Golf is a game of creativity

I recently had the opportunity to play a round of golf with LPGA player Gigi Stoll, and somewhere between watching her hit shots and talking about shoes and music and goals and food and our home state of Oregon, I realized I was getting one of the better golf lessons I’ve ever received.

On the surface, it was just another friendly round of golf, but there were countless moments when Gigi would do something so impressive and yet so effortless.

I don’t remember a missed fairway or green, but what was more impressive was watching her deal with the situations that normally produce a bit of anxiety—a tricky tee shot, an insane headwind, a difficult pin placement. Gigi would take in the information, see what the shot required and hit it.

Meanwhile, I’d be standing over my ball calculating the yardage, talking out loud, weighing the options, considering three different clubs, and before I’d even made a decision, Gigi had already seen the shot, trusted it and moved on.

Problem. Solution. Keep moving. Repeat.

Gigi has been repeating those steps for decades. She was part of Arizona’s 2018 NCAA National Championship team, has won on the Epson Tour, and now competes on the LPGA Tour and in the Grass League.

But she’s also a multi-instrumentalist who releases hip-hop music as Golf God, has an unmistakable presence in the golf fashion world, and continues to make an impact through different creative projects and communities.

On paper, those things might not have much to do with hitting a golf ball really well, but I think they have everything to do with it.

Creativity isn’t simply having a bunch of different interests. It’s the awareness to look at what’s in front of you, process it through your own perspective and make something out of it.

Gigi has the unique ability to do that everywhere.

With music, it might mean hearing something that’s missing. With fashion, maybe it’s seeing combinations someone else wouldn’t think to put together. With people and communities, it’s finding ways to share your light and energy rather than simply occupying space. And on a golf course, it’s seeing a shot—and then creating it.

Nowadays, with all the objective data, launch monitors and swing tips, it can be easy to forget that golf is still a creative medium that requires analog processes and a human touch.

We want the correct backswing, the correct path and the correct club from 137 yards, and then you walk onto an actual golf course and the wind is blowing sideways, the ball is sitting down and there’s a tree exactly where a tree shouldn’t be.

Now you have to CREATE something.

Three golfers can stand in the exact same place with the exact same problem and see completely different shots.

One sees a 7-iron over the tree. Another sees a 5-iron underneath it. Some lunatic sees a 40-yard hook through a gap the size of a mailbox.

And all three can be right.

Golf has always had room for that.

Trevino didn’t play like Nicklaus. Seve certainly didn’t play like anybody. The history of the game is filled with strange swings, different minds and people who figured out their own way to get the ball into the hole.

I think too many of us confuse a “perfect swing” or “technically correct” mechanics with good golf, and they’re definitely not the same thing.

There are fundamentals and physics and certainly better and worse ways to move a golf club, but there has never been one correct way to play the game.

And I think that’s what I was actually watching with Gigi.

The same instinct that allows someone to make music, develop their own style, connect with different communities and throw themselves into new ideas also allows a golfer to walk into an unfamiliar situation and see possibility instead of complication.

The best creative people do that everywhere they go.

They see things, and then they make something with their gifts and the ingredients available to them.

Gigi Stoll happens to be exceptionally good at this.

And both on and off the golf course, that’s a superpower.