Over the last several years, I’ve spent a practice round day at the Travelers Championship chatting with players on the range for a variety of stories, everything from their favorite holes or the most intimidating shots on tour to the one rule of golf they’d most like to change and the golf course they would choose to play for the rest of their lives if they could only play one.
This year and last year, however, I asked as many tour pros as I could one simple question: If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self? While there was some overlap to the answers that I received, the almost two dozen players who were interviewed provided a variety of insights—some exclusive to playing golf at the highest professional level but others were pieces of advice that players of all ability levels can benefit from.
I’ve compiled all those responses below, broken up into categories based upon the specific advice that each player shared.
Stay True to Who You Are
Adam Hadwin: “The biggest thing is just to be true to yourself. It’s very easy to come out here, watch what other guys are doing and think you have to do it like them because they’ve been successful.”
Matt Kuchar: “The lesson that I learned—and it took me quite a while—is just being comfortable with who I was as a golfer. It was hard for me as a kid to stand on the range hitting balls next to Tiger Woods and Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson and to not try to do what they did. I’ve never been a guy that could hit a 3-iron miles in the air and stop it softly on a green. But you stand next to these guys, and you watch them do that—and they’re the best players in the world—so you think, I probably need to do that. I realized that I needed to be scoring from inside 150 yards and to not worry about hitting that 220-yard 3-iron that landed softly on a firm green.”
Russell Knox: “Obviously, you can learn from great players, but looking around being like, ‘I wonder what he’s doing’ or ‘I wonder what coach he has,’ that hurt me over my career. It takes massive discipline to be able to walk up here in front of the best players in the world and to know that I’m doing the exact right thing that I need to do for me.”
Sam Burns: “Guys get out here and sometimes they try to change too much. So, stick with what you have and try to make that better rather than making wholesale changes.”
Peter Malnati: “Nothing determines whether you belong out here other than your score. That’s it. It’s not your golf swing. It’s not how pretty the shots are that you hit. It’s not whether you can step up and hit the bold, aggressive shot that you see the guys hit on TV late on Sundays. All that matters is what you shoot, and what you shoot over the course of four days. There are times when I’m hitting balls next to Justin Thomas or Scottie [Scheffler] and I just feel so inferior, like I don’t even belong. But clearly, I do because my scores say I do. And that’s what matters in golf.”
Don’t Focus on Keeping Your Card; Focus on Trying to Win
Seamus Power: “For my first year or two on Tour, I got too caught up with trying to make cuts. But I realized after a while that it doesn’t really matter. It would cost me some shots on a Friday because I would get a bit too conservative. And then I realized on Sunday evening I finished 30th and I got 15 [FedExCup] points, and it doesn’t do a whole lot for you. Instead, when you’re on, make it count. It’s the high finishes that are going to get you anywhere out here. But it’s tough—it’s a catch-22—if you get out on Tour and you don’t have a lot of money, making the cut and earning 10 or 20 grand, it means a lot. So that’s what you want to do and it’s obviously the goal, but it’s not always the easiest. So, I would tell myself to stay aggressive. And when your game is there, you’ve got to take advantage of it.”
Kevin Streelman: “I wouldn’t put as much pressure on myself, and I’d tell myself that everything’s going to be fine. The amount of worrying that I did and the sleepless nights about losing my card or losing my job or losing a sponsor, all that stuff works out. I didn’t think I could stay out here for three years, let alone 17 straight. So, I would say be great at mastering your control. Life’s too short and moves too fast to worry about things you can’t control.”
Cam Davis: “Looking back on my first year or two on Tour, I would take my focus away from trying to keep my card and focus more on winning golf tournaments. Once you spend a lot of time around the best [players] in the world, if you don’t see yourself playing well you can lose that drive for the top quickly. You can find yourself trying to just hold on rather than thrive. So, keep your focus on that [trying to win] rather than trying to make sure to stay out here because that’s a trap that can start to bring you down after a while. It’s more about getting out of your own way.”
Recognize Your Strengths and Model Your Game Around Them
Stewart Cink: “Looking back, I probably spent [too much] time trying to grind on my weaknesses—what I thought of as my shortcomings in the game—and tried to eliminate those. If I could go back, I would tell my younger self to spend more time sharpening things that were already really sharp. I don’t mean to ignore the areas that you need to shore up, but don’t neglect the stuff you’re really good at. You need to be good at everything, but you need to be elite at something. Without being elite at one part of the game or two, it’s hard to have those spikes in your performance where you can ride a six-tournament wave with a win or two in there.”
Tommy Fleetwood: “Never change who you are as a golfer but improve on that and know the difference between the two. If you are a natural drawer or fader of the golf ball, and you try to change what your strengths are, it very rarely works out. You’ll change something in your swing to eliminate a miss you don’t like, but you might have played with that miss your whole life. Your swing and your DNA is never going to change, and the more you fight that rather than thrive in it and improve that DNA, there’s a big difference between the two. Fighting it generally gets people into trouble.”
