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.
Four Fascinating Facts:
I have been attending a workshop on “The Artist as an Entrepreneur.” Its purpose is to help artists become more successful businesspersons, by teaching basics of business plans, marketing, sales, finances and networking. I appear to be the oldest person in the class, and I think I’m being viewed with some suspicion by a few of the others: while I am there to figure out how to turn a hobby into a business, the other artists are trying to make a living at it. There have been a couple of comments to the effect that “retired people” aren’t serious about or dedicated to the cause of art and so should be avoided. In other words, not real artists.
One of the speakers, while discussing markets and product niches, noted the recent death of “Bob Timberlake” and made a disparaging reference to his work: he was popular and successful, but he was not an artist, don’t we agree? In his haste to lay waste, the speaker got his schlock wrong. Bob Timberlake is still with us — it is Thomas Kinkade who is not.
Timberlake
Kinkade
Millais
Is anyone and everyone who calls himself or herself an artist an artist? What standard determines whether a person may be called an artist or whether a work is considered art? This was explored in a 2011 study by Kieran, Meskin and Moore. They asked, “Do works belong to the artistic canon because critics and museum curators have correctly discerned their merits?” Or, do works enter the canon as a result of “cultural exposure over time” with less regard for objective qualities of the work? To find out, the authors compared how viewers reacted to paintings by John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and the aforementioned Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012) after a single exposure and repeat exposures. If quality of a work outweighs exposure to a work in terms of influencing viewer preferences, then one could argue there are in fact objective quality standards for art.
The results: whereas increased exposure to Millais paintings had little effect on how well viewers liked them, “…we found that with bad paintings by Kinkade, exposure decreased, rather than increased, liking [of the work] in relation to our control groups.” I might argue with the authors about having prejudged Kinkade’s work as “bad”, but then again, when people like something less and less the more they see it, that is the kind of art that ends up in a Goodwill store.
At my workshop, I was struck by the number of attendees who shared that making art was integral to advancing their social cause. I began to wonder: if I am to be an artist, do I need not only a product but a cause? Will a cause make my art better? Will it get me through the door and on the wall?
Perhaps the workshop speaker was right and Kinkade was not a real artist. And neither will I be a real artist until the Gatekeepers of Good Artisanship evaluate my worthiness against the standards and decide that I pass. I can’t wait.