How I Turned Pro in Golf ⛳️ My Dos & Don’ts [Video]

0:00 | hey everyone it’s Paige and welcome back to my YouTube channel I haven’t done a sit down video in a minute so I thought

0:05 | it’d be fun to mix it up a little bit so as you guys know I played competitive

0:10 | Golf and there were a lot that I wish I did differently so that’s what this

0:15 | video is going to be about uh what I wish I did differently when I was a competitive golfer and hopefully this

0:21 | will help all the parents out there with aspiring golfers we’re going to talk through junior golf into college and

0:28 | then when I was playing professional so you know what let’s just get right on into

0:44 | it first off let’s talk about my competitive playing credentials because I do think that’s important to this

0:51 | video cuz most people actually don’t know this play junior golf college golf and year professionally in junior golf I

0:58 | was ranked number one in the state of Colorado I was a top five recruit in my graduation class which was

1:04 | 2011 and I was top 25 in the world as a junior golfer I ended up getting a

1:10 | scholarship to play golf at University of Arizona wasn’t the right fit which we will get into a little later on in the

1:17 | video so I transferred and had a full ride scholarship to play golf at San Diego State University where I was first

1:24 | and second all conference and I was also on the Deans List and I was also on the student advis advisory committee I was

1:31 | team captain my Junior and Senior year and at San dieo State ended up winning

1:37 | our conference Championship was the first time in school history for uh the women’s golf team which was really

1:43 | exciting we also had three individual golfers qualify into regionals which I

1:50 | think has been done before but um not for San Diego State which was a cool accomplishment for our team we ended up

1:57 | also going to Regionals as a team which which again was really cool never qualified for Nationals but after

2:04 | college I ended up going and playing golf professionally there It’s a Grind

2:09 | we’ll talk about this in a little bit as well um I played around 25 events the first year as a professional made money

2:16 | in all of them but two and had a pro win on the cactus tour which is a mini tour

2:22 | but it still counts as a pro win and I also made the cut at the Scottish open which is a European Tour event in at Le

2:30 | event so that’s what I accomplished as also have a couple course records and

2:36 | needless to say there is this misconception that I don’t know what I’m talking about but I have played golf at

2:42 | a very high level I am proud of all of my accomplishments no I did not make it on to the LPGA Tour I’m not one of the

2:50 | best golfers in the world um but I am still very proud of everything that I

2:55 | have accomplished and how hard I worked to uh get there so I’m excited to share

3:01 | all of my experiences and what I wish I did differently to potentially have

3:07 | helped me make it on to LPGA Tour because it was years of just scar tissue

3:12 | that I was building from mistakes that I made so yeah let’s talk about the maybe

3:18 | not so good stuff now number one the first thing that I wish I did differently was not care about rankings

3:26 | so much in junior golf especially so the Junior Golf Scene is highly intense and

3:34 | competitive actually quite scary the parents are insane insane and you feel

3:42 | pressured to be the best in your state and the best in the country and you

3:47 | always want all these accolades and to be number one you know and and obviously that’s when you play professionally

3:54 | that’s what you’re going after as well but to have that much pressure on you at such a young age and continue that on

4:00 | from junior golf to college to professionally it burns out so many kids

4:05 | and I’ve seen this firsthand where you have a highly ranked Junior golfer completely burn out by the time they get

4:12 | to College because they are so focused in and it feels like a job you feel like you’re already on tour when you are 13

4:20 | 14 15 16 17 18 that’s even before you get to College which is even more of a

4:26 | grind and it’s exhausting and so I I would say focus more on your development

4:32 | as a player and less on the rankings yes it’s important to get a full R

4:38 | scholarship for some people that was really important to me but you can still do that and you don’t have to be number

4:45 | one and you don’t have to do all of these things because guess how many people know my Junior Golf Ranking and

4:51 | bring it up this today zero

4:58 | zero um no one talks about it and so I worked so hard and I was obsessed with the

5:05 | rankings and no one remembers and no one cares and so if that’s something that

5:11 | motivates you fine you can look at it if that motivates your your child fine look

