Golf’s Inevitable Peaks and Valleys- Henry Shimp

I began this year having not played any competitive golf, nor having even swung a club in over 6 months due to a shoulder injury. This would last for another 4 months as my first time on the course would not come until April of 2023. By far the longest lay off I have ever had from the game. Safe to say, my prospects of any decent competition were not looking too peachy for 2023. Well, once I got back to hitting driver without pain or fear by about May, I was ready to dive headfirst back into things and start getting my feet wet again.

My first outing would be the US Amateur qualifier in July. I qualified. My next event would be the US Amateur itself at Cherry Hills. Although I didn’t make match play, I was close, and played really quite well considering I had played very little golf in the preceding 14 months. To round out this summer’s competition would be the US Mid-Amateur this past week at Sleepy Hollow. An event I felt ready to go make a serious run at if I showed up with my A game.

Spoiler, I didn’t show up with my A game. I played bad. Terrible. Like total dogshit. Easily the worst I have in multiple years in a tournament. My old putting woes returned, I didn’t really know where the ball was going off the clubface, and the game just felt really damn hard.

Ever go to a dinner party and each time you think you crack a clever joke or strike up an interesting piece of conversation it just doesn’t land? That was my 36 holes at Sleepy Hollow and Fenway. Just plain and simply out of sorts from start to finish. One shot after another that *felt pretty darn good and each and every time the result was just atrocious. 

So, reflecting on the experience at the Mid Am as well as the summer in general, I’d like to hopefully cast a bit of positivity on you all to somehow make sense of my last week of golf. Put simply, the law of averages is a powerful thing. Overperformances are described as such because they are just that. Performances that are above expected value. I like numbers. So here are some arbitrary numbers. If the expected value each time you play is to play 7/10 (again, arbitrarily rating the standard of your play) golf, then it is reasonable to believe that if you have been having a lot of 8.5’s, there are probably some tougher days ahead. Fortunately, the reverse is also true.

When I think about my 6 rounds of the summer in numbers, I’d give my standard of play in each one (in order) an 8.5, 9.8, 7.7, 9.5, 3.2, and 2.5. I promise I wasn’t trying to do this, but when I average those out it comes out to 6.86. Right around that 7 marker. In other words, reversion to the mean. I played some strong golf in my first 4 rounds of the summer and was frankly somewhat to extremely pleased with my play in each of those 4, so to assume I wasn’t going to have a round or two that was lackluster in the near future would simply be foolish. I don’t mean this as a justification, complaint, or reason not to work hard on your game and have belief. But I do believe in math and statistics, and for better or worse, over time these things do hold true and dictate your play more than we all probably wish they did.

The question here is this. Why am I writing this? Why does this matter? Insecurity over bad play? No. Quite the opposite actually. Peacocking over my better rounds of the summer? I still got the smoke from a bunch of young guns in each one, so that isn’t it either. The reason I like thinking about golf this way is it keeps you grounded when you’re playing well. Provides hope when you aren’t. And most importantly is a way to show the respect I have for the game and its difficulty.

Golf is F****** hard. It is humbling. It is rewarding. And it is as good a way as I know to test out your fortitude and perseverance. A long-term view on what a set of 10 rounds will bring is a more sustainable way to view the game than living and dying by each round or shot. I promise you good times and bad times are ahead. Again, that’s simply math. And the only thing you can do as a golfer to make it through the bad and to the good is to recognize this to be the case.

I’m a hunter, and this is a lesson I’ve learned from hunting. You may have to sit in a tree and not see a deer for 2 months to see that one deer you’ve been waiting for. But here’s the catch, those hours must be put in for the good times to come to you. Deciding to not go because the odds have been out of your favor just pushes the good times further down the line. Golf is the same way. You’re going to have to endure some shit to get to the good stuff. But, the good stuff is worth it every single time. And it’s that much better when there has been struggle endured to get there.

So, if you’ve been playing well, keep riding that wave as long as you can. Because it will crash unfortunately at some point. But, another good wave is always somewhere ahead.

If you’ve been struggling, look at it this way: you will only play so many bad rounds before a good wave comes to you. So keep going out, getting in the game, and keeping a positive outlook. Because math is on your side and good times are ahead.

Cheers everyone,

Henry