I Hate The Word Choke

Sunday if you watched the Masters you witnessed one of the major players in all of golf play on one hole as bad as if I were hitting for him.  Having been at the Masters Practice round two years ago B W Holt and myself spent an hour watching the players play the 12th hole.  Standing on the tee box the green looks about about as wide as a driveway and 135 yards away.  It is a miracle anybody ever gets a ball on the green.

Was it a choke  or was it just a bad five minutes of one of the best golfers in the world. Jordan Speith had the lead almost all the Masters but he was hitting the ball all over the place all tournament.  He played Tiger Woods like being able to one putt so many greens to save his butt.  The 12th hitting two balls in the water his putting could not save the hole.  He got birdies on two of the next three holes so can you say he choked or was it just bad ball striking?

I think all of us at some point in time have done something that we were so nervous that we failed to do our  best.  I have told this story before that in 1985 during a state bowling tournament after I started with five strikes in a row that the entire bowling alley started watching because a 300 game was possible.  I was so nervous I don't even remember the strike I made in frame Six and seventh frame. Even the eighth frame my ball was perfect in the pocket but I left the ten pin.

During my bowling days my balls had a natural curve and the ten pin was over in the right corner and I could not throw the ball straight so my knocking down that one pin I missed about 30 per cent of the time.  Sure enough I missed the ten pin and Finished with a 257 game.  Did I miss that pin because I choked or was it just poor execution.

From Eight years old until I finished the High school I played little league, it was called pony league at 13 years old and then I played varsity baseball three years.  In the summer I played in a church league and in all my playing days I only hit one home run.

When I was 12 I played on a city all star travel team from Ahoskie and we played all the towns in the area like Jackson, Conway,Woodland, Aulander, Murfreesboro.  We had a city league field with a fence but nobody else did.  I hit one home run in my entire life. Our field was in right field of the high school field and we had a portable fence that could be put up and taken down and the big kids could play on the high school field as soon as we rolled the fence up

What ever reason the fence was not up on this night and I hit a line drive that probably never got ten feet high.  As I was running to first I knew it was over the left fielders head and if the fence had of been there it would have been a home run.  Rounding first I looked toward left and I see the left fielder chasing the ball and I know I got a home run.  Right that moment I went on cloud nine.  I never remember from the time I touched second, third and home until it was time to go back out in the field.  I was no longer on this earth.

Was I so nervous with excitement or is there such a place as cloud nine.  I think there are times in our life  we are so nervous that we do bad things instead of what we are trained to do.  I also think that there are times when we do things that don't seem possible to do but it happens anyway.

I don't think Speith choked.  Whether the finish changes his career only time will tell.  Great players have something in them that Joe average like me doesn't have.  They recover from making a seven on a par three by making birdie on two of the next three holes.  My next at bat after I came down from cloud nine I popped up to the shortstop.  Cloud nine didn't last long.  If he comes back strong from this disaster he may be on his way to being the next Tiger?