imapMyTeam Blog

Master Golf to Master Pressure

This week’s premier event in golf, the Masters, played in Augusta, Georgia was yet again a great tournament to watch. The finish is usually filled with drama and suspense and this year gave us all of that and more. This year’s winner, Jordan Speith – Wait! This year’s winner is Danny Willett! And a worthy champion he is.

In golf as in business there is pressure to perform. When the consequences are small the pressure we experience as a result is also small. Whether you are battling for the Masters or a new major contract for your business – and others are counting on your performance - the stakes are raised, pressure to perform increases, stress magnifies, mistakes become more costly.

In roughly 25 minutes Jordan Spieth went from 7 under, comfortably leading the tournament and in line for his second green jacket in a row, to losing 6 strokes over 3 holes. Just that quickly he was out of the lead and never able to recover from a disastrous hole. That same meltdown to one degree or another happens every day in business offices across the country. They just aren’t televised nationally for everyone to see.

While Spieth imploded, Danny Willett quickly vaulted from playing for second place to the lead in one of the most prestigious golf events in the world. Pressure mounted on Danny as well. ‘Easy’ shots get harder. But Willett seemed to handle the rapid script change fairly well, at least externally; internally however you can bet he was battling an increased heart rate! It’s tough to play golf (or succeed in business) with your heart in your throat.

Golf is a great business tool and can teach us a lot about how to succeed both personally and professionally. Not only does golf help you build relationships quickly, the business similarities are endless. Changing conditions, the need to adapt to the unexpected, how strategies sometimes work but often you need to regroup midway. We saw that over the last four days for sure.


Use your imapMyTeam® reports to identify where you’re going to have the greatest difficulty managing your behavior in response to new conditions. Perhaps this weekend requires we all look at our Succeed Under Pressure report. Maybe the Stress of Change (changing conditions) too.