Tony Finau: Staying in the Swing

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1:17This is The Playbook, a limited series by Good Inside in partnership with Nike. I'm going to be talking to some of the most successful athletes of our time. Leaders who have had real impact in their sport. And I'm going to be talking with them about their highs, about their lows, about their mindset, about team dynamics, about what really motivates them, about the way they talk to themselves and recover from difficult stages. And I also have some of my favorite moments with these athletes where we talk about their life off the field. Their early years, their family life, the things that keep them grounded, their rituals and superstitions that keep them going.

1:58We cover so much in every conversation. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. Today, I'm sitting down with someone whose story I cannot wait to dive into. Tony Finau. Tony is a professional golfer on the PGA Tour with multiple wins, and he's made history as the first player of Tongan and Samoan descent to compete on the tour. But beyond all the trophies, Tony is known for something even more powerful. His groundedness. He's a devoted father of six who talks about being a part-time golfer and full-time father and about raising kids who understand hard work, gratitude, and faith. His story is about sacrifice, resilience, grit, and what it means to stay true to your values in the face of success.

2:51Today, I want to focus on what's going on on the inside, the part of the story that doesn't always show up on the leaderboard or during a broadcast. Hi, Tony. Hi, how are we doing, Dr. Becky? So good to talk to you today. And probably as expected, I want to talk about a lot of things around sports and performance. But before we get there, I always actually love to rewind with someone before we come to the present because so much has happened in our story. So what were those early years like? I think about you and this amazing athlete you are today, but there must have been themes in your early years that shaped who you are today.

3:30So what comes to mind first? Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, thank you. No question. I'm looking forward to our chat. So I started playing golf in the summer of 97. And there's a couple people that I really owe starting this game to one of them is my younger brother, Gipper. And then the other ones, you know, Tiger Woods, I mentioned the summer of 97, just because we all know as sports fans, in April of 97, Tiger won the Masters. And that was a huge deal for me watching with my brother and my dad. But I'll rewind a little bit. In 1995, my younger brother started playing golf. But he just had this curiosity about golf, which was so left field.

4:19Nobody in my family played golf. Golf wasn't cool. 30 years ago, golf was not what it's like now, where you got a bunch of cool athletes playing it. It was so random that my brother started watching golf on TV and took this liking to golf. And so he brought it up to my dad that he wanted to play golf. And my dad's idea, and this is him telling me the story. His idea was he's going to go to the golf course, bore my brother to death for a day. And then he's never going to ask him about golf ever again. And that pretty much changed the story for the females. house. They went to the golf course and everything changed.

5:00My dad started asking questions, becoming curious about golf. And my brother, they stayed at the golf course all day. And my brother loved it. He loved chipping and putting. And so that was our start. And then my dad took it upon himself to be my brother's coach. They went and played. And the very next summer, this was in the summer of 95. The very next summer, he my brother ended up winning a junior golf tournament at the age of six a 10 and under division tournament and they wrote this huge newspaper article on him and i still remember it like it was yesterday i showed up to school the next day and and this is before phones and all the things newspapers were everything right and so i show up to school and people start asking me if that's my brother um and so i decided to pick up golf mainly because my brother was spending a lot of time with my dad and I was not going to be known as his as his brother so that's pretty much that's pretty much how I how I got started I after after he had been playing about 18 months I told my dad that I I want to start playing golf um and kind of chase him and my brother around and so that's where that's where golf started for me and again that Tiger having a big impact as well.

6:23Watching the 97 Masters with my dad, with my brother, really pushed me over the edge to just start this golf thing. So that's how I got started. And it was all systems go right away. My brother had already been developed into this really nice player as a young six-year-old even. And so when I started, um my dad sat me down my parents sat me down and told me you know if you're going to do this your brother's already pretty heavily involved and we're all in you know i i got pretty fortunate my dad even though he wasn't a golfer he has a great background and being an incredible athlete and so he knew the discipline and um just the work ethic that was going to be needed to be great at anything and so to have him to have him mentor me and my brother growing up together once I started was a huge deal for me becoming the player that I am.

