Remade
By Scott Stallings
The first fight was over Dr. Pepper. At my worst, I was drinking as many as 12 a day. So this was going to be a negotiation between my trainer and me. That’s how I saw it. He won. And that may be why he’s not just my trainer anymore, he’s one of my best friends.
Not too long ago, my son saw a picture of me when I was younger and asked if I was sick when the picture was taken. I was just really heavy, to the point where he almost didn’t recognize me as his dad. Those are hard things to think about, but he was 100 percent right. I was sick.
When you’re sick, you go to the doctor. That’s what I did in 2015. Before then, I thought that I could do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it, without there being many repercussions on the other side. Next thing you know, you are 29 years old and you are sitting in a doctor’s office at UCLA where the guy is looking at you and telling you some very scary words and phrases. You’re like, How in the world did I get to this spot?
Turning a blind eye to health is one of the most foolish, if not most foolish, mistakes you can make. We only have one life, and what we have is precious and should not be taken for granted. Unfortunately, I was the poster child for that and now it’s safe to say it got rectified, put in the right spot. I don’t necessarily dislike talking about it, but at first I was pretty ashamed at the way I treated my body and some of the things I put myself through as far as diet and nutrition. Looking back on it, it got me to the place I am now and to be able to tell my story for people and hopefully be the intermediary for them to not go down the same road I did.
They have a test where they can measure the age of your mitochondria to determine your biological age. I was 29 years old and my biological age was 42. That was a number that was not going down. It took that to get me to finally say enough is enough.
Everyone thought I did this for golf. I didn’t do this for golf. Golf was the furthest thing from my mind. I needed to do these things to be there for my wife and my kids. If golf continued to happen, great, that was a bonus, but it’s not like, Hey, I’m going to get in unbelievable shape so I can go crush it on the course. That was something that happened after the fact. That was never the goal. Overall, I did it for general health and wellness and a better sense of where I was and where I was aspiring to be.
In a word, my problem was negligence. Maybe apathy, turning a blind eye, hoping for the best. But mostly negligence.
You don’t do this stuff on your own. For me, it started with a good friend of mine who is big in the CrossFit space and had a huge career in that. He texted me and said, “Hey, I started working with this guy on my diet. I feel like he can help you.” I texted him back and said, “Man, if you’re on a diet, I definitely need to be on a diet.” Still, I was hesitant to go down that road, because all you hear is diets don’t work and eating plans don’t work. This friend was like, “No, it’s not really like that.” So I called this guy he worked with and, next thing you know, I had to report a body weight and pictures to a nutritionist guy I’d never met 52 Mondays in a row for a year.
Professional golfers live on the road. Everyone talks about how it’s so difficult to eat well on the road. I was the same person: “Oh man, it’s hard to eat well on the road.” Now, doing what I do, I think it’s easier to eat on the road than it is to eat at home. I know I’ve got a routine, I’ve got something that I know I can rely upon. The home time is when it’s difficult, because I say, “Man, I’ve been on the road, I’ve been super dialed in on my nutrition. I’m going to go have dinner with my friends, go do this, go do that.” The next thing I know, I find myself sacrificing way more at home than I do on the road.
Then there’s the gym. My trainer, Adam Kerley, had one goal when we first started, which was to get me into the gym. Now his goal is to get me out!
If I play in the morning, I’ll work out in the afternoon. If I play in the afternoon, I will not work out in the morning. A lot of that’s personal preference and figuring out what I operate the best at. Golf is very counterintuitive to my personality. I don’t like to do anything that involves a significant amount of patience, which is funny. God has a funny sense of humor, because he puts me in a spot where I have to exhibit my biggest shortcomings on an everyday basis and just deal with it. But I know that, so I figure out some other outlets where I can get that out of my system. There are a lot of times when my caddie will come and be like, “Have you trained today?” “No.” “Why don’t you go do that and we can come back and practice later, because I’m not going to get out of you what I need to get out of you if you haven’t gotten that out of your system yet.” That’s definitely where I go to get away. It’s kind of like a reset for me. I’ve seen all sorts of emotions fall to the floor just by going in there and putting myself in a different headspace.
Some days it’s 30 minutes, some days it’s two and a half hours. I try to do something every day. Some days that’s heavy lifting, some days it’s just running, some days it’s yoga-ish. I kind of run the gamut of any fitness related thing you can think of. My recovery days, some days it’s playing with my kids, some days it’s going on a swim, some days it’s bike riding, some days it’s a light run. There are days when I completely get away from it all, but I try to do something to move around every single day.
I meant it when I said I didn’t do all this for golf, but sure, I’ve seen payoffs in my game: injury prevention, how my body feels over the course of days and weeks, just kind of managing all that on the road and how I feel.
