Ep. 124 - Annabelle Pancake - Beating The Golf Course

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mental Toughness with Dr. Rob Bell.

[00:00:13] Each week, Dr. Rob sits down with athletes, executives, and expert coaches to talk about

[00:00:18] mental toughness and their hinge moment.

[00:00:21] Here's your host, Dr. Rob. guest today on the Mental Toughness Podcast. It's just finished her junior season at Clemson University. She's a member of the All-ACC team for golf. She won the Clemson Invitational co-medilist for Clemson Invitational. She finished runner up at the Women's Amateur Championship at a Princess Golf Club there in England. Two-time winner of the Indiana Women's Amateur,

[00:01:42] one in which she won by 14 shots. Excited, so I started when I was two Basically like a walk first tournament was when I was three years old. So I've had a couple my hand for forever basically

[00:03:04] And honestly if you knew me when I was younger you knew I played soccer for like a year or two, gymnastics for a couple of years, road horses for like six years, played basketball all throughout my childhood until I got a bunch of concussions and I basically had to choose. That's when the doctor was like, all right, you can't be, you know, you can't play a bunch of sports and be at risk for work and questions all the time. So you kind of made me pick and so I chose golf.

[00:04:22] And that's another reason why I kind of chose that career path you could say at a young hard but you get a bad concussion. So obviously you had great summer. I mean, let's start with the Women's Amateur Championship. You know, everybody in Indiana, obviously it rooting for you, you know, your Clemson family

[00:05:40] rooting for you. But talk about and let's just delve kind of into that.

[00:05:42] Talk about that experience like your mindset heading in, how you were playing

[00:05:46] and what kind of unfolded.

[00:06:44] especially because, you know, I have, I went in also having no expectations because I've never been there, never played golf on a link style course before. So, um, uh, go,

[00:06:51] I mean, if you would have told me before the tournament started that I would have made

[00:06:53] it to the final match, I would have been like, no way. Like that's crazy. I've never played

[00:06:57] here before. You know, this is my first time even playing this event. So, um, yeah, but

[00:07:03] just going in and having a, having wood bump and runs out of almost the rough, like because it's so hard out there and the grass is so thin and it's basically you could putt from just about anywhere. But I liked that because it made it more exciting. And I also think that was an opportunity

[00:08:20] for me to grow in my game

[00:08:21] and kind of get a little more creative,

[00:08:23] get out of my comfort zone

[00:08:25] and just experiment with different type of bumper run shot, my mom taught me that shot years ago. And so I as a kid, I hated it because I was like, mom, that's not normal. That nobody does that. But I mean, I now realizing that shot is so good. And it's so much more consistent. So that one I've been, I've used for a long time because of her. She taught me that shot. And it definitely came in clutch.

[00:09:42] And for Ling Skull.

[00:09:44] Yeah. I mean, I see it today where it's like, you game. I mean, it is for a lot of people, but personally I love match play. And that's when you're at your best, right? Yeah. And I think, I mean, the way I describe it to people is I feel like, I mean, I should honestly utilize this and stroke play more often too, but I just feel like I'm on offense. I think of it kind of in basketball,

[00:11:00] like I'm on offense and I can be aggressive

[00:11:03] and I can go for every shot and it won't really matter.

[00:11:05] It doesn't really hurt you in the end. cast and are already a bad ass, but it's all way too complicated, then visit our website, DrRobBell.com and schedule call with us to help capture your very own hinge moment.

[00:12:25] Some of those early match play matches, what kind of stands out to you? What were some of those moments? just continue to stay consistent and be aggressive. Don't try and change my game in any way. If I get down, just do my thing, stay aggressive and have fun with it, honestly. I think a lot of people get really wrapped up in the score and I'm like, well, it's still a game. We still have to enjoy and love it. So I tried to keep that in mind too.

[00:13:42] Your mom was on the bag all week?

[00:13:44] Oh yeah, she was.

[00:13:45] That was not planned originally.

[00:13:48] Oh, it wasn't. God moments that she was mentioned. What were some of those that kind of stand out to you over there? Well, I mean, my faith is my everything. I literally wouldn't be where I am without God. And I'm just so thankful for the opportunities he's put in place for me. And I mean, he gives me my strength. I give all the glory to him. This is all for him. I play for

[00:15:02] an audience of one, ultimately. I do play golf to have fun, but I also play for him. And

[00:16:01] kind of a little stressed out at home, but if you want me to go to go play in this tournament,

[00:16:04] I'll go and I think I finally,

[00:16:06] he kind of told me like, yeah, I think you should go.

[00:16:09] And so, I mean, all of it was such a blessing from him.

[00:16:13] And I mean, yeah, it was really cool to see.

[00:16:17] So you were alluding to it.

