“PEOPLE SEE FIVE PERCENT OF OUR JOB ON TV, AND THAT LOOKS PRETTY COOL. BUT THERE’S A LOT OF SHIT THAT YOU DEAL WITH.”
– LUCAS HERBERT.
Lucas Herbert was done. Cooked. Tired. So very tired. Physically, emotionally. He was tired of being CEO of Lucas Herbert Inc; tired of being responsible for the livelihoods of his entourage. He was tired of being cranky with family and friends. Mostly, he was tired of playing such shit-house golf.
Golf at the top level may be a vocation, a calling – but it’s still a job. A cool job, for sure, one of the very coolest, perhaps, upon the Earth. The feeling of hitting the ball purely is a reason so many of us play. Pro golfers chase that feeling for money. Do it well enough and they can fly about in private jets and fish from mighty boats; and live on tropical islands and in tax havens.
Do it consistently less well than other ridiculously great players who’d be off plus-nine at your club, and there is perhaps no greater full-bodied angst in world sport. What other game can send people so mad, can mess with one’s nervous systems, can evoke fullbody yips?
And there’s all the stuff that goes with feeding the addiction to improve – whacking ball-after-blasted-ball, chipping and putting for days, lifting heavy things, stretching latissimus dorsi muscles, knowing there are latissimus dorsi muscles, spooning great globs of salmon onto your plate in another soulless airport lounge and asking: where even are we?
“It isn’t a glamorous lifestyle,” Herbert says. “People see five percent of our job on TV, and that looks pretty cool. But there’s a lot of shit that you deal with.”
After three months of dealing with the angst while trying to practice and play his way out of the funk, Herbert missed the cut at the 2023 Open Championship at Royal.