5:17 | at it it did not motivate me it made me obsessive and put a lot of pressure on

5:22 | me and that was number one don’t care or look at the rankings because in junior golf it does not matter number two stop

5:32 | seeking a perfect swing and start playing I and I think this is because of

5:38 | my gymnastics background and my mom was a professional ballet dancer and her background and we were just raised to be

5:49 | perfect and you were always seeking Perfection and in Gulf we know this you

5:55 | can’t do that because it doesn’t matter if

6:59 | trying to hit these perfect positions that just wasn’t for me I wish instead I

7:05 | was trying to hit the ball as hard as I possibly could and then from there I can control it as I get older and practice

7:11 | my short game and putting and learning how to score another thing is adding in

7:16 | pressure and learning how to compete when there was pressure on me I crumbled

7:22 | because I was just so focused on trying to have the perfect swing and that was my mindset instead of let’s figure this

7:28 | out and let’s try to uh beat the golf course or beat the person that I was playing and so whenever I had that type

7:34 | of pressure on me I couldn’t handle it so conditioning your kid at a young age to see competition as fun and something

7:41 | that they look forward to and not something that they’re scared of because they are scared of not being perfect and

7:47 | failing and so it’s just changing their mindset around it and I wish that I did that differently and maybe it’s also

7:54 | just a personality flaw that I have that I was always just

8:00 | born to be this way and I would always just struggle Under Pressure but I think

8:06 | that there were things that I could have done when I was younger to help me get out of that mindset and to see

8:11 | competition as fun instead of seeing it as a place where I would fail number

8:16 | three understanding that in golf you are going to have a lot of failure with my

8:22 | gymnastics background and I come from a very Sports Centric family but not a golf family and so I was always Tau

8:29 | taught that if you work hard dedicate yourself you will be successful that’s

8:35 | not always the case with golf you can work your butt off every single day

8:40 | which I did anyone who has watched me practice knows that I have an incredible

8:45 | work ethic I always have and I would spend so many hours practicing this

8:52 | stupid stupid game like hours on hours on hours I’d be there from morning till

8:58 | night and you know how frustrating it is when you are practicing so hard and

9:05 | dedicating everything to the point where I was homeschooled I didn’t even have a social life I didn’t even do anything else all I did was focusing on Golf and

9:13 | then you dedicate everything you have and then you show up and you don’t play well and everything that you’ve been

9:20 | told in life is if you work hard and you do all these things that you’re going to be successful and you’re going to lower your scores and you’re going to do all

9:26 | this and then it doesn’t happen that’s really frustrating and it makes you not want to work hard

9:32 | and so I think the mindset around golf is that when your kid is playing in all of these junior golf tournaments is to

9:40 | ride out the lows because there are going to be so many lows in golf and you’re going to have more bad rounds

9:46 | than good rounds especially when you’re developing as a player and learning what works best for you is not being so hard

9:54 | on your kids and not being so hard on yourself I was so hard on myself when I would have these bad rounds because I

10:00 | just couldn’t understand how this the hard work that I was putting in on the Range and in the gym and into my mental

10:07 | game was not translating over into um lower scores or more wins and I just it

10:14 | really ate me alive because I didn’t understand how golf worked and how it’s not a game of perfection and sometimes

10:22 | no matter how hard you work it just isn’t there because it’s all all up here

10:28 | and no that the hard work will pay off it might not be today it might not be a month from now but if you keep

10:36 | consistently showing up every single day it will come and having a really great

10:41 | support system around you to ride out those lows because I have seen so many players as well burn out because of how

10:49 | mentally exhausting golf is it is so different than any other Sport and you

10:54 | really need a good team around you to lift you up because sometimes you could be doing all the right things and

10:59 | everything’s great but it’s just not clicking and that is okay so having that

11:05 | understanding that it is okay to shoot those bad scores and just to keep it up

11:11 | because it will turn around and you will get there eventually you just got to write out the lows number four is it

11:18 | doesn’t actually matter what college you go to you have to find a place that fits

11:24 | your game and your personality best I have seen so many players go to a top

11:30 | ranked University and think that they’re going to thrive and they ends up being a

