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Imagine you're standing on a sunny patch of tightly trimmed green grass. The air is stiflingly hot. Television cameras zoom in on your face as a crowd surrounds you. You've trained your whole life for this moment. Your goal: to tap a tiny white ball into a 4.25-inch-wide hole. If you make the shot, you'll win $720,000 and a trophy, confirming that your thousands of hours of hard work have all been worth it. If you miss? Your worst critics, including you, may claim you never had what it takes in the first place. With everything on the line, you step up to the ball, take a deep breath and swing your putter.
Michelle Wie, 25, has coped with this sort of intense pressure more than half her life. The 6-foot-tall golfer is one of the strongest, longest-driving players in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). But it's her mind, not just her muscles, that has made her a champion. "The game is 80 percent mental," says Wie, who is currently ranked sixth in the world. "It's five to six hours of stop and go, which makes it hard to find your rhythm. Plus, you need to envision the perfect shot on every hole, and most of the time, it doesn't end up that way." Champions, she says, recover. No matter what, they always remain confident. They focus on the present. And they never give up.
You don't have to be a golfer, or even a fan of the sport, to understand how the mental skills that lead to victory on the fairway can lead to success in all areas of life. "You can have all the talent and skill in the world, but if you don't have the ability to execute under pressure, it's as if they're not there at all," says Wie's former performance psychologist, Jim Loehr, Ed.D., cofounder of the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida. In fact, you can attribute most ace accomplishments to the power of the mind. "The difference between your best and worst performance always hinges on your mental game," says Jim Afremow, Ph.D., author of The Champion's Mind. "You can never be better than your best, but if your mind is not in the right place, you can be worse."
Wie was born with a drive to succeed. She started playing golf at age 4 and, by 12, became the youngest player ever to qualify for an LPGA event. By 15, she was gunning for a spot on the men's tour. "From a very young age, I always wanted to be really good at something," she says. "I played baseball, soccer, tennis and golf, and once I realized I couldn't run, I was like, 'OK, I'll just play golf.'" Her passion made practice easy. From 10 to 16, she spent up to five hours a day on the links just to see how long she could last. "I've always been a grinder," she says. "Whenever I didn't feel like practicing, my parents would ask, 'How good do you want to be?' That's what it took to get me back out there." Wie's perseverance is called grit, and research shows it's one of the most significant predictors of success. "We all have inner drive, but we may talk ourselves out of it or let others do it for us," Afremow says. "Champions, on the other hand, give themselves permission to see how great they can be."
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Above: Shirt, $70, skirt, $75, visor, $22, and glove, $22; Nike.comStyled by Lindsey Frugier. Hair, Steven Hoeppner for Oscar Blandi; makeup, Alexis Renny for Nars; Manicure, Donna D for Chanel Beaute.
Photo Credit: Sam Kweskin