[00:16:18] I mean, your dad saw the semifinal match, saw you advance,

[00:16:22] and then he was able to get a flight over there

[00:16:24] for the championship match.

[00:17:26] No, absolutely love it. When you talk about like when you head over there with no expectations, just, you know, I mean, you mentioned the gratitude a lot. I mean, is that a mindset that you're able

[00:17:32] to take into other tournaments? Because it's easy to say it's really tough to do, right? Because

[00:17:40] you know how you're hitting the ball. You know how up to God. And that he already knows that result and I can't control that. I can give it my all and practice as much as I can, but ultimately I just need to try my best, have fun, and be thankful for the opportunity that God's given me.

[00:19:03] Right. After all my years at Clemson, I've been in most of the tournaments and then you lose it a little bit and you don't make it. It's a very humbling experience. But it's also motivating. I think when I went through that, I knew, all right, hey, at least I'm still playing. I at least still get to go to a tournament as an individual with my best friend who is also my teammate got to go with me, Melaina.

[00:20:22] This was a separate tournament, right?

[00:20:24] Yes, completely separate. frustrated and annoyed whatever it was. But instead I was like, all right, you know what? God wasn't surprised by that. So I had to take that opportunity and learn from it and work harder and earn my spot back, which I think was good. It taught me a lot. And

[00:23:01] you know, now I look back and I think I, okay, this is where I went wrong. And you know, I didn't work hard enough. Maybe I wasn't something I had to figure it out. And I think I just learned that I, you know, when you go through stuff like that, you can come out of it. And that there's also there's a reason that you're going through it. Like I had to, you know, I was praying about it and realizing that, okay, you know, I'm

[00:23:05] trying to take control of this. I think I got tied six. I think I tied with my teammate. Okay. I don't remember what, I don't remember what we shot. It was a round par. I think I might have shot 74 the first day and then under par the last two rounds. I can't really remember. You know what, do you know why I ask? Why? Because you're, I make it a point like to just make sure

[00:24:24] I'm having breakfast with your dad like looking back and seeing that. I think the reason why I bring that up could people be like, oh, well, Annabelle just such a good player. Like, but I mean, that's a major setback for somebody at your level and then to not make the,

[00:25:41] you know, the roster spot for that tournament.

[00:25:45] You know, I mean, that's what I always kind of look at.

[00:25:47] And that's why I was not expecting that to happen, but I mean hindsight, it's, I'm glad that it happened because it needed to happen, because I think it's easy when you get in the lineup, so often you just almost expect it. And then you maybe don't work as hard, kind of get comfortable,

[00:28:06] I was almost like numb like I just didn't my swing. I wasn't I was just thinking about that one thing and

[00:28:08] We just hit the shot and it would be

[00:28:10] Perfect. I mean, I think I hold out

[00:28:17] Like the second day on the first hole or something from the fairway a Prairie View and I mean I was just like I

[00:28:22] Don't know how to describe it other than I was like I almost blacked out It was numb like I just kind of happened and I was just I was just playing golf

[00:29:24] like the jump from high school to college, but how do you think like your mental game and mental toughness has evolved?

[00:29:26] I think it's completely changed.

[00:29:30] I've had a complete shift.

[00:29:31] I think in high school, I was playing the girls around me.

[00:29:37] I was trying to win the tournament.

[00:29:38] I was trying to shoot scores.

[00:29:41] I was playing the numbers game. thought about. I don't really think about, I don't look at the leaderboard after I'm done playing. I never check it ever. Mostly because I don't care, which sounds bad, but I genuinely, my thought process is if I just go beat the golf course, I'm gonna be just fine and I'm gonna be close. And so that's what my mindset is go beat the golf course, have fun and glorify God and

[00:31:02] everything that I do. And it's worked pretty well, but you take even so when you don't play well. I mean you're able to Take the emotion out of it and just look at like the feedback. What is it that I need to work on? Yeah, I mean it's in the moment. It's difficult to do that because in the moment you're frustrated you just

[00:32:25] Whatever it was you just hit a bad shot. You missed an easy putt with, I mean, do you find just game wise then, like, is it that your good shots are better now? And maybe it's a little bit of both, but I'm like, what do you think? Or do you think the bad shots like the misses have just become, you know, because I mean, the misses have become smaller, so to speak.

[00:33:41] Like what have you noticed game wise? once or twice around, I usually have either a tap in or something within three feet. So my good shots have gotten really good. I mean, I've always been a pretty good ball striker, but I would say in the last couple years, last three years, I would say it's gotten like, I can hit it really as long as

[00:35:00] I'm hitting it solid, it's going to be pretty dang good.

[00:35:03] And that's kind of my goal when I go practice is like, you know, track me and yeah, look

[00:35:06] at numbers.