11:37 | clash within the team maybe the personalities don’t quite mesh or coaching style is different than U their

11:44 | coach from home and so they end up just not doing well in college and they don’t

11:50 | want to play professionally after that because college is such a bad experience so we see a lot of transfers we see a

11:55 | lot of kids just end up quitting when they get to college and there is is the pressure on you to go to a D1 school get

12:02 | that full ride scholarship and have them be you know nationally ranked but I don’t think that’s as important as

12:09 | finding a college coach that really understands you can develop your game if

12:14 | you want to continue playing on professionally and finding a team that really meshes with you and your

12:20 | personality and if you don’t have aspirations of playing golf after then

12:26 | go to a really great school and use golf as a way to get a full ride scholarship and to do what you want to do after

12:32 | college and have golf be the vessel that carries you there and so you have to think about all these things which is

12:38 | hard when you are pressured into making this decision a massive decision when

12:45 | you one are so young and two you have to make it so quickly I remember that

12:50 | people are signing their National letter of intense really early on and it’s just

12:56 | this kind of culture within probably all sports but I can only speak to golf where you want to be the first one to

13:03 | sign you want to be to a good school and once they have their spots um allotted for then you can’t go to that school

13:08 | anymore so there is a lot of pressure to like make this decision really early on

13:14 | and I didn’t take enough visits I only took two visits and I wish I did so many

13:20 | more again I just felt this pressure to commit early on I thought I knew what I wanted it wasn’t actually what I wanted

13:27 | and so ended up making my College experienced much harder because

13:33 | I did have to transfer because the first school that I was at was not the right fit for me and it has been the right fit

13:39 | for so many people and so many people have a great experience there but for me it wasn’t the right fit and so I ended

13:45 | up transferring to San Diego State which was the right fit for me and it’s where I needed to be but I just didn’t even

13:53 | that wasn’t even a school that was on my radar when I was going through the process it’s very intimidating when you

14:00 | know day one you get all of these letters you have to um sort through it all I think I got offers from almost

14:08 | every school except for two I believe and um the I didn’t want to go to those

14:14 | two schools anyways but um you have this stack like it’s a full stack of letters

14:20 | and emails and coaches contacting you and it is so overwhelming and I wish

14:25 | that I just took a step back took a deep breath realize that I can take as many visits

14:32 | as I want and I should take as many visits as I want because you’re spending um four or five years at this place um

14:39 | where you are doing your most growth as a person and you’re away from your parents for the first time and it’s very

14:47 | overwhelming and a tough experience for a lot of people especially for me because I was homeschooled from fourth

14:53 | grade until college and so I wanted to I thought I wanted to be close to home and

14:59 | I just um I think I was so nervous and so overwhelmed I keep saying that word

15:05 | but um by the whole experience and me being away from home cuz I’m very close to my parents that I just kind of rushed

15:10 | it and my parents and I talk about this all the time that we wish we slowed down

15:16 | we wish we took more visits and we wish we put more thought into it instead of just trying to um sign and kind of

15:23 | almost get it over with so um take your time go through the process and

15:28 | sometimes sometimes a good D2 school is better than a D1 if that fits you and your wants and your needs much more at

15:35 | the end of the day whatever gets you to your final goal it doesn’t matter how you do it and again I think there is

15:42 | this pressure that you have to be highly ranked junior golf and you have to get a full right scholarship to a top D1

15:48 | University and then from there then you’ll play professionally it’s like sometimes that doesn’t work for you and

15:55 | that’s okay sometimes there’s a different route that leads you into playing golf profession especially if that’s what you want to do instead of

16:01 | burning you out trying to do something that you think you should be doing and so listen to your gut listen to you know

16:08 | the people close to you and take your time through the process and I wish I did that number five being more prepared

16:14 | coming out of college so I this might just only apply to me personally because

16:20 | I was at a really weird point in my life but I do feel that a lot of student athletes aren’t quite prepared when they

16:28 | have have to make a switch from College athletics into uh playing a sport

16:34 | professionally and what that looks like because when you’re in college everything is provided for you so we had

