Joel Dahmen and Winning on our own terms

If you haven’t watched Netflix’s Drive to Survive style documentary on the PGA Tour, Full Swing, I suggest you stop reading this and immediately go binge a few episodes.

My favorite episode is “Imposter Syndrome” which follows PGA golfer, Joel Dahmen. Dahmen is both funny and self deprecating. He’s also been through a lot and you can’t help but want to root for him. He lost his mother to cancer months before heading off to college and eventually was diagnosed with cancer himself a year after turning pro. 

As the title suggests, the episode focuses on Dahmen’s belief that he can’t beat the best golfers in the world.  To use his own words, “Someone’s got to be the 70th best golfer in the world and it might as well be me.” Those that know him, including world no.5 Max Homa, believe that Dahmen has far more talent and potential than he gives himself credit for.

The episode asks: Is Dahmen’s mindset the only thing holding him back?

But that’s not what I’m going to write about today. Not because I don’t think it’s a worthy conversation or an interesting one, but because I think there’s more to learn from Dahmen’s story.

Given his life experience, Dahmen knows intimately that there’s more to life than golf. He seems to relish the friendship he’s built with his caddie, Geno, and is committed to not losing a sense of fun and laughter on the golf course. He even downs a few white claws in between qualifying rounds for the US Open.

Outside of the imposter syndrome conversation, I wondered if maybe Dahmen’s fear was that going for greatness on the golf course means losing part of who he is. I had the feeling that the traditional life and image of the “great” golfer didn’t quite feel like him.

Perhaps the question at stake is one many ambitious people confront: how do we play big and be ourselves?

In the sports world and in business, it’s so easy to feel like there’s one right way to do everything. There’s a framework someone else used, a book with all the answers, a story on how another company did it. We lose the creativity and the fun in an effort to fit into a neatly defined box. 

I think the answer lies in finding a way to be ourselves and to build and create in a way that works for us. 

For Dahmen, it might be that he’s already reached the pinnacle of what he wanted on his own terms. His caddie even says, “I’m not sure Joel wants to be top 30 in the world.” 

But I suspect that there’s a part of him that wants to embrace his talent and go for more (the end of the episode seems to suggest as much). If that’s the case, Dahmen’s recipe for success might be getting creative on what winning looks like the Joel Dahmen way. White claws included.

I’ll leave you with this: If nothing has to be a certain way, what does winning look like on your terms?