before and roll in? So the question that I always ask people when they're striving for perfection, because we think that's a really noble goal to have perfection, strive for perfection. But the question that I always ask, which I talked about in my podcast about perfection, is like, define it. Tell me what perfection is. Because when I say to somebody, this is perfect golf, they're like, wait a minute, I'm not really looking for that. Okay, that's over the top. I'm like, okay, so what are you looking for? Well, you know, I'm gonna hit, you know, 12 fairways. Okay, well, that's not perfect. Well, well, then I'm gonna chip pretty good. I'm like, wait a minute, you're chipping, you haven't hit the ball on the green. How are you putting? Well, I'm making, you know, I'm making all my birdie putts, my birdie opportunities when it's reasonable. I mean, it makes no sense. The reasoning makes no sense. But I I've asked this to many clients define perfect. The answers are totally different. So there is no one definition of perfect, perfect is perfect. So I don't think Bryson has gone through and defined his idea of perfection. What does that look like? Because it's not obtainable. He's gonna constantly be disappointed and frustrated. And this is why I think that he's gonna constantly be having moments like this. And I think that's part of why he overreacted and got super angry, was because he had unmet expectations. The other reason for frustration and anger, his unmet expectations is that he wants to be perfect. And if he's not perfect, he's disappointed. Right? He's setting himself up to never be happy, especially if that's like the that's really if his life all revolves around all of this. So I'm not surprised by his reaction, right? He talked about even in his in his apology about how he needed to control his emotions. We don't control emotions, we let them be, but what he's probably doing is resisting them a lot, right? We don't react to our emotions, right, which is snapping or yelling or slamming a club, right? That's not a mature way of dealing with our emotions, right? He's just, he doesn't know the skill on how to process his emotions. So he feels like he has to control them. And the reason he feels like he has to control them is because they feel out of control. And the reason they feel out of control is because he doesn't know where they're coming from, they're coming from outside circumstances. So he is at the effect of them. I thought his apology just was so revealing and so many different things to show his mindset and where he's struggling. I could totally coach Bryce and help him out with this. But I wanted to point all this out to you because it was just such a glaring example of different ways that you could use what he did as an example of helping yourself manage your mind and your thoughts on the on the golf course, not mirror what he did. Even though he's a really good golfer and he's very successful and he hits it a mile, I do not think that it behooves you to mirror anything that was happened at the British Open or things that was were said, or the way that he reacts to his emotions. I do not think that is going to benefit or uh serve any of you. One is perfection is just not obtainable. It is a way for us to fail ahead of time. The minute you get into that perfectionist mindset, you're going, you're failing ahead of time because it's not obtainable. Right. So he's constantly going to feel like a failure. And anywhere that perfectionism shows up in your life, you're going to constantly feel like you're a failure or not good enough, or frustrated, or angry. The other thing is that he was giving away his power to outside sources, which made him feel like there was injustice being served, like he's being wronged somehow. Right? Another reason to be frustrated. And that goes to the other point, which is that he's the emotional maturity of understanding that he's in control of his emotions, that you're in control of your emotions through your thoughts, not through circumstances, not through situations. It's always our thoughts, which is good news that our thoughts control our emotions. He just doesn't know that. So he's feeling like he's a feeling a little out of control. And so if you're feeling out of control at any moment on the golf course, always just ask yourself what you're thinking. You are in charge of it. Am I blaming it on something outside of me? So I just wanted to share that, share some insight on that, and hope that that could help you and encourage you not to mirror what you saw, because I don't think it's going to serve you. But I just wanted to share this with you. And I hope you found that helpful as you work on managing your thoughts and emotions on the golf course. All right, my friend, I will talk to you later. Hey, so if you like this podcast and you want to work on your mental game, I have a brand new program. If you haven't heard about it, called the Mental Game Fix. Four weeks, we dive in deep on one major mental issue that is holding you back from performing your best. We get to work and solve that problem for you. So you can start taking more of your talent out on the golf course. You learn the skills you need to work and manage your brain, and you can apply it to anything else that is holding you back. If you want to learn more, I would love to work with you. And you can check it out at masteryourgolfbrain.com. Hope to see you there.