Birdies, Bogeys & Life Lessons from the Game of GolfChikamu

The Epic Collapse

I will never forget sitting in front of the TV watching Jean van de Velde turn a guaranteed win of the 1999 Open Championship into an epic collapse on the eighteenth hole. He could have teed off with a pitching wedge, played the hole in six shots, and won the tournament. But that’s not what happened.

He was the unlikeliest to even be in the position. Jean was one of the lowest-ranked players in the field that week. Yet, he stood on the eighteenth tee needing only a double bogey to win the major golf tournament.

He made his first mistake when he hit his tee shot with a driver versus an iron, which was an incredibly stupid choice. Pressure makes you do the dumbest things sometimes. He hit his next shot far right, hitting the grandstands and into the rough, beyond the Barry Burn. His long-iron approach bounced off the grandstands, the brick border of the river, and back across the hazard before finally landing in the rough. His fluffed wedge dropped into the water in front of him, “but the ball floated on the surface, only to sink after Van de Velde rolled his pant legs up and waded in to survey his chances at recovery.” (4)

He decided to take a drop and hit his fifth into a bunker. He got up and down for a triple bogey and a spot in a playoff, which he eventually lost to Paul Lawrie.

Van de Velde tells the media in his postmortem interview after his collapse, “I’m going to have to live with it, not you guys.”

Years later, van de Velde reflected on his fate in the golf world: “Golf, he says, is a sport and a game, and should be treated as such ‘nothing more, and nothing less.’ The adversity you face when playing it is an opportunity to find out ‘who are you really, what are you made of.’” (5)

Van de Velde eventually came to terms with “what could have been” and did not let it color his love for the game. After retiring from professional golf in 2008, he continued to share that love by teaching golf to juniors. He is also a UNICEF representative. He seems to be at peace with himself, and whenever the subject of his 1999 collapse comes up, he handles it with grace.

Fail Forward

The apostle Peter betrayed Jesus in one of the most heart-wrenching denials of all time. He denied knowing Jesus when the Romans arrested Jesus and accused Peter of being one of his followers. The man who was to be the leader of a worldwide movement betrayed the one he had served for three years. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny Him three times before the cock would crow.

Failure is a part of life. We fail in business. We fail in relationships. We fail in our integrity. What we do with those failures will define who we are in the future. We must learn to fail forward. We must learn from our failures and make failing a learning tool to help us do better in the future. We must forgive ourselves. Peter went on to be the church’s leader and is credited with writing the books of Scripture that teach us to imitate Christ and prepare for his return. Peter failed forward. So should you.

(4) Josh Sens, “Jean Van de Velde’s Cartoonish Collapse at 1999 British Open Revisited in Whimsical New Netflix Doc,” Golf.com, March 5, 2019.

(5) Sens, “Jean Van de Velde’s Cartoonish Collapse.”