Yearly Archives: 2012

Translation:  I Also Am Unable to Win a Major

“No soy capaz de ganar un grande,” is what golfer Sergio Garcia said to Spanish reporters last Saturday after the third round of the Masters, the first major tournament of the year.

“After 13 years, today was the day when I realized, I am not capable of winning a major,” the 32-year-old said.  “That’s the reality.  I’m not good enough, and now I know it.  I have been trying for 13 years and I don’t feel capable of winning,” he said.  “I had my chances and opportunities and I wasted them.  I have no more options.  I wasted my options.”

“If I felt like I could win, I would do it,” he continued.  “I can’t really play much better than I played this week, and I’m going to finish 13th or 15th.  What does that show you?”

For the world of sports, let alone any highly-visible endeavor, this is pretty amazing stuff.  Here is a golfer (widely regarded as “the best player never to have won a major”) telling the public he does not expect to win, when winning is the only thing anyone remembers. ¹

In our culture, athletes are not allowed to admit the possibility of losing.  Just imagine the fallout if Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots, were to say to the press he was “no longer capable of winning a Super Bowl.”  Mr. Brady would be on the next plane back home to California.  This would also be true for any other player on any other team.

But professional golf is not a team sport: Sergio is self-employed, so he can’t be fired for not being fired up.  He can keep making good money on the tour as long as he plays decently. ² He has to answer only to his sponsors, his fans and himself.

Most Americans would respond to Sergio’s self-assessment in one of the following ways:

• Sergio, you need to identify the problem with your game and keep working on it.
• Sergio, you are just ensuring that you won’t win, with that kind of defeatist attitude.
• Sergio, you should never have admitted it.  Your fellow golfers will eat you alive out there.
• Sergio, are you depressed?  You sound like an eighty-year-old man.
• Sergio, say goodbye to your endorsements.  No one wants to buy golf gear from a loser.
• Sergio Garcia.  You’re no Seve Ballasteros.  You’re just a whiner.  Get over yourself.

But I applaud Sergio.  He did something very courageous.  He evaluated his place in the sport and his prospects for success with cold honesty.  He confronted his own limitations.  He freed himself from the expectations of the press, the public and his own past.  To me, this speaks of maturity.

At age 26, in what would be the final edition of my underground magazine, I wrote this:

I know this:
no one will discover me
these words will die
syndication will not befall me
I must be satisfied with small worlds
I will write failure's handbook
more pages to decay, undisturbed

I was not a professional writer, and I had (unrealistic) ideas about what I would be able to accomplish creatively.  My 1979 poetic self-assessment is certainly more drama-soaked and depressing than Garcia’s, but I was talking to myself — he was speaking to the world.

Our achievement culture tends to treat any acknowledgement of personal limitations as “throwing in the towel.”  It is an arrogant stance, believing one can do anything.  It is also rather sad, when one is confined by narrow definitions of success, accomplishment and personal satisfaction.  First place is not the only worthwhile place.

I don’t know what kind of person Sergio Garcia is in private life (not that I care to judge).   But for his realism and candor, I hereby present to Mr. Garcia the trophy for Honorary 100 Billionth Person of 2012.  We are both unable to win a major.  Congratulations.

¹ Besides choking, that is.  Everyone also remembers when a golfer chokes and then loses. Just ask Jean van de Velde, who had a three-shot lead on the last hole of the British Open.

² At the end of 2011, Ricky Barnes was the 134th-ranked golfer in the world. He finished in third-place once and fourth twice, in 23 events.  He earned over $950,000 last year.

³ In spite of its length, the only possible category for this essay was One Foot Putts.

I am one who believes that financial markets are chaotic — highly sensitive to changes in sentiment and economic conditions, so much so that the future is essentially unpredictable.

But that doesn’t stop people (or me) from making guesses.  For many years now, my old friend Tom Campbell has been making educated guesses using mathematical models of his own design, and he now publishes his predictions on his web page.  I wish him good fortune, but I have also expressed to him my skepticism about the value of such forecasts.

So let’s have a little contest to see if my skepticism is well-deserved, or if Tom has indeed come up with the Holy Grail of forecasting that investors have sought for decades.  Below, you will see a list of Tom’s most recently published forecasts — I extracted these values from the charts on his website.  At the end of the year, I will bring this post back to the top and, assuming Tom is still updating his figures, we can see how he did.  I’m going to guess that Tom will get one or two of these about right.  I will publicly congratulate him if he is more accurate than that.

Forecasts for January 1, 2013, taken from AAFORECAST.COM on March 20, 2012:

Without doing any modeling, my guess is that the unemployment rate will be a few tenths higher than what Tom predicts, the S&P 500 will be about 1360-1380, and the Gold ETF will be roughly where it is now or a bit lower (say 15.75-16.00).  See you at year’s end.