Essays Nikki Dunagan Essays Nikki Dunagan

The Five Inch Fairway

The subject of mental health in sports continues to be a hot topic as we enter the new year. Nikki Dunagan reflects on a time when golf epitomized the importance for self care.

“Golf is mainly played on a five inch course
– the space between your ears.”
-Bobby Jones

The topic of mental health has come up a lot lately in sports. Bubba Watson was one of the first in the golf world to speak on it. Rory McIlroy was extremely candid about his struggles after the Ryder Cup. And who could forget the media storm Simone Biles created when she put her mental health first during the summer Olympics? Even as recently as last week, Bryson DeChambeau (of all people) was the first to voice concern for Antonio Brown when the rest of the world just wanted to make memes. 

Most of the conversation surrounding mental health in sports these days centers around strategies to improve your game - how to drown out the crowd noise, how to stop overthinking your swing, etc. It’s great that the conversation is starting somewhere, but there’s a lot more to it than that.  


Tiger Woods was all I knew about golf growing up. My introduction to Tiger Woods came at the same time as my introduction to the game of golf - at the 1997 Masters Tournament with my grandfather. Over the years of attending the tournament together, I meshed together an emotional connection between the Masters, Tiger, and the game itself. Golf had become more than just a Sunday afternoon sport. Tiger had become more than just a famous athlete. At the end of the day, it was all tangled up in my relationship with my grandfather.

He passed away unexpectedly in 2019 shortly after Tiger won his most recent green jacket. I never really had the opportunity to process the grief of that loss, at least not then. I was nine months pregnant when he died. I was so pregnant, in fact, that I was scared I would go into labor before we could get through the memorial services. At the funeral, I tried so hard to be invisible. But that was difficult to do when I was the same size as the hearse. Every guest in that church thought my about-to-pop-belly was an invitation to strike up a conversation, or worse, touch me. As much as I wanted to run away, talking to strangers about how dilated I might be or if I was planning to breastfeed kept my mind off of the reality of the situation - that my grandfather was gone.

Fast forward to February 2021.

We are a year into a global pandemic and everyone is burnt the hell out. In that year I had a baby, went on maternity leave, came back from maternity leave, lost a job, & started a new job. I was constantly on the move, trying to busy myself with as many distractions as I could. The sports world came to a crashing halt - cancelling most events or postponing them to a weird time of the year, like the November Masters. Everyone seemed to be hanging on by a thread. And then came Tiger’s accident.

I was pulling double duty that day working from home at my grandparents house, helping my mom clean out some of their things in the attic in between meetings. I was away from the TV and my computer so the first news I got of the crash was texts from friends. “Have you seen this?” “NIKKI, OMG!!” “........this is bad.”  The pictures gave me instant flashbacks to Kobe’s helicopter crash. For the first several hours all we knew was Tiger had crashed and it didn’t look good. I made a split-second decision and emailed my boss. “Something came up, I need to take the rest of the day off.” Thank GOD by the end of the day, word was sent from Tiger’s team that he was alive and recovering.

A few days later, in the Sunday round of the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship, several golfers including Rory McIlroy and Tony Finau sported red and black to honor Tiger and send him a “Get Well Soon” message of support. While I sat watching the final round, I got a text from a friend. He mentioned he had never seen anything like it and how this unifying gesture showed that Tiger was bigger than the game of golf. I replied that I agreed and told him how much anxiety I had over it earlier in the week. I even told him that I took off work for the day and was really struggling over it. 

His response was jarring. “You took time off work because Tiger Woods crashed his car?” he texted. “Socialized identity is a serious problem. You have a husband and a kid! Tiger Woods is not your life. Grow up.” 

To be fair, he was right. From his point of view, I looked like a lunatic for freaking the hell out and completely stopping my life just because a famous athlete flipped his car a few times. But from where I was sitting, Tiger’s crash was the final straw that pushed me over the edge. I had been running away from and holding in a lot of pain for a long time. I had avoided facing grief over losing my job, anxiety over a never-ending pandemic, fears of inadequacy in being a new mom, and the stress of trying to juggle it all. 

I had also given birth only five days after my grandfather’s funeral. The flowers from his service were still fresh in my kitchen when we brought the baby home from the hospital. I didn’t have time to accept the reality of his loss and grasp what his absence meant for our family before jumping headfirst into motherhood. I ignored that grief and shoved it down to focus on other less painful things. I had a lifetime of memories that entangled Tiger Woods with my grandfather. So on that February morning (standing in my grandfather’s attic of all places) when I saw Tiger’s crumpled car on the side of the road, all of that ignored pain that had been bubbling for over a year rose to the surface and spilled out.


 I’ve suffered from anxiety my whole life. It’s taken a lot of therapy to help me realize my triggers and learn helpful coping mechanisms. But even with all of those tools, life is unexpected and sometimes you get caught off guard. You can revert to old unhealthy habits, like bottling your emotions.  Even Bubba Watson has admitted that he, too, used to struggle with trying to keep it all tucked away. “I held things in for so long that it hurt me,” he said. “Now I’m at a point where I can say, let's just talk about it…it’s OK to not be OK sometimes.”

It’s easy to head into the new year making resolutions or goals like lowering my handicap or increasing my swing speed. But as we enter our third year of a global pandemic with burnout and depression at an all time high, I encourage you to put more effort into your mental health. For some that might mean learning to set healthy boundaries. For others, that might mean learning to finally accept and feel your emotions.