[00:35:07] But also I need to focus on it. occasion, look, it's just golf, but then man, she would fire when it was close. So it sounds like, I mean, it was kind of the, the same thing, right? Like, I mean, you, if you're, if you're striking it solid, there's going to be some that are, that are definitely tap ins and kick ins. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, I would say most of the time, my golf is pretty boring. And then there's a couple shots in there that I

[00:36:22] fired a almost make. I hit to 16. Was it okay? Yeah. I remember I was a couple over par and I was like a little frustrated because I was like I know I can like shoot par and I made a couple dumb bogeys and I remember it was a pitching wedge. I was coach at the time, Jeff Anderson, he like sent it out to all the teachers. And I remember getting messages from my friends like, oh yeah, our teacher in algebra just showed us the video if you hold me out. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. No, that's fantastic.

[00:39:00] When did you know that, you know, I

[00:39:05] always think like there are these certain moments where it's like,

[00:39:07] hey, you know, you're good like you just got to believe it and it was hard for me to believe because I wasn't seeing it It's really hard to believe you're good when you're not seeing results And I was like how how are you saying on that? They're like your swings great. You're putting great. I

[00:40:23] Was like I just have a hard time leaving that because I haven't the scores aren't showing that

[00:41:25] like she killed the field. I remember that. But that was a moment in junior golf. And then

[00:41:33] I think when I won the stadium by a bunch of shot like 14 or whatever, that was a moment I realized, okay, yeah, I can beat the golf course pretty day good. And now we're finally showing people how good we are. Like now people can be like, Oh, shoot, Clemson, like we didn't really know. Like our team's only been around for 10 years. People probably didn't, they probably underestimated us. Um, so that was really cool. That moment to kind of show everyone who we were and how good we were. But, um,

[00:43:00] yeah, those, those are, those are some cool moments that I remember that.

[00:43:03] We're definitely a confidence booster. Yeah. Indeed.

[00:44:04] Yeah, I think that would be really cool. I was talking about it this week with two different caddies about the travel and you

[00:44:10] have to love to travel because if you don't like to travel because you are a way.

[00:44:14] Oh yeah.

[00:44:15] You're not like to travel is really, really even more difficult than what it is.

[00:44:19] I know.

[00:44:20] I was, yeah, well I've talked to my parents about that and my teammates Savannah she's

[00:44:24] probably she's going to try and go on tour and go to Q school this August and we talk Yeah. Beldsey, what question should I be asking that I haven't asked? An idea. I don't know. You've asked me a lot of similar questions that I've been asked.

[00:45:41] So they're pretty good. game, it can't be your coach's game, it's got to be yours, you have to do it yourself. I mean, I played for my parents when I was younger, didn't play well, didn't go great. But as soon as I started playing more so for God to honor him and glorify him and audience of one, but also I motivated myself and owned my own game, then that's when things really

[00:47:02] started to take off.

[00:47:03] And I started to love it more that way standing there, you know, just arms crossed,

[00:48:21] washed in their balls right on top of them, fix that, you know, searching something

[00:48:26] in their swing. They didn't play well that day. So they start to search.

[00:49:27] who knows what. So yeah, I think my parents have always kind of stood at a distance. And the thing that I love that my parents do that it we we went through a stage where it wasn't

[00:49:33] great. But what we figured out is they were like, okay, if you want help, you have to ask

[00:49:38] me, like if I was struggling with my swing, I talking about like Tommy Fleetwood, what, let's just talk about your game, right? Like how is everything going? Did they make the shift to we're only going to talk about it when you bring it up? I think, I mean, I just remember there being a moment

[00:51:01] with my mom specifically, where she was like,

[00:51:05] I don't, I tell my son and I tell every player this like you have to be so careful just about the side comment about What it is that you do? You know Because it just becomes noise, you know what I mean? You really decipher I mean the power in your mom saying that hey if you want it I can give that to you, but if you don't I mean that's such higher

[00:52:22] Level like let's just say caddying at that point, you know, I mean that is power

[00:53:22] This is your game again. So do you want this advice for your game?

[00:53:25] And I really appreciate when they've done that.

[00:53:28] So yeah.

[00:53:29] No, no, no, no, it's powerful.

[00:53:32] Really powerful.

[00:53:33] Yeah.

[00:53:34] You know, my son and I, we did kind of get into it on the range

[00:53:38] right about one to go.

[00:53:39] It was because I stressed to him, you have to have an alignment stick

[00:53:43] every time you're practicing, you know, because I'm like,

[00:53:47] look, your stance,'s like, oh dad. I'm hitting it's so good, but I'm hitting it to the right. Well, I'll be like, okay, so

[00:55:02] Where do you think you're aimed?

[00:55:08] Why do you think you're doing that? Oh because you're on the range practicing doing that so I don't know that