7:20And I know you've spoken about kind of sacrifice in the early years that, you know, your dad had to build or your dad chose to build this like makeshift kind of driving range or your mom sleeping in a car so you could compete. What was it like in the family to allow you and your brother to kind of have golf as such a big part of your life? Yeah, so many sacrifices. Looking back, it's so humbling for me but my dad you know shows up to the golf course with my brother and he starts asking questions about the about the game of golf and they he finds out pretty fast this isn't this is an expensive sport you know this is not not gonna be a cheap endeavor if we're gonna if we're gonna go down this path so he points at the driving at the chipping green and asks you know what that area is how much it costs and they say well it's a city course so it's actually free if you chip and putt there and he asks about the driving range and they tell him It's about$7 for a bucket of 50 golf balls.

8:13And we'll give you a discount for$10 for a bucket of 100 golf balls. And so he's starting to do the math in his head. He put a ticket upon himself that they were going to chip and putt for free. And they're going to spend all day at the golf course chipping and putting. His golfing Bible and the book that he kind of looked to as one that was going to help him learn the game of golf was Golf My Way by Jack Nicklaus. And so Jack was the greatest player at that time. And so he wanted to learn from the best. But Jack talks about learning the green from the game from the putting green all the way back to the T.

8:50So he thought it'd be a great way to learn and he could do that for free. So chipping putting at home and then he decided to make a makeshift driving range in our garage. And if you can just picture like a rectangular garage, pretty standard garage, probably stood at about seven and a half, eight feet. and he just put a mattress right in the middle of the garage with netting on both sides. And so I would hit into one side and then my brother would hit into the other side. And so that's how we learned how to hit. We learned I hit way more golf balls indoor for the first five, six years of my learning than I did outdoor just because of that.

9:28And then once every couple of weeks, he bought the$7 bucket for us to go out and hit 50, 60 golf balls to see the golf ball fly. But that was how, this is how you guys have to, you know, this is how I'm going to teach them hard work. There's no excuses. We'll do what we can for free and then we'll hit balls in our garage. Do you feel like those constraints, that sacrifice, do you feel like those were ingredients of your intense drive that led to so much success? Like I think about families who talk to me about their kids and not every family, but some families, you know, it's a million private lessons.

10:05Resources are everywhere and they almost get frustrated with their kids. Like, am I trying more for you than you're trying? And I was just in my head as you were talking, like, was there something about the sacrifice, the constraints, the limitations, the rarity? Do you think those were ingredients that made you the athlete you are today? Yeah, there's no question. Those sacrifices, I didn't know it at the time. um but once i started to recognize that i was i was going about we were going about this game in a whole different way and making making so many more sacrifices than um most guys were doing you know now you know being from utah we only had the weather half the year so having a makeshift driving range in our garage was useful but you know i played against guys in california and arizona and florida where they had the weather um it taught me grit and it taught me that i had to earn it.

10:55But it definitely, you know, my dad was just a huge outwork the competition and just a true grit. I think that it was going to take for me to be great at anything I learned in those early years. What were you like as a golfer when you were young? Were you were you obsessed with winning? Were you impatient? Did you always have a kind of calm to you? I'm just curious a little bit about Tony as an early golfer. Yeah, I would say, you know, I've always had a pretty calm demeanor on the golf course. A little bit of that had to do with my dad. He was a drill sergeant for us growing up and he didn't take any slack.

11:33On the golf course, there was no throwing clubs, there's no throwing tantrums, any of that. That wasn't acceptable. So a little bit of it came from how my dad raised me. But a lot of it was just, I think, just my demeanor in general. You know, I'm not... I'm a pretty chill guy. I feel like I'm pretty easy to get along with. And that translated right into my personality on the golf course. But it ended up being a great thing. You know, being like an even-keeled person on the golf course has helped me throughout my career. And yeah, and a lot of that, I think, is just the nature of how I am and who I am.

