A painful part of tournament golf is that when the wheels come off, there is no place to hide. You can't lean on your teammates, concentrate on defense or ask to be benched. You -- and only you -- have to hit the next shot. The embarrassment is unavoidable and can leave lifetime scars, especially if you are only 20 years old when you melt down on a world stage.
For Ariya Jutanugarn, that Sunday a year ago was supposed to make her comeback complete; victory would put her injury-delayed career packed with promise back on track. And for 15 holes of the final round at the 2016 ANA Inspiration, the first LPGA major of the year, that was the case. Then it all became too wicked to watch.
Protecting a two-stroke lead built when she made four birdies in five holes beginning on No. 7 at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, the young woman from Thailand three-putted 16, failed to get up-and-down from a bunker on 17 and hooked her drive into the water on 18 to close with three bogeys and fourth place, two strokes behind winner Lydia Ko.
The meltdown was reminiscent of three years earlier when, as a 17-year-old, two-time winner of the American Junior Golf Association player of the year and the 2011 U.S. Girls Junior Championship, Jutanugarn took a two-stroke lead to the final hole of the Honda LPGA Thailand. She closed with a triple bogey before home folks to finish second. After the ANA, it seemed as if a pattern of not being able to protect a lead was emerging.
Then something remarkable happened. In May, only a month after the ANA, Jutanugarn started a three-tournament winning streak. Later in 2016, she again won back-to-back, including the Ricoh Women's British Open, on her way to securing the LPGA Tour's Player of the Year, winning the $1 million CME Group season-long points bonus and finishing the year No. 2 in the world to Ko in the Rolex Rankings.
So what happened? How did Jutanugarn, a hugely talented player who is so long off the tee she usually doesn't even carry a driver, turn the ANA into a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block? The short answer is she embraced the outcome.
Asked at a practice session earlier this year what she learned from her collapse, Jutanugarn deadpanned: "I didn't learn anything," then laughed at her own joke. That ability to not run from failure goes a long way to explaining her success.
"I learned a lot, especially the last three holes," she said, turning serious. "I learned how to react when I get excited or nervous. I learned to take a deep breath and stay focused on what's happening. Last year, I just kept hitting the ball and tried to do the same thing even though I was nervous. I learned that when I get nervous, I have to do something different. I didn't commit to any shots the last three holes. Not a single one. My swing got faster; I just wanted to finish."
How did she get that very mature perspective at such a young age? She had vision -- VISION54.
Barely a month before the 2016 ANA, Ariya and her sister Moriya, who is a year older and was LPGA Rookie of the Year in 2013, began working with Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, teaching partners for 20 years who've carved out a place in the male-dominated world of golf teachers with their VISION54 philosophy. Both consistently rank high on the Golf Digest 50 Best Teachers list and are the highest-ranked women.
What Marriott and Nilsson teach -- they prefer to say they don't teach, but rather help students learn -- is that golf is not about avoiding mistakes, but instead learning how to manage them. Stuff happens. It's how you handle it that matters.
"What we do is more than the mental game," said Marriott. "It is the human game. It is not just the brain, just as it is not just the swing. It's about the whole person."
VISION54 began when Nilsson was coach of the men's and women's Swedish national team in the 1990s. In trying to get her players to set their goals higher, she'd ask each: "Have you ever birdied the first hole on your home course?" As she talked the players through all 18 holes, most discovered they had birdied every hole at one time or another.
At that point, Nilsson would ask: "Then why not have as your goal making a birdie on every hole in the same round?" On a par-72 course -- which most are -- a round of 18 birdies would be a 54, and thus VISION54. It is a pure peak-performance philosophy. Set the bar and believe you can get there. Prepare, decide, commit. The philosophy remains an organic system Nilsson and Marriott have evolved over the years.
It was a setback before the ANA collapse that got Jutanugarn to VISION54. At the 2013 Wegman's LPGA Championship, in May, Ariya and Moriya were horsing around when Ariya stumbled and tore the labrum in her right shoulder, requiring surgery. Before that, she had finished in the top five of all five events she played that year, scoring under par in 15 of 20 rounds. Greatness seemed at hand. But after the injury, she didn't play again in 2013.
Ariya played 11 times in 2014, with one top-20 finish. In 2015, she had three top-10 finishes in 29 starts, but from the end of April through the end of July missed 10 consecutive cuts. Then early in 2016, looking for help, the Jutanugarn sisters began working with Marriott and Nilsson at their school in Phoenix.
"We wanted her to learn how to be kinder to herself after the shot," said Nilsson of Ariya. VISION54 breaks golf into the Think Box (when you are deciding what shot you are going to hit), the Play Box (when you step up to hit the ball) and the Memory Box (how you react after the shot, which determines how you might react on future shots).
