Lessons Learned From Failure In A Golf Team

Failure, while a challenge and a pain in the moment, leads to greater potential and later success when experience is gained from the failure. When nothing is learned from failure, it is a wasted opportunity.
Ever since I was a kid, I played golf. I loved going out for a round after school with my dad and brother. We were not very good, but my freshman year (my brother’s senior year) we both tried out for the golf team at school. Neither of us had ever played competitively, so it was a whole new game for us when we were not allowed to take as many mulligans as needed and when every putt counted. Nevertheless, we both made the JV team and had fun making friends and playing together all year. I continued to play through my next two years, but
my junior year, the golf program took a major hit. Not only did the entire previous varsity team graduate, our coach left the school for a better position elsewhere. This meant that our Junior Varsity team from the previous year all moved up to Varsity: two of us being juniors, three sophomores, and one senior who joined the program that year. When no one else volunteered to coach our golf team, Coach Parker said that he would run it so that we could actually have a team, though he was no real coach; his golf experience was limited to playing a few rounds a year with his buddies. Nonetheless, we were grateful to him for volunteering his time such that we were able to have a team at all.
My junior year at Grayson High School, the boys varsity golf team held an eight-year-long streak as region champions.
For what was really just a JV team without any real coach, playing varsity, this proved to be an immense amount of pressure to put on a team that simply was not prepared. This streak and the worry of performance on region day loomed over my team for the months leading up to the tournament. Every practice, match, and tournament, we compared our performance to how we needed to do in the region tournament, as a team and individually. When the tournament day finally came, one of our top players fell apart. Without a good score from him, we lost the tournament and with it the eight-year streak. As a team, we felt the pain and heartbreak of defeat, though I am sure none of us was able to express what he personally
felt. I believe that this failure to perform at our true potential and loss of our eight-year streak will prove to be fundamental for our success in this upcoming season.
With the streak having already ended, the pressure that came with it is also broken and defeated, allowing us to relax and play our own game, one shot at a time, to limit our own mistakes and play to our full potential. As a team, we also have gained experience from a season of playing Varsity and learned how to handle major tournaments like the Region Tournament to be prepared for it next year. Since none of us had ever played Varsity, we were all inexperienced and overwhelmed by the teams that had that experience and were not intimidated or overwhelmed. Those teams played without that pressure and inexperience, and they played to their full potential, scored well, and won. Now that we have learned from our failure, gained that experience, and lost that overwhelming pressure, we have the opportunity to be the ones to start a new streak of region championships for Grayson High
School.