You go through slumps in this game, and you just have to work through them. You're going to miss putts out on an LPGA tour and have bad rounds. You just have to think to yourself that you always have tomorrow, and you're lucky enough to be out here just playing golf for a living.
I always save a few special outfits for the final rounds of a tournament, because they put me in a more positive mindset and I then make better decisions.
In tennis, you can make a couple of mistakes and still win. Not in golf. I played three rounds in that Tahoe event, and I was drained. Mentally, not physically.
There were days I could barely struggle into a size 46 or 48, months of larges and XXLs, and endless rounds of leggings with the elastic at the waist stretched to its limit and beyond - topped with the fashion equivalent of a tea cozy. And always black, because I was in mourning for my slimmer self.
You know, if you need 100 rounds to kill a deer, maybe hunting isn't your sport.
I plan my golf outfits for the tournaments, I recycle some for the practice rounds, but I always have new ideas for my golf attire, and I like to dress nice after the rounds, so I have to bring all my heels. It's terrible. The worst part about being on tour is living out of a suitcase.
Boot Camp was great and very interesting. You got to use live rounds of ammunition and got to do a lot of crawling around with live rounds flying around you, so you really had to learn to keep your ass down - everything down for that matter.
There are 30,000 days in your life. When I was 24, I realized I'm almost 9,000 days down. There are no warm-ups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Your biggest risk isn't failing, it's getting too comfortable. Every day, we're writing a few more words of a story. I wanted my story to be an adventure and that's made all the difference.
I'm not here just to walk two rounds or four rounds and just show up. I want to be able to be competitive, and I truly believe I can still be competitive when I'm playing well and feeling good.
It's a fun thing to do: Go to a shooting range with a buddy, knock off a few rounds, release stress.