Dear Harvey,
Do you remember when Emily and I created this mantra while learning the game of golf together? She was in elementary school, I was in my early forties, both of us standing over balls that rarely did what we planned.
There is no such thing as a bad shot.
Only interesting shots.
It wasn’t denial.
Some shots were objectively terrible. But they were still interesting. They forced creativity. They revealed the slope you hadn’t noticed. They asked a better next question.
Late last week, I was handed one of those shots.
I received news that my add-on sales role is likely being made redundant along with 1000 other Autodesk sales jobs. On paper, that sounds like a bad shot. In practice? Just an interesting one.
Because here’s what golf teaches that life confirms: The ball is already where it is.
You don’t get extra strokes for wishing it landed somewhere else. You get one choice.
How are you going to play the next shot?
Right now, there’s work in motion. Real momentum. Serious conversations. Pilots being discussed around how operational edge data is connected, secured, and managed – especially when it starts to matter for things like resilience, trust, and ESG accountability.
That kind of work doesn’t care much about org charts or titles. It cares about continuity. About judgment. About not walking off the course mid-hole just because the wind shifted.
So this moment isn’t an ending. It’s a ball that lies a bit off center and needs reading. A stance adjustment. A reminder that the most interesting shots often come when the plan meets reality and loses the argument.
Harvey, you always said the game reveals who we are under pressure – not when every ball is striped down the middle, but when the ball finds a place that demands imagination.
This one does.
And whether the next shot is a punch-out, a lay-up, or a bold carry over trouble, I’m still swinging. Still curious. Still paying attention.
No bad shots.
Only interesting ones.
Make it a great Monday,
gPage
“Millions of people were charmed by the homespun golf advice dispensed in Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, a sports classic that became the best-selling sports book of all time. Yet, beyond the Texas golf courses where Penick happily toiled for the better part of eight decades, few people knew the self-made golf pro who coaxed the best out of countless greats — Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Betsy Rawls, Mickey Wright — all champions who considered Penick their coach and lifelong friend.” – Kevin Robbins, author of Harvey Penick: The Life and Wisdom of the Man Who Wrote the Book on Golf.