There’s a lot that goes into it that people don’t realize. If all we had to do was show up and play tournaments Thursday through Sunday, people would play every week. But when you travel to the extent that we do and everything that goes into preparing to play on Thursday, this feels funny to say, but by the time we play, that’s the easiest thing that we do. It’s already got a prescribed set of things that you know you’ve got to deal with. When you’re trying to fly across the country, there are so many other things outside of your control that you’re going to have to deal with and you’re going to have to come in contact with that you’re not normally having to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Amateurs can get fit. Most amateurs make excuses for the lack of time they have. I was the same way. You need to find reasons for why you can instead of excuses for why you can’t. Also, too many people try to make drastic changes. They’ll say, “OK, I’m going to get in good shape, so I’m going to sleep better, I’m going to exercise two hours a day, seven days a week, I’m going to eat nothing but brown rice, vegetables, and grilled chicken, and I’ll just become the picture of health.” Man, that’s not sustainable, especially when you’re not doing any of that now. Instead, just pick a few small changes and make one better decision more often and eventually that becomes a habit and builds into other things.
I built a gym in my house, and my kids see me down there every single day. My daughter was there with me this morning. She’s three years old. She’s in there understanding what I’m doing. I built the gym trying to be more cognizant and disciplined in terms of time away from my family, just because golf takes so much. I try to be there and be around and show them that this is a part of my day and this is a part of my life. That comes in the kitchen as well, understanding what’s the healthy decision and what’s not so much and learning how to manage the difference between the two of them.
You need to surround yourself with people who will ask you hard questions. I’ve got an accountability guy that knows nothing about golf—more about life, family, traveling on the road. I don’t always love those situations because they’re hard conversations, but they’re conversations that need to happen.
I was with one of my accountability guys and we were discussing what the next six months of my life looks like. Let’s talk about some things that could potentially come our way that we’re going to have to deal with. If we talk about what we’re going to have to deal with, whether it’s loneliness or apathy or frustration, let’s talk about when we come across that, so we’re not surprised. Not “I’m never going to be on the road,” or “I’m never going to be lonely,” or “I’m never going to have discontentment.” That’s all a fallacy. We’re going to come across that all the time. Just my saying that, there’s freedom in the fact that, Hey, I’m going to come across this, but when I do, I’m not going to be surprised and this is how I’m going to deal with it. I’m not going to immediately succumb to the pressure of whatever it is, something that comes my way that seems like it would take me away from that space at the moment. I think that’s what people fall into.
You need to surround yourself with people who will ask you hard questions. I don’t always love those situations because they’re hard conversations, but they’re conversations that need to happen.I talk to my kids about big stuff, too. Always we talk about the Golden Rule, to treat others as you want to be treated, but also the idea that you may be the only bright spot in someone’s day, so try to meet people where they’re at. Unless you know, give them the benefit of the doubt and try to understand where they’re coming from. So many people make snap judgments and assumptions about why people act a certain way, instead of really trying to figure out that maybe that guy’s going through something and we have no clue.
If we believe in Jesus, we have to understand that we may be the only glimpse people get of grace and humility. As athletes, we live in a very harsh reality, in some form or fashion, with the fast pace and aggressive nature of professional sports. There’s not a tremendous amount of grace and humility that comes along with that. I feel like the entire Bible speaks to the very opposite of that and embraces every situation.
Not that I always get this right. I played decent in an event and I did an interview, and a guy who holds me accountable played it back to me and said, “Do you feel like this was handled with the grace and humility that it should have been, or do we need to talk about how, when you’re in this situation again, you can point them in the right direction instead of sitting there talking about how good you are at golf?”
If you saw my Tour photo now and my photos since 2011, you would think the newer one is my rookie year. That’s a lot of change, and people want to ask about it. I can get put in a spot of being touted for some sort of heroics on the golf course, or some person wanting to come to my house and take pictures of some kind of training thing, saying, “Man, physically you look great.” “Ah, thank you, but…” I’ve learned how to turn it away from that and turn it toward the inner workings of what’s really taking place instead of just the aesthetics. Focus more on how we got here, instead of actually where we are. I feel like all that goes back to biblical principles. Approaching every and all situations with grace and humility, I think you’re going to be successful in every situation you come across. Some things are going to be a little bit easier to deal with than others, but for the most part if that’s your general rule of thumb, you’re going to be all right—and I think you’re going to have a lot of people begin to ask questions as far as, “Man, that situation was awful, and how in the world did you come out of it dealing like that?” “Man, that didn’t have a lot to do with me,” and then, “This is how I believe, this is how I carry myself, and this is why I do these things.”