Performance Through Panic?

If true, it’s amazing.

The problem?

I don’t think it’s true.

But what do I know? I don’t play golf. So I have no way of knowing whether Charlie Beljan—28-years old, recently married, recently childed (his son was born in September), and needing a top ten finish to stay in the PGA—played his way through a panic attack to win the Children’s Miracle Network Classic.

OK, so I don’t know anything about golf. But I do know something about panic attacks, having had two or three at the beginning of this year. That said, could I have done a routine activity, an activity I had spent thousands of hours to perfect?

Teaching. I have taught for twenty years, and the average person works 2000 hours per year. So, I have an estimated 40,000 hours of teaching notched on my belt. Could I have taught a class—that day the decision to hurl myself into the stream of cars or fish out my cell phone and call for help was made by convention only?

No.

Well, the clip below lets you see for yourself. Something is clearly happening. I don’t think it’s a stunt. I’m convinced that what was happening was exactly what we see—a guy struggling with anxiety, a man battling demons.

And Beljan was fighting some heavy odds. There are three things, scientists say, that completely remap your brain: getting married, having a child, moving to a foreign country. Beljan was married early in the year, and his first son was born two months ago.

Never had the experience, but I’ve heard about it. Yes, initially it’s exhilaration. But it quickly turns to exhaustion.

So he’s already under stress. And then, last Friday, on the second round of the first day of the golf tournament, he goes into a panic attack. And emerges with a 64—his second best performance.

Gets into an ambulance, goes to the hospital, gets a battery of tests. Comes out the next day, and decides to do the last two rounds. “I was crying on the range because I was so afraid these feeling would come back,” the New York Times quotes him as saying.

Two other quotes:

1.     Beljan also picked up a paycheck of $846,000

2.     “I never tried to make golf something more than it is.”

Well, my question would be ‘what is it?’ Is it a game or a high-risk, high-exposure job under conditions that you mostly cannot control? The Times quotes an expert as saying that golf is the most mental of games (though what about chess?).

And certainly sports is about pressure, and how we react to it. My current theory is that guys, for most of our evolution, were hunters. The chase, the hunt, the kill are bred into us. The corporate world isn’t quite the forest or savannah we crave. A football stadium with 250-pound muscled beasts facing us is more to the taste.  

And there’s a term in sports—the choke. A talented player, someone who has worked ceaselessly to perfect his game, loses it completely, enters into a panic, gets worse, gets tight, starts to analyze when he should relax. It’s a horrifying spectacle to see. (Even worse to go through, as I have….)

My take? Beljan did a reverse choke. He was operating under extreme stress, but somehow never lost his automaticity. Look at the clip—yes, he’s gasping for air and crouching on the sidelines (or whatever golfers have). But when he’s playing? He seems as loose as a jellyfish.

My question? What would have happened if he had lost, just for a second, that automaticity, that ease? For most of the time, that’s what happens. A missed note, a missed shot—the shoulders go up, the forearms tense, sweat forms and runs down the fingerboard. The next high note will now be harder, you think, and then….

…you’re spiraling down.

Did Beljan trust his body so much that he never lost flow?

Think so.

Panic attack?

No.