I didn’t learn as a child how to say prayers before I went to bed or before meals.

That’s when I fell on my knees and begged God for help. But my mind is also tremendously stubborn and now its stubborn will was threatening everything that I had worked for. It’s my mind that in 2012 conceived hooking a modern golf ball 40 yards with a 52-degree wedge out of the woods to 10 feet at Augusta National to win my first Masters in a playoff. One of my biggest downfalls is that my mind races, but my mind also is such a beautiful thing that’s helped me tremendously as I’ve worked to become a great golfer. And the more anxiety I had around thoughts of death, the more fearful I became and the less I was capable of coping with the stress. When I started losing weight my first instinct was that I was dying. The difference was that on the golf course I could make a birdie that would turn my mood from bad to good, but when it came to my weight there was no way for a quick rebound that could help settle my mind. I could have a five-under round going and then have a single bad break with my ball settling into a divot and feel like everything was falling apart. On the golf course and off it, my mind tended to go quickly from one extreme to another. So here I was losing weight and wondering if I had throat cancer or some other terminal disease and getting ready to die and leave my family. You never dream of bathing a grown man, especially your father. I remembered bathing him three days before he passed away. I thought back to 2010 when I watched my father, Gerry, go through throat cancer and wither away from 190 pounds to 92 pounds in less than a year. The Bible teaches us to not fear death, but I was worried that this was the end of my life. “It looks like you eat fish every day.”īut I’m a fearful guy. “Bubba, there is nothing wrong with you,” they told me. Three or four doctors had looked at me with blood tests and heart monitors. There was something going on in my body that no one could find. When I saw 162 on the scale, I thought I was dying. At 190 pounds, I had the energy and power to compete at the top of the game. I had slimmed down twenty pounds by giving up everything that tasted good - cheeseburgers, chocolate cake, and sodas. A decade ago, I had been pushing 210 pounds. I had been losing weight for nearly a year. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” I say. I fall to my knees and cry out to the Lord. In a fog, I move from the bathroom into the bedroom. The number doesn’t flash at me it screams. My feet tremble as 162 comes across the digital screen. It’s the spring of 2017 and I’m on my bathroom scale in our home in Pensacola. I’m too weak to hit many of the shots that led me to two green jackets in three years. I am standing on a scale a lot these days: watching the pounds fall off as I become rail thin.

Hello neighbor green key