You can't completely control the sport - Tiger Woods comes close. The test is against yourself and nature's own way. I find golf a particularly good metaphor for this story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.
It's such a psychological and mental game, golf, that the smallest wrong thing at the wrong time can distract you from what you're trying to achieve.
Sport has given me drive and discipline. It also taught me to remain humble.
Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.
I mean, as an athlete, as a competitor, you have to have that belief in yourself.
Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature.
I compete against myself in competitions anyway, so I train against myself in practice.
In my opinion, the power of the mind in sport is vital. If you can overpower those physical risks mentally, you can get your body round it physically. I've made my body do things because of my mind that it shouldn't have been able to do.
You can't take up golf on a whim and find yourself competing against Tiger Woods in the Masters six months later.
Marathon running, for me, was the most controlled test of mettle that I could ever think of. It's you against Darwin.