12:08But I will say this, you know, like a lot of people look at being competitive and they look at Michael Jordan and they look at Tom Brady and they say, well, this is how this, these guys are the greatest. That's how, that's what competitive looks like. And I've learned, you know, there's something that I've learned with how I am and then just how a lot of great athletes are. You know, the best player in the world right now is Scotty Scheffler. And he goes about his business in a different way. Does that mean that I'm less competitive than they are? No, I'm just competitive in a different way. You know, everybody finds their inspiration from something different.

12:49You know, I think if you watched me on a golf course, I may not jump out and jump out at you as someone that's like, oh, he doesn't quite have the fire or the grit. If you if you if you know where I came from in my story, like those aren't words that you would ever use against me. I think that's so important because I also think about parents who are listening to this, who have a kid. And I think we'll get into it. But watching your kid play a sport can be so triggering because you could have been one way as a kid or you can have a model of whether it's leadership or excellence. And if your kid shows up in a different way, it can get very, very messy for many reasons.

13:25Right. But one of the things that you're saying that's just so helpful is grit and drive and wanting to be the best that can feel similar inside people, but look extremely, extremely different to the viewer. And what you're saying, it's interesting in golf, too, because one of the things I think about a lot in life is it's not so much an event that bothers us as much as it's the story we tell ourselves about the event. So maybe I yell at my kid. I don't want to yell at my kid, but what's the story I tell myself? Is it, oh, I'm the worst parent ever and, you know, oh, I ruined my kid or is it, okay, Becky, that was not my best moment.

14:03Let me take a breath. What do I want to do next? And let me move forward. And it makes me think about and in golf you literally have right like these walks between the shots the walk between the hole and the tantrum can come from not just a bad shot but probably the story you tell yourself about the shot right um and it makes me wonder about like you've had bad shots right you've had a hole right talk to me a little bit about the walk between the shots or the walk between the whole, your process, how you talk to yourself. I'd love a little peek inside. Yeah, that's the, I think that's the hardest part about being a great golfer and being a competitive, a high level competitive golfer is the time in between shots.

14:49You, you know, it only takes me, they've done the math. I'm standing over the golf ball five to six minutes around, you know, where I'm really over the golf ball, ready to hit the shot. And so if I'm out there five hours, you know, We average about four and a half, five hour rounds on the tour. So if I'm out there for five hours, but I'm only over the golf ball for five minutes, that's a lot of time that my brain has to think of a bunch of stuff. And so when I hit a shot, if I know that I've done everything I can preparation-wise to go into the shot and execute the shot, if I don't execute the shot the way I want it to, there's always going to be a reaction.

15:31And I think some guys react to it different than I do. I haven't been wanting to throw my club and different things, but I definitely will get mad. Like I definitely will be disappointed. Like I can't believe that just happened. But as soon as I, as soon as I hand my club to my caddy and he throws that at the, you know, throws that in the bag and I hit the, hear the grip hit the bottom of the bag. That's like a, that's like a trigger to me that it's time to move on. That's over with. And it's, and, and now my focus is, is moving forward. we all know there's nothing you can do about the past. There's nothing you can, but it's easy for us to blame ourself for the past, but it's like you did everything you could to try to execute the shot in your power.

16:17Bad shots happen. It is what it is. You know, the faster you can learn how to get on with it, I feel like in the game of golf, the better chance you have of being good. I have two follow-ups to that. Number one, you just, I feel like you held two things as true without just saying that. I'm a big fan of that idea that we can hold two things as true, right? And I think what you just said is I have a very high expectation for my game. And bad shots are going to happen. Like those are just both equally true. One's not more true than the other. I expect myself to hit great shots and bad shots will happen.

