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Imagine yourself standing on the 18th hole leading a local tournament, a Saturday club competition, a major tournament as a tour player. On your right is water, on your left is out of bounds. You tee your ball and ready yourself for the tee shot. You align yourself, look at the fairway and send it down the middle. All the stress is over, and you pick up the tee breathing hot air through your mouth and sweat sticking to your forehead. For a moment you thought the ball was going towards the water, but it eventually did not. Now imagine the same scenario; however, instead of sticking to your pre-shot routine, you look at the out of bounds and send it into the water. This is what happened to Louis Oosthuizen in the playoff hole at the Zurich Classic last week. He could not sink the ensuing bogey put and eventually lost with his partner Charl Schwartzel against two Australians. 

Matteo Manassero is an Italian tour professional. He was one of the youngest winners in the European tour history. It is said that he was on the path to become the new Seve Ballesteros. It has been three years since he lost his tour card, and he has not regained momentum in terms of world rankings. One can speculate what happened to his game, but so many tour players suffer from (unnecessary) swing changes at the peak of their games. Pádraig Harrington has suffered the same fates. A Swing change and the ensuing world ranking decline. (There is not always a direct correlation between a swing change and decline in world ranking, correlation does not imply causation, but many have suffered a similar fate. Jordon Spieth has luckily made a great comeback after minor changes.) 


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If you are not a golfer, the above might not mean much. Briefly, golf is an immensely complicated game when you start to work on your swing. The mechanics are complex and coaches study years in order to spot and “diagnose” problems. However, the game of golf is not wholly in the mechanics but more between the ears. In other words, golf is wholly mental. I get a lot of flak for saying this. As someone who studied the swing for a year, I am not in the position to say this but also, I did study the swing more than the average golfer. But as a philosopher specializing in mind and human behaviour, I know that when something gets inside of you head it is hard to get it out. There is a saying in golf that when you think about the water on the tee, you will hit it in the water. No swing coach can help you hit it straight if you think about the water. 

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In any case, why tell these stories? I think this is the perfect metaphor for showcasing how in life you need to use stumbling blocks as building blocks. After the disastrous drive in the playoff hole, Louis Oosthuizen is back in contention this week. It is unlikely that he will win, but a top 10 finish is not off the table. He did not let the failure get between his ears. He got back up and is doing well. But not everyone is strong enough to do this, plus we need people to fail so that others can succeed. This is a harsh reality in our times when there are so many talented people out there in the world doing what you would love to do. Take the golfer Matteo Manassero and countless others who had success on tour but who are struggling to get back. New guys get on tour and find success but there is only so many spaces. Only a certain number of players (roughly 200) can make the tour, so there needs to be players who will miss the cut. This is so in life as well: there are only a limited number of job positions, there are more people than number of jobs. 

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However, this does not mean that we should stop getting better. In fact, I think this should be motivation for everyone to work even harder to gain success. Every time you stumble, or fail at something, you will have the ammunition and motivation to work harder to get over the stumbling block. If you are only successful in life, you will not know how to deal with the emotion of losing or failing or stumbling. If you are familiar with failure, losing and stumbling, you will more experience than the person who does not have this familiarity.  But I think that the stumbling block is required to cultivate the desire to overcome said stumbling block. In other words, I think that we need to fail in life so that we know how it feels. But this feeling will cultivate in you the desire to overcome that feeling. As a golfer, you need to have hit it in the water on the last hole to learn how to cope with the feelings that will inevitably flood you. It becomes your choice to either slump in a corner and get crippled by the failure, or to use said failure as a new vantage point from which to succeed.