16:41 | teas and golf balls and shoes and apparel and our bag and all of these things and head covers and then in

16:47 | junior golf your parents are paying for everything and so you don’t actually really understand the process and how

16:53 | expensive everything is and then they just throw you out in the real world and I think it’s a little a little bit

16:59 | better now because of the nli program and you can earn money when you are in

17:04 | college but when back in my day when I was in school that wasn’t a

17:11 | thing and so I had no connections no money and just this dream of playing

17:18 | golf professionally and so I had to get like a second job to be able to pay for

17:23 | my golf career and so I was catting I was doing uh junior golf clinics I was

17:30 | help running junior tournaments anything I could to get a little extra cash to pay for my golf career because it is

17:36 | extremely extremely expensive and so there’s a couple ways you can go about this one you hope that you have parents

17:43 | that can help you out in the you know beginning stages but if you don’t like a lot of people um don’t have that

17:49 | Financial Security you have to get a second job which means that you can’t spend as much time practicing which is

17:55 | tough because now all you want to do is practice and play to make money but you can’t do that because you don’t have

18:01 | money and so it’s this Vicious Circle or you end up meeting um like a

18:07 | donor someone to be able to invest into your career the problem with that is if you don’t make it and you don’t make

18:12 | enough money then you have to owe this person a lot of money that they have invested into you which is really

18:19 | stressful and so I always recommend don’t go that route um because I still have friends who have decided to not

18:25 | play golf professionally anymore and they still have to pay their investors back and uh it’s an extra layer of

18:33 | stress so that’s tough and so I actually is that’s how I got into doing media

18:40 | work is that I didn’t have any money for golf and so these golf companies after I blew up online were were like hey we’ll

18:47 | give you some golf balls and I’m like I need golf balls I need shoes I need teas I need a place to practice like I have

18:53 | nothing and the tournament fees are really expensive and it was a lot and

18:59 | you’re not fully prepared for that and within College you meet a lot of really great people who can help you along the

19:05 | way and I don’t think that is stressed upon you know young college kids enough

19:11 | that when you go to these you know donor events Network like that’s really really

19:17 | important and that just isn’t something that is pulled to us and what it’s like

19:23 | after and how to do these things and how to be an adult so when I was on the student advisory committee I kept

19:29 | telling the university I was like we need to have some type of program to

19:36 | help these student athletes because we just weren’t able to do internships and we weren’t able to do a lot of these

19:42 | things and even when we were in high school we didn’t have time to get a a job or um we’re just like babies and we

19:50 | need to be taught how to do these things because we just have lived very different lives and then just to have

19:56 | your sport be your whole Focus for your entire life and if you even if you don’t go professionally all a sudden you’re thrown out there and you have no

20:03 | connections you haven’t done the internships and you’ve never had a job before and now you’re just expected to know what to do that’s very stressful

20:10 | and on the flip side then you’re supposed to play your sport professionally yet you have no support and you have no money how do you handle

20:17 | that and so I just never feel like student athletes are set up for Success after college and now I think it has

20:23 | changed like I said but still there are those pitfalls and there’s these worries

20:28 | that I’m sure all of these kids are having and that’s why you see these things happen with student athletes where they’re once they quit or when

20:35 | they’re going through it they’re just a lot of depression and anxiety because of all the pressure that we’ve had and then

20:40 | you you’re not prepared and it’s it’s a lot so I wish I was more prepared and I

20:46 | wish that I knew what Life After College athletics was going to be like and I

20:51 | wish that um universities would prepare students a little bit better student athletes for what that looks like six

20:59 | I wish that I didn’t spend so much time on

21:04 | sports psychologist but hear me out so I was a head case on the golf course Head

21:10 | Case absolute Basket Case um I think I would have made it if I wasn’t so cuckoo

21:17 | up there when it came to competing and we tried every single sports psychologist Under the

21:23 | Sun from bio feedback to like these weird like tapping techniques to um h i

21:31 | was hypnotized I have seen everyone had tried everything and nothing was working

21:36 | for me so later on in my life I sought out therapy because I just felt like I

