The universal lessons from one golfer’s viral ‘nightmare’

By now, coverage of the Internet Invitational has rivaled some PGA Tour events and maybe even a few major championships, most of it reflecting the inevitable drama of a high-stakes competition between YouTube personalities.

But beyond entertainment, there were also tangible lessons for golfers everywhere, even from the parts that went spectacularly wrong.

Specifically, we’re talking about the very end, when Barstool Sports’ Frankie Borrelli stared down a chip that could have delivered his team the $1 million first prize, but he instead skulled the ball into the water. The harshest way to frame it is Borrelli choked. The tight-lie chip is a shot he has struggled with before—he's nicknamed “Frankie Butter Knives” for a reason—and he was faced with it at the worst possible time. But the sequence was also a byproduct of a golfer playing well enough to get to that point, and in the three months since filming, the 6-handicap Borrelli has been able to reflect on both the highs and lows of his performance. On the most recent episode of the Golf IQ podcast, we asked Borrelli to expand on the experience and what he’s learned since.

“I’d like to think that now that I've seen the reality play out, which was my nightmare in my mind. The reality is I bladed [the ball] over the green and I lost the match for a million dollars. That has now happened. It's a reality,” Borrelli said. “I'd like to think that the next time I'm in a situation similar to that, even if it's not for the money or whatever in high-pressure situations, that I can at least remove myself a little bit from the nerves and say, ‘OK, we now know what the worst thing could happen is.’”

As a 6-handicap, Borrelli has benefited from past work with Dr. Bhrett McCabe, the sports psychologist and frequent Golf Digest contributor who has helped Borrelli slow down his pre-shot routine and even talk through shots he’s trying to hit. He says some of his best shots were in the aftermath of his producer telling him, “McCabe process” before stepping into the ball. The reason Borrelli says the climactic sequence was a regression was he admitted he wanted to rush through it, and because he sought to suppress a nervous feeling that was unavoidable.

“It started to become a physical thing as opposed to just mental,” Borrelli said. “I legitimately started seeing two golf balls when I would look down, and I'm just thinking to myself, ‘How are you gonna get through this?’ .... The more I told myself not to get nervous, the more nervous I got.”

You can listen to the full episode here: