Besides providing the biggest opportunity of the year to unwind from the pressures of the printing business, the event also promotes a feeling of comradeship that you have to experience personally to appreciate. The fluctuations of a golf game are much like the ups and downs of commerce, and our tournament’s fans have discovered the strength and renewal that come from facing them together as a united front.
Hope springs eternal in golf and business
There’s no better example of how golf compares to business than the come-from-behind success story of Canada’s Mike Weir. Until last year, when Mike won the Masters at Augusta, Georgia – one of the most prestigious golf tournaments in the world – nobody ever expected him to achieve such phenomenal success, including being the first Canadian and the first left-hander to win the Masters. In fact, Mike was the first left-handed golfer in 40 years to win any of the four major tournaments in the PGA Tour.
Before then, as Savannah Morning News sports columnist Tim Guidera wrote, it seemed as though Tiger Woods "was shutting major championships off to everybody else, that any player who hadn’t won one yet might just be too late. … Now all of a sudden [Weir] is not only being considered Canada’s greatest golfer of all time, but one of the top players anywhere.
“And he got to that point by reaching his breaking point.”
“After a disappointing 2002 season, Weir decided to get better and then did, tightening up his swing and becoming a more consistent putter. He says it was that simple, that elevating his game took as much work as you might think, but that it began with the thought of doing it.”
“This is not a prodigy we’re taking about. He played golf as a kid, but only during summers.”
“It took him six tries to get through PGA Tour qualifying school. He was 31 when he made the commitment to becoming a different player than he was.”
“And how many [other] players … are one or two tiny improvements away from potentially being somebody else in professional golf?”
Actually Mike, now 34, began his quest to excel at age 13, when he wrote to Jack Nicklaus asking whether he should switch to playing right-handed. The response was to stick to his natural swing.
Tim O’Connor wrote on pgatour.com: "Every golf-obsessed Canadian can tell you the story of Mike’s epiphany when he was hitting range balls alongside Price and realized that he had to revamp his swing. … Along with putting, Weir also showed Canadians that you win with your mind. He proved there’s no reason to ever feel inferior – a national tendency with our colossal neighbor. Weir’s final round at Augusta was a lesson in the power of committing to the process, staying in the present."
Who knows how much success you could achieve if you applied the same kind of decisive concentration that made Mike a winner to your business? Through our tournament – and other professional resources and events – OAQP is dedicated to helping you kindle the same mental attitude that made Mike a champion, as well as giving you the educational and networking tools to make your company a top competitor.