21:43 | needed it was going through a lot of changes and I’ve always just had pretty bad anxiety like crippling anxiety and

21:52 | so once I started going through therapy and learning myself and finding inner

21:57 | happiness lo and behold my golf game gets better for the first time ever in

22:04 | my entire life say after I stopped playing golf competitively but even after I stopped playing I had a very

22:10 | weird and complicated relationship with like keeping score and competitive Golf and even playing with other people and

22:16 | we were keeping score I hated it couldn’t do it and then once I started this journey of self-discovery and

22:23 | becoming you know more self-aware and more in tune with my emotions and my um

22:29 | past trauma in my life and all of these things that I never really dealt with

22:35 | cuz I only saw sports psychologist my game got better and so I

22:42 | recommend therapy first than sports psychology because I think I would have been more receptive in understanding of

22:49 | the sports psychology if I did therapy first because these demons that we’re

22:55 | facing and these feelings that we have they come from from our childhood or we come from these things that have

23:01 | happened in our lives and it bleeds into everything that we’re doing and for me

23:06 | that was competitive golf you got to fix the leak first and not just put a Band-Aid over it and that’s what sports

23:12 | psychology felt like to me that we weren’t really tackling the icky not fun

23:18 | stuff to talk about we were just trying to be like why why do you feel this way on the golf

23:24 | course and I’m like I don’t know you know and they’re like well just try to think of positive things and visualize

23:30 | and that that doesn’t work when there’s parts of you that aren’t fully healed

23:35 | and you need to do that work first before you can do the sports psychology to get you to that next level personally

23:41 | that’s for me personally I know everyone’s different this is a very personalized Journey that you have to go on to what makes you happiest but that

23:49 | is what I personally wish that I did different that I saw a therapist first and then a sports psychologist number

23:56 | seven I wish I knew how how sucky life on tour was going to

24:04 | be um no one tells you how much of a drain emotionally physically financially

24:10 | trying to be a competitive golfer is and it’s incredibly difficult you are

24:16 | constantly on the road you have no money and you are playing week in and week out

24:23 | and sometimes for the girls in not great places and it’s very lonely because

24:29 | we’re all feeling this way so we’re not our happiest and we all have this um competitive towards one another because

24:36 | we want to get to that next level and so it just breeds this environment

24:42 | of animosity and it’s not healthy and it’s not fun and it’s truly a grind it’s

24:50 | especially difficult for women through all of the stages because you really

24:55 | aren’t making any money until you get to like the top 20 in the world at what you

25:01 | do at least for the guys that their purses are much bigger and so you can still survive as a mini tour player but

25:08 | as a mini tour player for the women you are making pennies like for example when

25:14 | I played um I only missed the cut in two tournaments and I had the win and I had

25:20 | a pretty decent year for my you know rookie year and I barely broke even

25:27 | barely broke even and so that’s why I was doing this media work to be able to

25:33 | even pay for my golf career because it is so incredibly expensive Q school and

25:39 | it keeps going up every single year but it’s at least $10,000 for like one or

25:44 | two of the stages and so you were in all of this money and you have the pressure

25:49 | to play well you don’t know what you’re doing you’re doing this for the first time and if you miss the cut you make nothing you make nothing and it’s not

25:57 | fun truly it’s not fun when golf becomes a job and I think people who play golf

26:03 | for fun it’s hard to wrap their head around this because they’re like oh my God I would i’ would love to play golf for fun every single day and um and then

26:11 | when it becomes a job it’s not much fun and that’s like everything you know jobs cannot be fun but again there’s just

26:17 | this mental mental grind with golf that just makes you exhausted exhausted you

26:23 | hate playing you hate practicing you feel all this pressure and it really

26:29 | breaks people down a lot I’ve talked to so many players who have such a

26:35 | complicated relationship with the game now once they have quit because of all

26:40 | of the scar tissue that they endured through um the ups and the downs and especially all of the Downs it it really

26:48 | truly tears you apart and makes you hate the game and I wish I knew that I wish I

26:55 | knew how much of a grind it was I wish I knew that you don’t have any help I wish I knew that it was lonely and I wish I