Ben Hogan said, “As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” Can you focus on improving your game? Absolutely. Can you make goals to have a better career or make more money? Yes, those are great goals to have! But don’t forget to set goals for your mental health this year as well. You only get one-round in life, there are no mulligans. So don’t forget that five-inch fairway between your ears - it needs love too.

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How Golf Has Helped Me Overcome Anxiety | Episode 162

On today's episode, Adam discusses news from the week related to mental health, including how golf helps him overcome struggles of his own.

Believe it or not, this is calming for me.

Believe it or not, this is calming for me.

Today's episode was recorded at the end of a difficult week. We discuss news related to Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, and I talk about my own struggles with mental health. Golf has been a saving grace for me in many ways, and serves as a means to overcome anxiety and depression. If you are struggling or having serious thoughts of harming yourself, take the necessary step of calling the National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

If you know someone who struggles with their mental health and want to learn ways to speak to them about their health, visit MakeItOK.org to learn more.

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Overcoming Anxiety: How Golf Gets Me From One Day to the Next

Readers of this site and listeners to our podcast know that we can get pretty "unfiltered" with our topics, guests, and subject matter. Overcoming anxiety is a subject I've touched on in the past, but I've never shared the full breadth and scope of how the disorder affects me and how golf continues to help me cope with my overactive brain. Let's change that today.

My name is Adam, and I have a mental illness.

Wow, reading those words on my computer screen is kind of intimidating. A few thoughts immediately come to mind:

"Do people actually care about my issues?"

"Are people going to think less of me?"

"What if the wrong people read this, share it, and other people stop coming to the website?"

In other words, classic "what-if?" questions float up into my brain in typical Adam Brain fashion. My mind and body go into fight-or-flight mode and I immediately start thinking of ways to delete this post as fast as possible.

But then a second thought whispers quietly in the background: "Why not let people know your story?"

Maybe that voice has a point.

Anxiety affects all of us

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly "40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18% of the population" suffer from an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders "cost the U.S. more than $42 billion a year, almost one-third of the country's $148 billion total mental health bill," according to a study commissioned by Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA).

To put that into perspective, that's a little more than half of what is spent in the entire golf industry ($76 billion) every year.

Approximately 25 million people play golf every year; almost half the number of people who struggle with an anxiety disorder.

It's fair to say that statistically speaking, there is a very good chance one (or more) of your golf partners falls into both buckets. We've read about it in golf news and can probably think of multiple examples from our own social circles.

Anxiety is real, and it can be debilitating.

My story (in a nutshell)

I was always a nervous kid growing up.

My mother would call me a "worry wort" whenever I would spend most of my day fretting over an exam I had to take in school, the amount of homework I had to finish, or something I had been grounded for weeks prior.

I vividly remember laying in bed every night sweating and shaking from fear and worry about what might happen to me the next day, week, or month. Being raised Catholic, I recall feeling an intense need to say my prayers in the exact right order without missing a single word out of fear that if I messed up, something bad would happen.

Any stumble meant I'd have to start my prayers over again, sometimes leading to a "prayer session" that lasted an hour or more.

Whenever I got in trouble -- as kids are wont to do -- I'd react as if my world was ending. I was conditioned to think that any misstep or mistake should be responded to with guilt, shame, regret and punishment. At times my environment reinforced these thought patterns, but most of the time it was just how my brain decided to react.

Throughout my teen and early adult years I rebelled against myself, often turning to alcohol to deaden the over-activity I had going on between my ears. By age 19, bars, parties and drunken social circles become a place of comfort... and, well, you know how that story typically goes.

Dumb mistakes.

Impaired judgement.

Serious thoughts of suicide.

But thankfully, nothing that killed me or someone else.

By the time I graduated college I knew that I needed help. So I got it.

Therapy, Golf and Life

One of the biggest stigmas surrounding mental health is the concept of "being in therapy."

I sometimes jokingly say that I'm officially on my way to becoming famous because I regularly see a therapist. After all, anyone who's anyone has their shrink on speed-dial. Psychologists and psychiatrists are the perfect accessory!

But taking the step to talk to a mental health professional is what probably prevented me from hurting myself or someone else. And, through good fortune of speaking to a therapist who loved golf, I was able to find solace in an activity that already impacted my life so deeply.

I remember the conversation to this day:

"So, Adam, you like to play golf?"

"Yep."

"Maybe you should... you know... play golf more?"

"[Intense shrieks of happiness]"

Sure, you've probably heard people say "golf is my form of therapy." For me that is quite literally the case.

Golf allows me to practice mindfulness and living in the present moment.

Golf challenges me to deal with mistakes as they happen and move on to the next shot.

Golf provides me a chance to do something athletic, outdoors, and with friends instead of sitting at home, by myself, being lazy and ruminating on my thoughts.

But most importantly, golf gives me a chance to look forward to something every day when I wake up. No matter what, it will be there.

Looking ahead

Anxiety disorders never go away. It's something I'm going to have the rest of my life, and that's perfectly fine.

One of the best things anyone who lives with a mental illness can do is exactly that: live with it.

Acceptance is a wonderful thing. It allows you the freedom of no longer spending days "working on your disorder." Instead, you can simply acknowledge something exists and move on.

In my case, this means taking the opportunity to do something I enjoy more than anything else: play golf.

I encourage any of my readers to share their story as well. You are among friends in that regard, and learning from one another is another great way to help each other out.

In the meantime, visit MakeItOk.org to learn more about mental health issues and what you can do to help.

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