“That was slightly unnerving but exceptionally awesome!”
– Phil Mickelson (b. 1970), winner of Sunday’s PGA Championship, now 6-time Major Champion and my favorite golfer since Jack Nicklaus
Some random thoughts under the heading of “you’re not supposed to…”
Phil Mickelson won the 103rd PGA Championship Sunday afternoon in South Carolina. He became the oldest professional golfer to ever win a major championship. Golfers, even Hall-of-Famers, aren’t “supposed to win majors” after they’re about 42 years old.
- I’m a ginormous Mickelson fan, amidst my “unhealthy attachment” to the game of golf, so it was a pretty magical week for me.
- One of the young guns, Rory, Jordan, maybe even Brooks, in the last pairing with Phil, was supposed to win…
- Phil wasn’t supposed to win. Golfers over age 50 aren’t supposed to win on the “young guys’ tour…”
- If Phil does it again next month, he’ll complete the career Grand Slam, and become not only the oldest but also only the 6th ever to accomplish that feat.
Jim Richerson, President of the PGA of America, presented the Wanamaker Trophy to Mickelson.
- Richerson is a “kid from Kirksville, MO” where I first met him when he was in his teens.
- He was the head pro and then director of golf at the Blackwolf Run and Whistling Straits resorts, where I’ve been blessed to play a lot of rounds of golf.
- One of his first jobs was working for a good buddy of mine at a Club in Phoenix, AZ about 30-years ago.
- I can’t necessarily call Jim a “friend,” but I can say we’re friendly, and we have a number of good friends in common.
- Nice young guys from small college towns in the Midwest aren’t “supposed to” be on international television as a person of authority, alongside one of the biggest stars in the history of sport.
“Do this don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” is a lyric from, “Signs,” a 1971 hit record by Five Man Electrical Band (that was re-recorded by Tesla in 1990). The song is about what we’re supposed to and what we’re not supposed to do, and how dopey some of the things we’re supposed to do, or not supposed to do can be.
Here are some of the problems with what “we’re supposed to do and not supposed to do…”
- Policies are often put in place by companies to keep smart people from making decisions.
- Rules are (and this is an over-generalization, admittedly) usually effective at stamping out innovation and creativity. If a rule doesn’t present injury or death, it might not be a necessary rule. Just sayin’…
- Babies roll over, walk, talk, etc at their own pace, because they’re too young to understand what they’re supposed to or not supposed to do. It takes us adults to put fear and doubt into their minds
- I could go on for hours, but what an awful post that would be, right?
What if we paid less attention to what we were supposed to do, or not supposed to do, and simply did the absolute best we could – even challenging ourselves to work hard and smart enough to raise the bar over and over again? Maybe we’d become the oldest pro golfer to ever win a major championship, and maybe we’d become the kid from the Midwest who got to present the trophy. Maybe we’d become x% better at what we did. Maybe we’d make a difference, maybe in a way in which we weren’t “supposed to…”
Instead of letting the system tell us what can and can’t happen, let’s try to make incredible things happen…
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