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Mistakes Happen – Ask Tiger

Tiger Woods HSBCI’ve been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. Ask any golf fans in this part of the UK as well and they would tell you that this Saturday and Sunday would be special. Today is the final of the HSBC World Matchplay at Wentworth and all of the top pros were going to be at the event which was starting on Thursday. The most anticipated golfer appearing at the tournament was the one and only Tiger Woods. I’ve always wanted to see Tiger in the flesh and so this was definitely going to be a very special moment – for me as a young aspiring golfer.

Unfortunately, I was at school for the first day of play on Thursday when Tiger was playing another American called Shaun Micheel. To my absolute horror, Tiger got knocked out, in a straight 4 & 3 loss (for those non-golfers reading, this means that Tiger was 4 holes down with 3 left to play – so he lost). I was devastated, as I knew that Tiger wouldn’t therefore be playing at the weekend and that I wouldn’t get to see him – shock, horror!

According to Mr Woods, his putting just wasn’t on form, “I felt like I hit the ball pretty decent all day but I just didn’t make any putts.” And sure enough it was his putting that let him down. The stormy weather the night before must have had an impact on the greens, but other than that you can’t put the blame on anything else apart from Tiger. But mistakes do happen. In his past 5 tournaments, Woods has won all of them and so this just goes to show how nothing is set in stone.

I suppose the same comparison can be made to business and entrepreneurship; at one point you think you’ve got everything sorted and in the bag, the next moment you’ve got a problem which needs sorting out or it threatens the destruction of your company. But mistakes are inevitable as well. You can’t be perfect but when you do make mistakes – learn from them. There’s nothing worse than repeating the same wrong move you already made a few years back, with the same dreadful outcome.

No doubt Tiger’s going to come back from this embarrasing defeat with a vengeance, and no doubt that he’ll stage a big upset at the Ryder Cup which starts this Friday – Im so excited, but I won’t be let down again!

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