Scott Stallings: How I Went From Invisible to Slightly Famous
It's only been a few days since I finished third at the Transitions tournament and already, all kinds of people I haven't talked to in years have been calling, emailing, and texting me. And then there's the press -- the 48 hours immediately after I walked off the last green have been filled with interviews for Sports Illustrated, Golf Week, The Golf Channel, even a radio golf show in Australia.
My first reaction to all of this is, who knew so many people would care so much about a third-place finisher?
That's one of the biggest changes when you move up to the PGA level. Suddenly, a golfer becomes the story in a way that he hasn't been in the past. The better you play, the more everyone wants a piece of you. And as Gary Van Sickle points out in Sports Illustrated, "Everyone loves a Cinderella story."
Don't get me wrong -- this is a good problem to have. No, make that a great problem to have. I like doing media interviews and I usually handle the requests myself instead of making my agent be the middleman. But this also means that now people I don't know very well are out there telling my story. These are people whose jobs are based on covering the ups and downs week-to-week on the PGA Tour. I get that.
Still, if you read everything that's written about you in the wake of a little bit of success, it can start to sound like a lot of very distracting noise:
I've been asked about the kind of clothing I wear and the clubs I use; Van Sickle called me: a "Tennessee country boy by way of Knoxville and the son of a preacher man," an "aw-shucks rookie," and a "wide-eyed kid" who looks like "he's taking his first plane ride;" I've also been named as one of five golfers who could be "the next Gary Woodland."
I may or may not agree with those observations. But none of them matter. People are going to make snap judgments. It's also very easy to assume that because someone played well one week, they won't miss the cut the next. But that happens all the time.
I'm a week away from the Shell Houston Open, a tournament that I wouldn't be playing in if it hadn't been for my third-place finish last week. The fact that I played my way into it is a huge confidence booster. Now the challenge is to keep my head focused on what got me there -- and not on what everyone else is talking about.
Scott Stallings's business is golf. He's blogging for BNET as he travels about 300 days a year playing on the PGA Tour.
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