If you’re not following Hal Sutton on Twitter, change that now.
Fantastic anecdotes from his playing career and time spent with greats like Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan fill his feed. The 14-time PGA Tour winner opened Hal Sutton Golf in Houston on Aug. 1, about a driver and a 5-iron away from Champions Golf Club, home of the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open. (There’s a great story on his Twitter feed about mentor Jack Burke, too.)
Sutton works with a number of up-and-coming junior players as well as long-time low-handicappers still looking for an edge.
A recent series of tweets regarding the relationship between a young Hal and his father focused on the important topic of how players perceive their parents’ love when it comes to performance.
Golfweek recently caught up with Sutton, a father of four, to talk more about his insights on guiding young athletes. Here are excerpts from that conversation.
I grew up with a dad that pushed and pushed and pushed and, you know, I wanted to please him more than anything else in the world. No matter how well I did he seemed to raise the bar on me all the time, so that we never quite got to when I thought hey dad, you’re finally pleased with me.
That caused me to tweet “Is your love for your athlete performance-based?” And then I followed that up in the same paragraph, “It’s your athlete’s perception of what your love is that is important.” Most parents miss that. I followed it up with, “Y’all missed the point. The point is how do they perceive what you’re doing?”
One day I said to my dad, you know you never really told me that you loved me. This was after I’m a bunch older. He said, “I gave up all my hobbies; I gave up all my friends; I gave up everything I did to help make what you wanted possible and you question whether I loved you?” That’s pretty profound. But see, sometimes the kid’s perception is what’s really important.
If I could’ve conveyed that to my dad, and he could’ve conveyed that to me at an earlier age, it would’ve been more powerful for our relationship. I kept my dad at arm’s length for a long time because I didn’t want to know what he thought. I knew that even though I was doing pretty well, it probably wasn’t what he wanted me to do.
We lost some time in our relationship. I later tweeted out that at 87 and 62, I know my dad loves me, but why wait that long?
I’ve got a picture up of my dad in the main room in here. It’s me holding the Wannamaker Trophy right after I won. I make the kids look at it with the parents and I say OK, if you all didn’t know who won this tournament you couldn’t tell by the smiles on those faces could you?
I’ve heard kids say, this is their life. It is your life, but your parents have to be heavily involved. You can’t financially support yourself. There are so many things that you need your parents for, and
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By: Beth Ann Nichols
Title: Hal Sutton wants golf parents to consider: How do your kids perceive your love?
Sourced From: golfweek.usatoday.com/2020/10/02/hal-sutton-golf-parents-kids-perceive-love/
Published Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2020 12:35:01 +0000