The Closers: Never Celebrate a Victory You Haven't Won Yet

So what are we chatting about today? I, I know c- a couple of the stories that you're gonna tell us today, and I think they're important, and they're well worth repeating because you've lived in some rooms where you just went, "Oh, that didn't just happen," but it did.

You know, people get, not, I don't wanna say cocky, but they're just, they've said, "Okay, I've got this.

I'm done.

Moving on to something else." But they're not done, are they?

No.

Frequently they're not.

And, uh, I, I come from a golfing family.

I was raised in Atlanta, uh, two blocks out the front gate of East Lake Country Club, Bobby Jones' home course.

So everybody in my family and just about everybody I knew played golf.

And, uh, we had several tournaments at East Lake over the years, they still do, uh, where Arnold Palmer and the other kings of golf would show up.

And Arnold Palmer was one of the first places where I caught it.

Uh, I probably should've learned it years before, but I didn't.

Arnold Palmer told a story at a dinner one night about how he was leading in a golf tournament, and I'm making up numbers, I really don't recall, but he's like on the 16th or 17th fairway.

He's up by four, and he's been leading f- pretty s- pretty solidly for four days.

And a friend of his over by the ropes yelled out, "Arnie, how are you?" And, and he recognized him, and Palmer was as friendly a guy as you ever met.

He walked over, shook his hand, "Good to see you.

How are you?" Break, A, breaking his concentration, and B, the guy said, "Congratulations, you're gonna win this." You know, "You're up by whatever, four.

Two holes to go." And Arnold said, "Well, thank you very much," and took the, the, uh, platitude, he said, to heart, and went on to, uh, bogey the next two holes while somebody else, uh, started birdieing, caught him and, and won the tournament.

And Palmer's, you know, the, the thing is, what'd you learn from that? One, continue to concentrate on the goal at hand, which was the next stroke, and then the next stroke, and then putting out and going to the 18th.

Uh, that would be lesson one.

Lesson two was he accepted the winner's trophy from his friend two or three holes too soon, and went on to lose the tournament.

So Arnold said that he never again, you know, when he gets to, when he was in the zone, no friend.

He said, "Not even my mother could get me [laughs] to go over to the ropes and start shaking hands and taking congratulations.

Stay focused on the moment and what you're really involved in, and until you have the trophy in your hands, you don't have the trophy." And, uh-

And you said that at the top, and I wrote it down.