Brendon Todd: “I would say that my elite skills—which are putting, chipping, wedge play, and accuracy—are good enough out here and that those are the ones that I really have to hone in order to compete out here. As far as my golf swing goes, I’ve always been somebody who likes to rotate the face a little bit, and I’ve been taught to close it a couple of times, and that’s led to pretty much all my slumps. So, I’d tell myself to trust the swing that feels good to me.”
Distance and Speed Make the Difference
Brian Harman: “I would probably train to try to hit the ball a little farther. I’m probably not going to get much longer now at the age of 36. I would have trained for a little more athleticism and let the skills develop a little later. That seems to be the formula these days. I wish that I would’ve seen where courses were heading [in terms of their distances] and developed that skill a little bit.”
Chez Reavie: “I would’ve learned how to hit the ball far as a kid. When I was a kid, no one ever talked about hitting the ball far. It was always swing smooth, hit it in the fairway, keep it in play. And the game has changed dramatically over the last 15 or 20 years. Now it’s just hit it as far as you can, and we’ll figure out how to hit it straight after that. So, if I could go back and redo it, I would train speed as a kid because that’s when you can learn it. Once you’re older, you can add a little bit of speed, but you’re not going to add a lot of speed. I would learn how to do that as a kid and then figure out how to hit it straight as I got older.”
It’s Never as Bad as It Seems
Webb Simpson: “I’ve learned that you’re never as far off as you feel, and when you’re playing well, it might not last as long as you think it will. I would’ve been wise to just be more present, not think so much about the future, and just enjoy the good golf when it’s there. And not get too down when I’m not playing as well as I want.”
Chris Kirk: “When you’re younger and you have a spell where you’re not playing that good, it feels a lot bigger than it really is. I’d tell myself to take the good with the bad a little bit more and know that even when you’re good, you’re never as good as you probably think you are and when you’re bad, you’re never as bad as you think you are. It’s always a lot closer to being good than you think.”
Nick Taylor: “Patience is a decent amount of the advice. It’s always a good thing to have out here. You’re probably not as far away as you think you are. And you’re probably not as good as you think you are, as well. So just be patient with what you’re working on and be consistent. Don’t flip flop around and search. There are times for that, but with the ebb and flow of golf, you’ll still be on the higher side if you stick to good routines.”
Take Care of Your Body and Your Mind
Wyndham Clark: “Have a long-term approach. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint. And really get stronger mentally, because this game is so mental.”
Billy Horschel: “I would’ve hired a private physio earlier, someone who travels with me week-to-week and knows my body. Also, I would’ve been more diligent and more consistent with my fitness.”
Zach Johnson: “I would have given the physical side, the physio side, the PT side, the recovery side much more attention. I feel like I’m a pretty decent athlete and I’m pretty in-tune with my body, but as a young 20-year-old, I was a trunk-slammer. I would pick up my clubs, throw them in the trunk, and go to the next stop [on Tour]. I had a [resistance] band, maybe, and a couple of weights. Outside of the very basics [for conditioning], I did nothing. I’m in the gym now every day. I have to be if I want to keep competing.”
Denny McCarthy: “Conserve some energy. My first couple of years on Tour, there were several times where I played seven or eight weeks in a row. But now, spending more time focusing on my body and focusing on things at home, I come out more energized and feel like I play better golf. Some people might think that they need to play a lot, but getting some rest is always good in this profession. You want to work hard, but also you want to take care of your body, eating the right foods and making sure your body is moving properly. I spend a lot more time worrying about the health of my body sometimes than the actual golf.”
Mackenzie Hughes: “If I could go back in time, I’d probably tell myself that it’s not that big of a deal. When I first got out [on Tour], I was probably harder on myself mentally, I beat myself up a bit more, and I expected a lot of myself. And it’s okay to expect a lot of yourself, but when you’re beating yourself up and getting down on yourself, it’s not helping you. That’s one thing that I did that I would try to rectify or correct if I was to go back in time. In the last handful of years, I’ve been more consistent and had better finishes with more chances to win, and I think being easier on myself and having a better attitude on the golf course is a factor in that.”
Change Your Routine or How You Practice
Rickie Fowler: “I’ve learned that with pro-am times I don’t always like [having to play] early mornings—that’s another early morning that you have to add to your week. Depending on where you fall in priority based off where you finished the previous year, you can request specific times to play. So, I’ve learned that my preference is to be first off in the afternoon. I like to have the morning to work out and practice and then have the pro-am be the end [of the day].”
Adam Svensson: “I would do things completely differently—my lifestyle choices, the way I practice, everything. I’ve quit drinking pretty much, and I didn’t practice as much as I do now. I wasn’t full invested in it, where I am now. Today, I’m treating it like a full-time job; before, I was treating it like a hobby. I was one of the best players in Canada growing up. I was good and I thought that my talent alone would take me there, but it can’t.”
Do you have golf advice you would give to your younger self? Tell us in the comments section.
