Louis Oosthuizen.  Ever heard of him?

Most people haven’t.

Even my golf-obsessed husband hadn’t heard of him … until this weekend.

The British Open Golf Tournament started in Scotland on Thursday and ended today.  It’s a big deal in the golf world, one of the four “majors,” (most important tournaments), and at the start of the tournament, the golf world had its focus on the big players like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Louis Oosthuizen (pronounced west-hi-zen—the Open announcers were so unfamiliar with him they didn’t get it right) didn’t care what the rest of the world was focused on.  He was focused on winning.

A virtual unknown, this South African player blasted through the pack of favorites to get in second place at the end of the first day of play.  The second day, he was in first place, where he stayed.  He stayed so far in the lead the rest of the way that today the tournament, according to ESPN writer, Gene Wojciechowski,“was a par-5 beyond boring. It was so maddeningly dull that you wanted to stick the sharp end of barbecue tongs in your eyes.”

Louis ran away with it.  Mr. Nobody won handily.

Doing the Underdog Dance

Louis’s “shocking” success isn’t at all surprising when you understand the law of attraction.  He got his win because of three things, three things that came together like the steps in a victory dance:  knowing and focus and feeling.

1. Knowing

If he’d been limited by what was and wasn’t possible, Louis would never have even been a professional golfer.  His poor farmer father couldn’t afford the instruction, travel, and equipment Louis needed to pursue his dream.

But Louis wasn’t paying attention to what was possible.  All he knew was that he wanted to play golf.  And the power of that knowing was strong enough to attract “a life-changing break;” he was accepted into the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation, which gave him the financial resources he needed to develop into a professional golfer.

2. Focus

The weather conditions at the British Open the last four days were ideal for golf.  Steady 25 to 35 m.p.h winds and rain assaulted the players.  While the other players struggled with the weather, Louis zeroed in on the part that he liked.  Louis “loves playing in wind.”  Rain?  No, he doesn’t like rain.  But he ignored the rain.  He focused on the wind.  The wind was his friend.

3. Feeling

When Louis took the lead in the tournament, the announcers wanted to know if it made him nervous.  Was he afraid he’d blow the lead?

No way.

“I’m going to have fun with it,” Louis said.

Learning From Louis

Even when we know about the law of attraction, we have a tendency to stay attuned to what is “possible.”  We’re stuck in these little grooves of things called “favorites” and “odds” and “past performance.”

We look around and see what someone else had to do to achieve success.  It was a “long, hard road.”  He “paid his dues.”

We forget that none of that is necessary.  Nothing that has come before has relevance to what we want to do now unless we put our focus on it and give it relevance.

We can win any “tournament” we want to win, achieve any goal we want, take any trophy.  The law of attraction will bring us anything we want.   We only have to do three things:  know that we can do what we want to do, focus on the positive in our lives now, and have fun.

It’s that simple.  Not easy.  But simple. Louis showed us how simple it can be.

Thanks to Louis, I’m inspired to do my own underdog dance.  Just watch me.  One of these days, my novel series will be on the bestseller’s list.  I’ll be one of those “nobodies” who “came out of nowhere.”

How about you?  What’s your story?  Tell us what you’re going to do; tell us your “came out of nowhere story.”  Then go out there and do your underdog dance.

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She Won The Lottery On Purpose

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Photo (it’s not Louis) by Steven Newton on Flickr.

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Golfer Steve Stricker sucked in 2004.  He sucked so bad he lost his tour card.  In the mid-nineties, he’d been a golfer with promise, but after several years of lousy play, he’d dropped to 172 on the money list.

I don’t care about golf myself.  But Tim does.  He plays (when we have money—he plays a lot in our virtual reality where we’re lottery winners).  He also watches it on TV.  Before we got together, I considered watching golf as something akin to watching slugs traverse my back deck.  I told Tim that while I had no problem with him watching golf, he shouldn’t expect me to watch it too.  That’s when we started playing Scrabble on Sundays.  He watches golf and plays the game, and I play the game and write or draw or read.  It works for us.

Over the years, though, I found myself paying just an eensy-weensy bit of attention to the tournaments.  While Tim always rooted for Tiger (and for the record, he’s not impressed with Tiger’s recent behavior).  I found myself paying attention to the underdogs.  One day, when Phil Mickelson made a putt to win a tournament (after having come in second or worse in many), I cheered.

I immediately clapped my hand over my mouth.  Was that me?  Cheering for a golfer?

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I was not only watching golf, I was rooting for the golfers.  Sigh.

Yesterday, Tim watched the Northern Trust Open, and when it was over, he told me that the tournament’s winner (Steve Stricker) had just become the #2 golfer in the world, and just five years ago, he was in the high hundreds.  In 2006, he used sponsor exemptions to get in tournaments and managed to have seven top-10 finishes in tournaments.  He was voted PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year.  Since then, he’s continued to improve, and yesterday’s win put him in the number two position.

I LOVE comeback stories.  They make me feel good.  They remind me of how life can turn around and make me believe that mine will too.

And speaking of comeback stories, in yesterday’s Scrabble game, I got 200 points in my first turn (we play on the Super Scrabble board with 10 letters on our tray, so my first word went across the double and triple word squares).  Tim wasn’t thrilled.  But he came back.  He beat me by 42 points.  That was fine—he was pleased, and I enjoyed the close game.  That’s the way it goes for happy lottery winners.

Life feels good.

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