16:51Those are just both true. Is that accurate? That's accurate. Yeah. And I just I love I think so many times we feel like we have to pick like there's no picking. They're just both on the shelf. They just live next to each other. So that's number one. And the other thing that's that's a true question for you. OK, so you hit a bad shot in the Masters, whatever it is. OK, you hear the club hit. There is a moment at some point and maybe to reflect on weight. Like, did I do this is my limited golf knowledge? It wasn't my grip. Like, what did I do? What? Okay. But are you saying in the match itself, are you not even doing that?

17:28Are you not even reflecting? Are you like, that's what I'll think about after the tournament. I'll learn from the past to change. Are you doing that live? Are you literally like that happened? I'm in a heated moment. I trust my prep enough. I'm not even learning in the moment. I'm just letting it go and moving on. Yeah. Mostly let's move on. Let's move on to the next one. You know, and I feel, I feel like a lot of times, you know, like if you get so upset on a bad shot, it's almost like you're telling yourself, well, I'm not good enough to recover. I'm not good enough to move forward and do better on the next thing.

18:03And so it's almost like a self-deprecating type attitude when to me, it's like, this is an opportunity to recover. This is an opportunity to show that I can still fight back after that shot. And so I'm not going to react. I'm not going to give this bad shot the energy that it deserves. It's already giving me... It's already costing me a shot or two, whatever the case may be. It's like not adding my bad energy to that. I'm going to add good energy and know I'm not going to overreact to this because it's like, look, I just hit in the water. I know I can recover. I've done it thousands of times. I've got up and down from everywhere.

18:44I've made... Who knows if I'm going to make a 40-footer, you know, but that's like repetition, straining of the mind. That's a whole different practice. Yeah. And that's a whole different practice. And that's, that's what I've seen myself, but with the best players in the world, you know, just being around them and watching them, I think, um, as a parent trying to incorporate that and, and for my son who plays golf, trying to be an example of that, not only tell him, but also when he watches me, he knows it's like I hit a bunch of bad shots, but man, I don't really react to them. And it's like, it's not that I'm not mad.

19:19It's like, I have so much confidence that I'm going to recover. I'm not wasting my energy on this bad shot. It doesn't even deserve my attention. I'm moving forward and I'm going to show my golf ball that I can put you in the hole in the house, you know?

19:39Okay, parents, quick check-in. If your brain feels like it's holding everyone's schedule, except your own, you're not doing it wrong. You're carrying a lot. I see this all the time. School emails, activities, chores, dinner plans, and somehow it all lives in one person's head. Usually mom's. And that gets exhausting. That's why I love Skylight Calendar. It's a smart touchscreen calendar that takes everything swirling around in your brain, schedules, chores, meals, grocery lists, and puts it in one place where the whole family can actually see it and participate. It syncs with Google, Apple, Outlook, all of it, and you can color code each family member.

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21:01So, you know what I'm associating to? And I'm curious. I know, you know, being a dad is being part of your life. So when parents ask me, like, what's one thing I should do? What's the one thing I should get good at? You know, and I said, look, if I had to pick, it would be repair. So let me finish this because I think it's so connected to what you just said. And I'm curious if you think so. We all have moments when we yell at our kid or we're distracted or we blame them when really we had some bad day. And to me, that's like my bad shot. Like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I have high expectations for myself as a parent.

21:30And sometimes because I'm human, it's going to happen kind of like a bad shot. And of course, that's right. And I think sometimes the story we tell ourselves after, right? I'm the worst parent. Oh my goodness. If anyone saw me, they couldn't believe it. And I messed up my kid forever. And now ironically, the moment lasts so long because of the story, kind of like the bad shot. And what I think is so powerful as a parent is when I can say, okay, Becky, that moment happened. Like, I'm like, If repair is my most powerful strategy, like what I'm proving is like I'm going to show up in my next moment with my kid.

