Why You Should Never Meet Your Heroes
There’s a practical truth to the old adage.
You probably have a story like mine. You can point to a specific moment in your life and say: “There. That’s where my faith in humans started to fall apart.”
My moment happened on a 104º day in Memphis, Tennessee. Dad had taken me to a golf tournament. At the time, I was 16 and my dreams of playing basketball came up short (literally), and I’d chosen golf as my profession.
I was obsessed with one golfer in particular. They called him “The Spiderman” because of the way he crouched when he studied a putt on the green. I couldn’t believe he and I were on the same course… where was he?
After some hunting, we found him on the 18th green.
Spiderman was having a bad day. That wasn’t why I fell out of love with him, though. I knew bad days happened to good golfers. It was part of the sport. No, what let me down was his reaction to the shot I saw.
He fluffed a sand shot, coming up way short of the hole. The crowd groaned, but Spiderman nearly screamed. He slammed his club into the sand bunker… once, twice, three times. His club dug into the ground so deeply that he peeled back the lining underneath the sand. Throwing his club at his caddy, he walked over to the ball.