Ariya got it right away. "She learned the difference between a half-hearted commitment and being really committed," said Nilsson. "She was also learning how to be neutral, or even positive, in the Memory Box, no matter the outcome of the shot. That helps keep negative thoughts out of your head down the road." Laughing at a bad shot is an important VISION54 skill, so you can let go of the memory.
Marriott and Nilsson were not at the 2016 ANA -- only Ariya's third event since she began working with them -- but they watched it on TV. "We said, 'Oh, this looks a little like what happened in Thailand a few years ago,'" said Marriott. "She was crying after the round. She was upset. But at the end of the year, she told us the ANA was probably her favorite memory of 2016 because it was such a learning experience."
What did she learn? She learned how to silence that voice in her head -- the self-talk we all have -- that whispers negative thoughts under stress. She learned that people change under pressure, and that we have to adapt to those changes and self-edit behavior on the fly. For example, her swing got too fast and she became less committed to her decisions. She learned the need to regroup.
Marriott and Nilsson provide skills such as deep-breathing exercises to slow down panic movements or singing to silence that negative voice shouting in your brain. When Brittany Lincicome won the ANA in 2009 while working with Marriott and Nilsson, she sang country-western songs to herself between shots during the final round.
A key to VISION54 is approaching the player not as a golfer but as a person who happens to play golf. Marriott and Nilsson work hard at understanding the individual to figure out what works best for them. Part of Ariya's pre-shot routine now is smiling. How that came to be is a perfect example of how Marriott and Nilsson work.
"We did the debrief after the ANA, and in a practice round we said, 'Relax your shoulders, relax your grip, do something -- anything -- to create a really genuine feeling of excitement when hitting a shot, almost as if it was going to be the last shot you were ever going to hit,'" said Nilsson. "She did that, and the smile started to appear. We never planted that. The smile just appeared. Now it is part of her routine."
The first time Ariya got into contention after the ANA was that May at the Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic, and she expressed the fear the past would repeat. "We told her: 'Now we know how you react when you get tense and nervous,'" said Marriott. "We had her focus on deep breaths and long exhales. She sang a little bit to herself. We talked about how normal it is to be nervous. There is nothing weird about it. It's just what you do with it that matters."
Another example of the unorthodox approach of Marriott and Nilsson came at the final tournament of the year -- the CME Group Tour Championship. A lot was on the line. The player-of -the-year award was between Ariya and Ko, as was the battle for the $1 million bonus. It gave Marriott and Nilsson a chance to bring the season full circle.
"The final hole at CME had water on the left, just like the final hole at ANA," said Nilsson. "We knew she had that stored memory of hitting into the water on 18 at ANA. So in the pro-am, Lynn and I got her as nervous as we could, pretending we were TV commentators saying things to her like, 'Will she hit it in the water again?' It really bothered her. She said, 'You guys are mean.' We said, 'What are you going to do with it?' She hit a great 3-wood in the pro-am, and we celebrated it with her. Then she went on to win player of the year and the million dollars."
In teaching the whole person, Marriott and Nilsson develop a formula for long-term success. "We bring up all the pressures of being No. 1 in the world, not just what happens on the golf course." Marriott said. "We talk to Ariya about doing interviews, running clinics, handling the pro-am interaction. We help her with all the different things to be a super golfer. We work with her caddie so he knows what we are doing and how to support her."
Annika Sorenstam, who has 10 majors among her 72 LPGA victories, was a master at controlling herself on the golf course and was the first VISION54 success story. "Improvement as a player is not just about sharpening your skills," Sorenstam said. "It is about getting better as a person."
And part of the uniqueness of the Jutanugarns is their being from Thailand. "They are very clear with the values they have," said Nilsson. "That's probably why they are so well-liked. They are very honest and very kind. There is a lot of humility there. They are the first players we've ever had we actually meditate with."
All that makes the Jutanugarns a perfect fit for VISION54, which teaches being more self-aware, how to better self-regulate and how to self-reference. "In this age of social media, it is really necessary to help players self-reference," said Nilsson. "They need to say, 'This is who I am no matter what people out there are saying.'"
One of the most overused words in sports right now is "process," but that is exactly what's at the core of VISION54. Just as there is not a place called "happiness" there is no such thing as mastering golf. As in life, golf is a series of challenges. Our joy, our success, depends on how we handle those never-ending challenges.
"We need to be masters of variability," said Marriott. "Understanding we are different from day to day, and even within the day, is really important. Also, there is a misconception that we are going to arrive at a magic place. But it is different every day. We can't get lazy, we have to check in and do the work every day. We want her to realize that in golf and in life, every day is different."
Jutanugarn seems to get it, and that, combined with her enormous talent, have made her the top challenger to Ko as the best in women's golf. A year after the tears at the ANA Inspiration, it now seems as if there are many smiles ahead for Ariya.
Ron Sirak wrote three VISION54 books with Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson: "Every Shot Must Have a Purpose," The Game Before the Game" and "Play Your Best Golf Now."