22:05And maybe you're going to like put the ball in the hole. But like I'm going to go to my son and say, hey, sorry, I yelled at you. That was not cool. Honestly, that had very little to do with the situation. I was stressed from my day. I'm sure that felt scary. I love you. Something like that. And what I tell parents is that repair is some of the most powerful connection building you can do with your kid. And you can't even repair unless you mess up. So it's not even the messing up. That's the bad thing. It's what do I do after? Everyone messes up, but not every parent can like crush a repair. And I think kind of what you're saying is every golfer is going to hit bad shots.

22:45But the golfers who are really elite are the ones who can kind of like repair on the next shot. I was playing in I was a freshman in high school. This is one of the greatest, my greatest stories because it's meant so much to me. I told you and I told you at the beginning of the show, my dad was tough on us. He was a drill sergeant. There was no throwing clubs. There was no all those, you know, no attitude. That was the first thing, clean up the attitude. But so anyway, so I'm a freshman in high school and I'm playing in the state championship of golf, high school golf. And I'm in the final group.

23:18I'm leading the tournament and I get to the last hole with I'm a freshman and a senior is I'm playing with. and we're neck to neck for the state title. We both hit it in the fairway. Anyways, I have a five foot par to tie and go to a playoff as a freshman to win state championships. I proceed to miss the putt. I knew the situation. I missed the putt. And because I missed the putt, I was extremely disappointed in myself. I tried to backhand the next one in and I missed that. And then I try and tap in the next one. So, and I missed that. So I five putted the last green of the state championship tournament of my freshman year to win state.

23:58And so I finished second place, you know, which for most freshmen, that'd be a really nice finish. For me, I looked at it and said, you're supposed to win this. You know, everybody was around the green watching. And I was just totally embarrassed by how I acted and what I did. I'll never forget to drive home. I got in the car and pretty much silence all the way home. And my dad just said to me, son, are you okay? And I just think that's pretty much all he said. He may have thrown in a couple other things, but I'm getting a little emotional just because I still remember that moment. And it was like, I'm waiting for him to scold me.

24:42I'm just ready for him to lay the law down. and I was embarrassed because of my, of how I acted and, you know, feeling like I should have won the tournament. I was defeated. I defeated my own self and I'm expecting this thrashing of yelling in the car and of just an absolute scolding. And it was the opposite. And so I think what I learned from that and that I try to take with me as a parent is your kids need you there as someone that can help them recover and heal and strengthen them. But a lot of it is exactly that. And so like, I love that you shared that. That's exactly, I think as a parent, maybe some of the best things we can do for them is after tough performances, just being like an anchor for them and not someone that's going to push, you know, kick them down while they're, kick them down while they're already down.

25:38First of all, thank you for sharing that. That like really struck me. I I it was like picturing you in the car ride and the other thing that your dad did and I'm going to say it the way we say it now as if it's a negative he was just there like I think being just there and saying very little is probably one of the most underutilized parenting strategies right he didn't lecture you he didn't yell at you but he also didn't say like here's all the shots. He wasn't fixing anything. He recognized you were upset. You were there. I always picture, I call this thing like the feelings bench. If you were on a bench, you were on the bench of embarrassed, of sadness, of frustration.

26:25You were just sitting on the bench. And the worst part of being on a hard emotional bench is actually just being alone. We think it's the feelings, but it's actually that we're alone in the feelings. And ironically, when someone piles on, we're more alone in the feelings and they're more intense. And when someone tries to pull us off the bench, oh, it's fine. You'll get the next one like too quickly or invalidating. That also doesn't feel good. And sometimes saying little and just kind of saying, I pictured, Tony, when you say, when your dad said, are you okay? It's like he just sat down on the bench next to you.

27:00And now it's so interesting, Tony, is you seem to have this ability as a golfer to like do that for yourself, to access that calm, collected feeling right next to your frustrated feeling. I just wonder how much moments like that happen. And they kind of started to get wired together, his calm next to your embarrassment. And all of a sudden over time, it became your calm next to your own embarrassment on the course. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I think just little by little, I picked up on things that I, the feelings that I liked and then the stuff that I didn't. But you try to take the good things and build on them.