Why People Fail
When explaining failure, my first instinct is to explain it quantitatively, clinging to the foolhardy belief that quantitative means can answer any question. Recently stumbling upon DataGolf’s (DG) all-time amateur golf ranking, I asked myself why some players separated, and others didn’t. The top 10 looks like this:
Most of these names are familiar to golf fans. Jon Rahm is a top 5 golfer on the planet, Jordan Spieth had one of the best peaks of all time, and Patrick Cantlay has been a TOUR staple for many years. Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Matthew Wolff all came out of the lauded 2019 amateur class and Morikawa’s two major championships and Hovland’s TOUR Championship victory are standout accomplishments. The book isn’t closed on Matthew Wolff with mental health struggles impeding on his professional golf career. Luke Clanton is the new kid on the block, already posting top 10 TOUR finishes when he was at Florida State this past year. Then we have Beau Hossler and Patrick Rodgers who may not have the aforementioned standout accomplishments, but are still solid TOUR players who have done well for themselves although maybe not reaching the heights their amateur career would’ve led us to believe. And then there’s Chris Williams.
A standout at Washington, Chris Williams was as decorated an amateur golfer as you’ll ever see. He was a four-time All-American, Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, #1 on the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), and Ben Hogan Award winner, collegiate golf’s equivalent to football’s Heisman Trophy. Williams’ best TOUR finish was a T30 in the 2013 Travelers Championship. How does the 9th best amateur golfer of all-time never register a top 25 on TOUR?
This led me down a rabbit hole of other amateur golf “busts”. Here’s ranks 11-20 on DataGolf’s list:
I’m sure you’ve heard of Ludvig Aberg, Maverick McNealy, Justin Thomas, and current top amateur Jackson Koivun. How about Bobby Wyatt and Cory Whitsett? At DG rank #45 you’ll find Hunter Stewart, another former #1 in the WAGR who you may have never heard of.
Wyatt, Whitsett, and Stewart’s resumes bear resemblance to Williams’. Wyatt won the 2012 Sunnehanna Amateur, went undefeated in the 2013 Walker Cup, and won the 2014 NCAA individual championship. Whitsett won the 2007 U.S. Junior Amateur, then went on to win five times in college, netting him the SEC Player of the Year in 2013. As a senior, Stewart registered the lowest scoring average in Vanderbilt school history, won three times, and was a first team All-American. Chris Williams, Bobby Wyatt, Cory Whitsett, and Hunter Stewart never finished better than T10 in a PGA TOUR individual event.
I first want to clear up how success is defined. Although these golfers may have never reached the heights they wanted to in professional golf, they are not failures as people. This article is an exercise in identifying why professional golfers (and people in other careers) fail or succeed in reaching certain heights. This is not intended to smear those who things didn’t work out for.
When researching Williams, Wyatt, Whitsett, and Stewart I thought there had to be some statistical explanation, could we have seen this coming? What I quickly found out was that all these golfers had one commonality: a failure to stick to their principles.
In a Seattle Times piece, Williams noted how he always hit a big draw, a core component of his collegiate success. One day he went to the range and started to try to hit the ball straighter and he never could get his draw back. His early skid paired with his inability to get back to his original ball flight snowballed into burnout from professional golf.
A Golf Digest article written about Wyatt’s struggles highlights Wyatt’s patented 5-yard baby draw which Justin Thomas used to sit on the range and watch because of how admirable his ball striking was. Concerned with his game’s ability to translate to professional golf, Wyatt attempted to start hitting a power fade, eventually messing up his swing so badly he couldn’t find his patented draw again.
Information on Whitsett is hard to find, but two years ago he went on a podcast and discussed what went wrong for him in the professional ranks. Whitsett had a rough start to his professional career and that’s when the tweaks started to happen, “We’re working on it and it’s getting worse and it’s like alright what are we doing here so then that just set off the search party. It was teacher after teacher and you know, hopefully this lesson fixes it or that lesson fixes it and you just feel like a hamster on a wheel.” Later speaking about his former teammate Justin Thomas, Whitsett says:
“... and you can look at Justin and what he’s done, we’re in the same position in 2013. We were on a Walker [Cup] team together. We’re in much different places now career-wise. He turned pro and he had some things that he needed to keep improving on and he just kept improving upon them. He didn’t make playing pro golf this big deal. He just realized, okay I need to improve these parts of my game to be a really good professional golfer, and that’s what he did, whereas some people were like oh my gosh this is pro golf I got to beat these guys. I need to do these things and that’s not always the case, there’s so many different ways you can improve in golf. He hasn’t bounced from instructor to instructor either.”
Sitting in U.S. Open-level rough, Hunter Stewart started to rethink his place in the professional game. A GolfWeek article detailing his TOUR struggles and new golf analytics career reads, “He began retooling his unorthodox swing in an attempt to hit farther and higher, a skill set shared by the golfers collecting the most trophies and the biggest checks. He succeeded in adding speed, but he became crooked off the tee.”
