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By Dr. Tom Dorsel

  1. Size didn’t matter.  Diminutive Sergio Garcia (and he is little, I was once in his presence) nearly beat behemoth Bryson DeChambeau.  And how did he do it — he outsmarted him on many holes, he drove him crazy with his accuracy and short game.  And Sergio didn’t hit the ball that short himself.  Distance isn’t solely the result of size and muscles.  It is timing and flexibility, too.  Plus equipment helps these days too.  So, if you are smaller, don’t worry too much about the big guys.  They will go crazy if you are down the middle all the time, hitting greens no matter what club you used, pitching and chipping it close, and knocking putts in from all over the place.  They will say, “How can I beat this guy, I’m hitting it a mile and he is right there with me on every hole?”  And if you hit first on every hole, you can just put more pressure on the big guy when he sees you already on the green.
  2. This was said about John Rahm:  “He has dominated for 18 months.  He made an attitude change back then, decided not to be so hard on himself, and he has been in control ever since and dominating the field.  His attitude change entirely changed his game and made him #1 in the world.
  3. All these players made a lot of mistakes, but they hung in there and also made a lot of birdies.  They also won matches despite mistakes.  The greatest shot of the tournament came after a mistake — Jorden Speith’s recovery that almost landed him in Lake Michigan on the recoil.
  4. There were a lot of putts made from all over the place, but the ones inside 10 feet impressed me the most.  They were the game changers.  And they took a lot of time on 3-foot putts.  They knew they weren’t gimmes.
  5. I did not see one player on either side lose his temper or show any disgust with himself.  No apologies to their partners, either.  They just played the game as best they could in the moment and moved on.
  6. Great sportsmanship within and between teams.

Dr. Tom Dorsel can be found on Facebook at “Sport Psychology of Hilton Head” and on the Web at Dorsel.com.  He is the author of “GOLF: The Mental Game.”