It shouldn’t matter. It’s just golf. Sure, if you’re a professional it’s your job. And if you’re good, it can be a lucrative career. But you are more than numbers on a scorecard; more than TrackMan stats, greens in regulation, hours on the range or polished trophies on a shelf. You have to be. Otherwise, you’re one bad season from an existential crisis, one injury from a dark place where bad things happen.
Those of us who have lived inside high-level sports for decades have seen too many athletes wrap their identities into their sports. The difficulties that can follow are as predictable as rain. Divorce is common and drinking problems abound, as do bouts of depression.
A lot of it is the intensity of the business. The focus and adrenaline are almost impossible to match. When the rush slows and the spotlight dims, many athletes are lost.
Which brings us to Lexi Thompson, the 23-year-old top-ranked American woman in golf and winner of the CME Group Tour Championship, an enormous talent who has been in the spotlight since she was 10 years old. Thompson is fun to watch and a treat to be around. Her interaction with fans is a model for other athletes. Her commitment to veterans will bring a tear to your eye. She’s genuinely sweet and will do almost anything if it helps the LPGA Tour and the women’s game.
That’s what made this season so heartbreaking. Thompson walked away in the middle of the summer to gather herself, to learn to be “more than a golfer,” she said multiple times. She missed the Ricoh Women’s British Open in early August and acknowledged seeing a counselor. Then she returned quickly, holding a news conference in Indianapolis two weeks later where most of her answers were obviously rehearsed.
What wasn’t rehearsed were the gasping sobs in France a few weeks after her return, not on the golf course where they staged the Evian Championship but on the walking path along Lake Geneva, where she stood facing the water and wept like a child. They weren’t the tears of a disappointed golfer who missed a cut. They were cries for help from a lost soul, a young woman who needs to know that she will be loved and accepted if she never picks up another club.
Things looked better last week. She came with a little lap dog, Leo, her first. “I’ve always been a cat person,” she said. And she has a new caddie, her brother Curtis, a former Web.com Tour player who lost his status – “Swing yips are pretty miserable,” he said this fall.
Thompson also came with a new attitude on the golf course. She decided to let her big hook fly. “My natural ball flight has always been a big draw,” she said. “In the past, I’ve tried to hold it off and hit a straight ball. But this week, I’m just playing for the draw and trusting it. I know it’s coming. I just have to trust it.”
The hook cost her a couple of shots at the season-ending tournament. On the par-4 fourth hole in the final round, she drew a pitching wedge right over the flag and watched as the ball spun off the green, down a slope and into the water, leading to a bogey. On the par-5 sixth she hooked a driver so far into the gunch that she hit a provisional. But the original ball was found, she made a par and her four-hour walk to victory had begun.
She prevailed by four shots.
Those who care about Thompson, not as a golfer but as a young woman, should celebrate the win and all the redemption it represents. But a work victory does not change who you are, just as a disappointment on the job doesn’t make you a bad person.
What person would Lexi Thompson be if she never hit another shot? Would she be happy with her life and herself? You get the feeling she doesn’t want to think about it. She sure doesn’t want to answer it.
“That’s a loaded question,” she said with a forced laugh. Then it was back to the rehearsed answers. “This year was an eye-opener,” she said. “It all kind of hit me this year what happened last year. I tried to just brush it off and play through it. I played great golf. I don’t know how. I needed that time off to be with my family and figure out things that made me happy off the golf course.”
All things she’s said before.
The time off she mentioned was three weeks. When pressed, she did admit that the pressure she feels is both internal and external. But there are glimmers that she’s starting to get it.
“Golf is not who I am, it’s what I do,” she said. “I’m coming to realize that. I’m still not there some days because it has always been such a big part of my life. But it is just a sport. There is so much to life other than that. There’s a family to be made and experiences to be had off the golf course“.
“You should enjoy your life. I’ve worked hard and deserve to enjoy my life off the golf course.”
Of course she does. But there are still pangs, things that don’t ring genuine and right. Leo the dog was brought out to the 18th green and into the media center for the cameras. Also, within seconds of Thompson signing her card, before she even exited the scoring tent, someone in her camp yelled for a Red Bull so that the victor could have one in her hand as she walked out.
Yes, sponsors are important. Photo ops are important. Image. Brand. We get it. But nothing is more important than love and care for a young woman who needs it. That has nothing to do with golf. Never has. Never will.
Steve
This Steve Eubanks article is reproduced with the permission of the Global Golf Post, the world’s first designed-for-digital weekly golf magazine. Subscribe for free at globalgolfpost.com.
Feature photo of Lexi with the 2018 CME Group Tour Championship trophy by Ben Harpring