The sad part about these stories is that these golfers may very well have had the ability to succeed at the professional level, but, for some reason, they didn’t believe that to be the case. This disbelief started a cycle of retooling in an effort to mimic what top TOUR players have. I couldn’t help, but be reminded of what Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said during the All-Star Game:
These golfers didn’t fail because they weren’t good enough golfers, they failed because they didn’t stick to the principles that got them to top amateur status in the first place. As Sam Presti said after the 2024 season, prior to Oklahoma City’s 2025 NBA Finals triumph, “The principles are still the way we’re operating. Those weren’t principles to get through a period of time. Those were principles to live by.” When you look at the top golfers in today’s game, you can’t help but notice that the top players are principled.
Scottie Scheffler checking his grip before every shot on the range and using a kid’s practice tool to nail down the grip fundamentals. Principled. Jon Rahm sticking to his homegrown swing that many coaches tried to lengthen and change, all while staying with the same caddie even when his results lapsed. Principled. Rory McIlroy chasing Bryson’s speed, but backtracking after poor results, getting back to what got him there in the first place leading him to finally win the Masters. Principled. Xander Schauffele sticking with the same swing coach for the majority of his career, barred from seeing his swing on video until he was 18 in an effort to not tinker too much. Principled. Bryson DeChambeau always looking at problems through a scientific lens, even when he gets blowback from the media for doing so. Principled. Potential Bethpage captain’s pick Chris Gotterup having an overall poor 2024 season (despite a win), sticking with his unorthodox open stance at address in 2025 and being rewarded for it with a win and 2nd place at the Scottish Open and Open Championship. Principled.
Si Woo Kim cycling through putters and putting styles every week, preventing himself from truly learning one style all while being a world-class ball striker. Unprincipled. Tom Kim winning early on TOUR, looking primed to be a PGA TOUR stalwart, and then going to multiple coaches and caddies when the going got tough. Unprincipled. Collin Morikawa winning two majors early in his career with his lifelong coach, hitting the skids (for his standards), firing his coach, getting a new coach, rehiring his old coach, shockingly ditching his well-regarded caddy amidst his best stretch on TOUR in some time, hiring a new caddy, firing him after a few weeks on the bag, and having blow-ups at the media over seemingly trivial issues. Unprincipled.
The margins on the PGA TOUR are minute. It’s no mystery that pretty much everyone on TOUR is capable of performing well, but what’s clear is that the ultimate separator is who can and can’t stick to the principles that got them there in the first place. Often called boring, Scottie Scheffler’s approach to the game isn’t attuned to be the most interesting, rather it’s attuned to yield results which often can look boring. All the top golfers have gone through ruts of performance, and the true greats don’t waver when they happen. You don’t see Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge completely change their approach at the plate during a slump and you don’t see Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal overhaul their pitching motion after a bad outing. What the true greats do is make the small tweaks that are necessary.
Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Xander Schauffele, Chris Gotterup, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Paul Skenes, and Tarik Skubal aren’t trying to be someone else. Did they admire certain athletes growing up? Certainly. But what all these athletes were told along the way that changed their path was that they were good enough as themselves. As Pete Crow-Armstrong tells us, they stuck to what makes them them. Unfortunately, not every talented athlete is so lucky to learn or believe this. Part of the credit goes to the coaches that surrounded these athletes throughout their journey. Look no further than Scottie Scheffler’s swing over the years, this is what a coach leaning into principles and an individual’s DNA looks like:
h/t @LukeKerrDineen on X
What Whitsett said about Justin Thomas not making “pro golf this big deal” also serves as an indicator as to why some fail and some succeed. Look at anyone who is super successful in their field, they likely worked towards goals that weren’t clearly defined nor externally imposed. Steve Jobs didn’t start Apple because he wanted to put an iPhone in everyone’s hand. Albert Einstein didn’t work on physics problems because he wanted to be known as one of the smartest people to ever live. And Miles Davis didn’t play the trumpet because he wanted to be the one of the most influential jazz artists of all-time. Jobs, Einstein, and Davis simply worked on problems and did things they found interesting. No one told them they had to, it just seemed right.
The popularized Scottie Scheffler comments from the Open Championship paint the same picture. What’s most apparent about Scheffler’s comments is that he just plays golf to play golf. As he says, he doesn’t write down goals, he just shows up and practices to the best of his ability because he loves to do it.
For all of us who don’t play professional sports, we can learn something from these people’s mindset. We should all be working on what feels natural and not worry about the externally imposed expectations placed on us. It’s easy to get caught up in the success of others, but I assure you that the people mentioned in this article, who are truly great, stayed in their lane, stuck to their principles, and didn’t make rash decisions after bumps in the road. The hardest part of this task for all of us is the deciding of principles. I don’t believe these come from self-help books or inspirational content found on social media. Relying on these avenues is a surefire way to rely on the same principles as everybody else who scrolls all day. The true greats, who I’ve mentioned ad nauseam, rely on principles that got them there in the first place, their true skill being the ability to stick with them. So, the next time you hit a rough patch ask yourself - is this principle part of what got me here or does it warrant changing? The answer may not be so easy, but its examination is sure to have a massive effect on what happens next.