27:01 | knew that it drains your bank account and I wish that I knew that you you know

27:06 | you play Dog Tracks like what you see the guys on the PGA tour and that’s why

27:12 | this conversation about money and live versus the PGA Tour is so exhausting

27:17 | because I’ve seen it on the other side where we’re making nothing and we truly are playing for the Love of the Game and

27:23 | so for these players to be complaining and you know bitching about100 million

27:28 | is enough and it’s like I could barely eat some weeks I know girls that were working three four jobs to be able to

27:35 | like help pay for their golf careers and they’re like living in their cars and living with host families and doing all

27:41 | this stuff and sacrificing so much and people don’t really see that side of it

27:46 | people think that golf is you’re playing as amazing country clubs you’re making you know hundreds of millions of dollars and it it’s just not the case especially

27:54 | for the women and people deal with a lot of them emotional abuse just playing

28:00 | this stupid stupid game and I wish I knew that because I think that let’s say

28:06 | that mentally I wasn’t a basket case I have I’ve always physically had the skills to make it but I don’t think I

28:13 | would like the lifestyle and there are so many factors on why you make it or not make it and I just don’t think it’s

28:19 | talked about enough and I know we always and I don’t have kids so I don’t know this and you always want to encourage

28:25 | your kids to dream big and do all this stuff but man I wish I knew more about what what life on tour truly looked like

28:33 | because you have to be a very special person to be able to endure that to make it on tour and to do all these things

28:40 | because it’s it’s truly such a grind and something like I’ve never experien before and that’s it you know nice

28:46 | little fun happy video for you guys no all jokes aside I do think this is really important to discuss and I love

28:54 | sharing my experience the good and the bad and hopefully you guys can learn from the mistakes that I’ve made and

28:59 | things that I wish I knew and that this helps you um hopefully end your aspiring

29:05 | uh little pro golfer if you want a part two on this cuz there’s so much more that I could dive into a little bit

29:11 | deeper comment down below but to wrap it up it’s a long road ahead and golf is as

29:16 | we all know emotionally exhausting and so to make the road a little bit easier make

29:23 | competition fun in junior golf and in college uh don’t put too much pressure on them um and uh most of the time if

29:30 | they have these aspirations to play golf professionally they’re already putting enough pressure on themselves and that’s

29:35 | what I did I was My Own Worst Enemy and I wanted to get there so so badly it was

29:41 | everything that I wanted um my only dream that I had was to play golf on the LPGA Tour and I put so much pressure on

29:47 | myself from the start of it and I had great supporting parents but um you know

29:52 | when you don’t come from a golf family you don’t know these kind of ins and outs it’s it’s really difficult and we talk about this all the time together

29:58 | that we’re like oh I wish I did this differently or I wish I did this and maybe I would be there or maybe I was

30:04 | just born to do what I’m doing now and everyone always finds their way into what they should be doing but making the

30:10 | path exciting for them and um allowing them the grace to develop at their own

30:20 | timeline as well like you don’t have to be great when you’re younger honestly I wish that I didn’t feel like I peaked in

30:27 | Junior golf I wish that I was developing and trying new things in junior golf and in college golf and then by the time I

30:33 | got to Pro that’s when I really blossomed but when you have this pressure on you to peek in junior golf

30:40 | and play well in college golf and then to play well in professional golf it’s you know really difficult so hopefully

30:45 | this video is helpful uh leave a comment down below don’t forget to like And subscribe we are closing in on 400,000

30:53 | subscribers Woo which is super exciting um I want to get to 500 that’s kind of

30:58 | been a goal of mine for a while so tell your neighbors tell your friends tell your family tell everyone to subscribe

31:03 | to my channel and share this video around if you know um anyone who has

31:09 | kids who are trying to play golf professionally cuz I’ve been through it and I didn’t end up making it so you

31:14 | know I have a lot of experience to share and that’s all okay bye see you guys

31:20 | next Thursday bye hey guys I know that you are loving my YouTube channel but

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How I Turned Pro in Golf ⛳️ My Dos & Don’ts [Video]

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