{"id":2878,"date":"2012-04-10T23:20:35","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T03:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=2878"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:19","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:19","slug":"no-soy-tambien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2012\/04\/no-soy-tambien\/","title":{"rendered":"No Soy Tambi\u00e9n Capaz de Ganar un Grande"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translation:\u00a0 I Also Am Unable to Win a Major<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

“After 13 years, today was the day when I realized, I am not capable of winning a major,\u201d the 32-year-old said.\u00a0 \u201cThat’s the reality.\u00a0 I’m not good enough, and now I know it.\u00a0 I have been trying for 13 years and I don’t feel capable of winning,” he said.\u00a0 “I had my chances and opportunities and I wasted them.\u00a0 I have no more options.\u00a0 I wasted my options.”<\/p>\n

“If I felt like I could win, I would do it,” he continued.\u00a0 “I can’t really play much better than I played this week, and I’m going to finish 13th or 15th.\u00a0 What does that show you?”<\/p>\n

For the world of sports, let alone any highly-visible endeavor, this is pretty amazing stuff.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00b9<\/span><\/p>\n

In our culture, athletes are not allowed to admit the possibility of losing.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 Mr. Brady would be on the next plane back home to California.\u00a0 This would also be true for any other player on any other team.<\/p>\n

But professional golf is not a team sport: Sergio is self-employed, so he can’t be fired for not being fired up.\u00a0 He can keep making good money on the tour as long as he plays decently. \u00b2 <\/span>He has to answer only to his sponsors, his fans and himself.<\/p>\n

Most Americans would respond to Sergio’s self-assessment in one of the following ways:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sergio, you need to identify the problem with your game and keep working on it.
\n\u2022 Sergio, you are just ensuring that you won’t win, with that kind of defeatist attitude.
\n\u2022 Sergio, you should never have admitted it.\u00a0 Your fellow golfers will eat you alive out there.
\n\u2022 Sergio, are you depressed?\u00a0 You sound like an eighty-year-old man.
\n\u2022 Sergio, say goodbye to your endorsements.\u00a0 No one wants to buy golf gear from a loser.
\n\u2022 Sergio Garcia.\u00a0 You’re no Seve Ballasteros<\/a>.\u00a0 You’re just a whiner.\u00a0 Get over yourself.<\/p>\n

But I applaud Sergio.\u00a0 He did something very courageous.\u00a0 He evaluated his place in the sport and his prospects for success with cold honesty.\u00a0 He confronted his own limitations.\u00a0 He freed himself from the expectations of the press, the public and his own past.\u00a0 To me, this speaks of maturity.<\/p>\n

At age 26, in what would be the final edition of my underground magazine, I wrote this:<\/p>\n

I know this:\r\nno one will discover me\r\nthese words will die\r\nsyndication will not befall me\r\nI must be satisfied with small worlds\r\nI will write failure's handbook\r\nmore pages to decay, undisturbed<\/span><\/pre>\n
I was not a professional writer, and I had (unrealistic) ideas about what I would be able to accomplish creatively.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Our achievement culture tends to treat any acknowledgement of personal limitations as “throwing in the towel.”\u00a0 It is an arrogant stance, believing one can do anything.\u00a0 It is also rather sad, when one is confined by narrow definitions of success, accomplishment and personal satisfaction.\u00a0 First place is not the only worthwhile place.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what kind of person Sergio Garcia is in private life (not that I care to judge). \u00a0 But for his realism and candor, I hereby present to Mr. Garcia the trophy for Honorary 100 Billionth Person of 2012.\u00a0 We are both unable to win a major.\u00a0 Congratulations.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00b9 <\/span>Besides choking, that is.\u00a0 Everyone also remembers when a golfer chokes and then loses. Just ask Jean van de Velde<\/a>, who had a three-shot lead on the last hole of the British Open.<\/p>\n
\u00b2 At the end of 2011, Ricky Barnes was the 134th-ranked golfer in the world. <\/span>He finished in third-place once and fourth twice, in 23 events.\u00a0 He earned over $950,000 last year.<\/p>\n
\u00b3 In spite of its length, the only possible category for this essay was One Foot Putts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Translation:\u00a0 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3810,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}