I’ve spent the weekend in Augusta for the Masters Golf Tournament and every time I get the opportunity to watch this kind of golf it reminds me of how similar the sport is to weightlifting. Over the last couple of years I have always 
written a blog series delineating out many of the similarities between the mental and physical game of golf and into a physical game the weightlifting. You can check 2013 series and 2014 series here and here. (although some of my opinions differ by a couple degrees today)
By the time most if you will have read this blog post I hopefully will be sitting on the 13th green watching Jordan Spieth try to fend off a charging Tiger or charging Rory. (I hope I did not jinx both of them because it is only Saturday as I write this blog)
However, as I watch the tournament this year, I could not help but be more drawn to the mentally challenging side of this year’s Masters. Jordan Spieth is five shots ahead of his closest competitor and he hasn’t even teed off yet on Saturday. That kind of dominant lead provides all kinds of challenges. For Jordan, it creates the mental battle of consistency. He is the elite, top of his class golfer this year. He’s the guy to chase. In the weightlifting world that’s the Derrick Johnson’s and the Caine Wilkes’ and the Jenny Arthur’s and the Cortney Batchelor’s. They’re at the top and have been at the top for at least a couple of years. For them the pressure is to remain consistent, make consistent gains, and be their own competitor. They really have nobody to chase. Jordan really has nobody to chase except his own goals. The biggest struggle for people in those positions and for Jordan has to be not getting comfortable and also being wise in how they play the game.
For the rest of us, we can much more identify with the likes of Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods and Charley Hoffman who are staring at a 12 or 10 or 5 shot differential with only two days left to compete. It’s a lot like where I sit right now as I look at the likes of Leo Hernandez and Travis Cooper and James Tatum in the 77 kg class. Having moved up a weight class I have yet to grow into the weights and the numbers that they are putting up. While the pressure is on them to be consistently growing and to not allow guys like me to run them down, the pressure is also on me to train in such a way that I believe that I can catch them. Right now the difference in my numbers and there numbers seems insurmountable and in many ways a waste of my time and effort to chase. The same feeling probably overcame Rory and Tiger at the end of Friday. Yet they came out ready to do work today. Rory is already four under for the day and has moved up to fifth place. Tiger has done the same, also sitting in fifth place. At the end of yesterday the world gave neither one of them a shot. Again I pray I’m not jinxing them and I pray that tomorrow I get to watch them chase down Jordan. However there’s something to be learned from what they’ve done already in only half a day of golf. They know where Jordan is, they are aware of what must be done to catch him, but they are doing it in their way. They are chasing him down with their style of golf playing with eagerness but not with inconsistency. For the rest of the weightlifting world who are watching and looking at the top American lifters and the top world lifters that’s the lesson we have to learn. What they are doing at the top level is not out of our reach. What they are doing with their 300, 350, and 400 totals is not impossible. Clearly, because they have done it. How they did it is exactly the same way that you should. Consistency, regular, measured effort, and pushing yourself up to the point of healthy growth. You don’t run down the likes of Caine Wilkes and Colin Burns with over-training and missed lifts. You chasing them down day by day, lift by lift, and consistently year by year ever increasing your total kilo by kilo.
The lesson to be learned from this years Masters is that no lead and no total are insurmountable. Chasing those numbers down is a process that takes consistent effort and smart disciplined work.