When it comes to golf, I’ve always had a complex (see instead twisted) relationship with hard work. When the emotion of a low point subsides, it transitions into a sort of sick enjoyment of being ready to figure it out. It’s a strange place to be when your feet suddenly hit the bottom of what you thought was a black hole of despair and realise there’s a ladder waiting to be climbed back out again. I think that’s actually always been one of my favourite places to be in this game. Recognising that there’s work to be done to improve. The work has always been the most satisfying part of golf for m ..read more

And on and on and on we go. A 13 hour flight to follow an 8 hour drive home across the channel, with 12 hours at home sandwiched in the middle… eight of them to sleep and four of them to do washing and try and work out why the hot water has stopped working. Trying to work out what lessons are worth carrying the 10,000km from one tournament to the next. The last lingering fumes of satisfaction and adrenaline made way for a slightly deflating exhaustion and hunger somewhere between passport control and carriage C of “Le Tunnel”. Turns out the magnum wasn’t really enough to replace lunch, dinner ..read more

Do you analyse or do you keep trusting the process? I’m spending my career trying to work out if it’s possible to do both at the same time. But when you’re in the process of rewriting the process that line between analysis and trust is an impossibility of jagged blurriness. The edges catch you even when you’re not looking properly. Do you trust blindly when you’ve only just opened your eyes? I’ve probably lost you already. I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone. People – me included – say trust the process so often for a reason. It encompasses more than any of us probably are willing to u ..read more

Spoiler: I have several half written blogs about LIV and women’s LIV and entitlement and Saudi money and the blurry lines that mean I can love every second of watching Newcastle United move to 5th in the table but not want to go to New York to play in this week’s event. This is not one of them. Ok. A couple of weeks ago, I read something about my recent ‘return to form’ after a difficult summer. It blamed said difficult summer, where I missed six cuts in seven events, on swing changes. The comment, while well-intentioned, was wrong. (For a start, if I’d known what was changing in my swing, I m ..read more

Sometimes I notice that I’m not struck by the desire to write blogs as much as I used to. A player in my group or spectator at a tournament will tell me they like my writing, and I wonder why that desire has faded. I wonder if it’s because social media is more of a minefield every single day, and every sentence you commit has to be weighted against every possible unintended consequence. I wonder if it’s because I’m more attuned to the nature of the game, and all its cyclical tendencies. And if I’m more ok with that. Or at least more understanding of it. More driven by it, rather than contempla ..read more

I’ve got a note in my phone with the timestamp 9th March 2022, 23.54. Something formed that late is already a sign…. A sign that I’m not settled. After a couple of paragraphs, I had written the following: “I love winning. I love being in contention. I love the adrenaline that comes from those things, and the stress of trying not to be stressed by it all.” I’m writing this blog, here, now, almost exactly two months later, having won again. I was right – experiencing those things again was a captivating reminder of the ultimate highs that come in this sport. But I could have turned that note the ..read more

So you want to know how it feels? That’s why you follow me, I think. That’s why you’ll read this, I think. You want to know what that pain feels like. When your world shatters around you but you’re not allowed to shatter with it. To have something you keep working for, day after day, week after week, year after year, taken away from you when you’re so close you have to actually walk past it when you know its not yours anymore. To know that it wasn’t ‘taken away from you’, but in fact you had it in your hands – after a year of sacrifice and improvement and doubt and trust and loneliness and pri ..read more

I possibly shouldn’t be writing this now. There’s still a week of Q School to go – as of right now, I haven’t actually achieved anything. But in a year where I feel like I haven’t written a huge amount – mainly because playing week in, week out means you really have to take your thoughts and run with them, rather than process them – the last week has been too mentally vivid to not try and capture some of it while it’s here. When I say I haven’t achieved anything yet, I’m not exaggerating. If I finish anywhere other than in the top 45 after this coming week, I won’t have gained any more than I ..read more

As I write this, in November 2021, I’m a professional golfer ranked 404 in the world. (Despite the point of this blog, I actually got a bit of a shock when I looked up that number). In April 2018 and again in April 2019, I was ranked 200 spots better than I am now. But ask me which version of me is the best golfer? It’s November 2021 me, and it isn’t even close. Professional sport has a very weird dynamic of necessary skills. If you want to be successful, you have to simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs: that of believing in yourself and your ability to succeed on any given day, and that ..read more

Some things seem to get clearer with age, and experience. Others get more blurry. I remember overhearing a pro golfer a couple of years ago describe the majority of our profession as “highly functioning depressives”, and without wanting to make light of real mental health issues, I don’t think it’s far off the mark. The customary asterisk fits here – a lot of professional golfers have a very privileged lifestyle, and I don’t take for granted for a second the fact I get to do what I love for a living. Regardless of how my writing comes across, I wouldn’t change it. But. Hanging on to the vision ..read more