What I Read This Week - 6.16.24
Weekly Finds From Across the Internet
Hey Everyone,
Welcome back for this Father’s Day edition of The Gunn Show. What a special day it is - an opportunity for us all to be thankful for the Dads in our lives that have given us so much and asked for so little in return.
To my own, the man who has affectionately been known as many things - Doc Gunn, The Doc, PJ (Papa Joe), KJ (King Joe - h/t Sam Fowler) - but who to me has always simply been “Dad”:
Thank you for all of the love, support, and memories along the way. I wouldn’t change a second of it all and know that we have much more life to live together - can’t wait to get to living it.
Now, onto this week’s edition - which goes focused and deep on some more sports related topic including:
A powerful definition of success, courtesy of Tony Vitello
Sports as a pathway to doing hard things, courtesy of Tom Brady
and thoughts from the US Open, courtesy of your truly
As always, hope you enjoy and see you next week!
- CG
P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.
Sports/High Performance
Tony Vitello on Success (~6 min)
Excuse the personal bias in here, but this was far and away one of the best things I saw this week - and it hit home especially after nearly 30 years of watching the ups and downs of Tennessee Baseball.
My roots with the program run deep, having grown up just down the road from Knoxville in Kingsport, TN. As a young kid, spring time meant games in Lindsey Nelson sandwiched around my own. Every winter I’d attend the Vol baseball camp and when middle school rolled around I found myself taking lessons in the Tennessee batting cages underneath the stadium concourse. In high school I’d go on to play with and against a number of friends that would later suit up for the Vols, and even when I left for my own college baseball journey I still followed the program closely.
The era of Vol baseball I grew up watching was a golden one - in just a 10 year span from 1995 to 2005 the Vols won three SEC championships and made the same number of trips to Omaha. The 2005 regional at Lindsey Nelson is still burned into my memory after getting to watch the likes of Chase Headley, JP Arencebia, and Luke Hochevar lead Tennessee to a sweep of the field at home to set themselves up for a Super Regional win at Georgia Tech.
Things fell off quickly from there - from 2006 to 2017, the Vols finished no better than 6th in the SEC East and constantly missed out on the yearly pilgrimage of teams to Hoover, AL for the SEC tournament (which featured the top 12 programs in the league - out of 14 total). Regionals, super regionals, and the College World Series were a distant memory that seemed hard to believe they ever existed.
But since 2018 when the Vols hired Tony Vitello, the program has re-established itself as one of the premier groups in the country. Of the last 5 years in which the NCAA tournament has been played, Tennessee has been in every one of them - playing in 4 straight super regionals from 2021 to 2024, and winning three to head to Omaha.
It’s hard to believe the turnaround happened so quickly for a program that was stuck in neutral for over a decade. Much of that is owed to Vitello and his work to rebuild it from scratch by instilling a culture and pride that had long since been lost. This clip was a perfect window into where much of that has come from - and there were two main things that stood out to me:
You Pick What Success Means to You:
Success is a fuzzy word, one we use a great deal but seem to have very little grasp of what it truly means. I think this is part of why sports are so powerful - they provide a black and white measure of success through points and runs, wins and losses. Or at least so we think.
The truth - articulated well in the clip - is that success is relative: it need not be defined by someone else’s arbitrary scoreboard. Instead, it is much more effective to establish your own definition - what does success look like to you? As Vitello says, you have a choice. You are the one that gets to decide
And to do so is liberating. Rather than living up to the expectations of others, you need only live up to the ones you have for yourself. You get to define the rules of the game however you like. No-one can do it for you, and frankly, you shouldn’t let them.
The way to success doesn’t lie in letting someone else pick the winners and losers. It lies in playing a different game entirely - your own.
Success Comes with Layers (And Trade Offs):
Another trap we fall into in regards to success is thinking that it can be encapsulated by one single thing. Reality is such that wins and losses, successes and ‘failures’, can come on a variety of avenues. It is entirely possible that you can be succeeding in one area of your life and failing in a different one. You can win at work, but lose at home - or as we like to say in baseball, succeed in fair territory but fail in foul territory.
The truth is that it is hard to succeed at everything, and that is okay. Success - however you define it - is not meant to be easy, and that is exactly what makes it so rewarding. And as such, that means that finding success in one area is likely to come at the expense of another. To get something necessitates you give something in return.
Trade offs are real, and there is always a price to pay. But the best part? Once again, just as in definition, we get to pick.
To wrap up on this topic, I’ve been enjoying watching this Vol baseball run - not only because of the wins on the field, but for the lessons that have come as a result. To me, this is not the most talented team the Vols have fielded in recent years. But I do believe this is Tennessee’s best team - specifically as a function of the togetherness with which they play and the resilience with which they respond in the face of adversity (look no further than Game 1 in Omaha).
I’m looking forward to watching how this all plays out on College Baseball’s biggest stage. And hopefully some more lessons along the way.
Tom Brady Patriots HOF Induction Speech (~20 min)
Building on the topic of memorable sport speeches from this week, Tom Brady delivered an epic one during his Patriots Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Wednesday. While the entire speech is worth your time, if you want the highlights I’d highly suggest watching this short ~2 min clip.
The main message? Something I fully agree with: we should encourage as many people as possible to play sports for one simple reason - they are hard.
In my opinion, the totality of sports creates a level of difficulty that is nearly impossible to replicate in any other domain of the world. Math may strain you mentally, lifting weights may strain you physically, and your 9-5 may strain you emotionally. But none of these alone can compare to the complete challenge that is inherent in sport. Whether in football, baseball, or any other athletic activity, if you make the choice to participate you will be taxed in every possible way you can imagine. Your body, your brain, your heart - nothing is exempt from paying the price. That is a given, the price of admission.
In this way, as Brady says, sports are the perfect representation of life. Because life is hard and, just as in sports, it will test you along every dimension.
From my perspective, there is no better way to prepare for those challenges than learning through experience via sport. For anyone reading this that has been an athlete at any point in their life, I’d be willing to bet there are lessons you carry from those experiences with you into whatever it is you do now - whether as a professional, a spouse, a parent, or otherwise. Because as the NCAA has had right for a long time, “almost everyone will be going pro in something other than sports.”
In this way, sports serve as a looking glass into the future. They can teach us things in the more controlled setting of competition that we will need to succeed in the very uncontrolled setting of life. Lessons like the value of commitment, what hard work really looks like, and how to be resilient in the face of adversity.
And so to close, one more hidden lesson on life that sport reveals, from Brady himself:
“To be successful at anything, the truth is that you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. No shortcuts.”
Amen.
US Open Thoughts
This is less What I Read, and more What I Watched amidst the 124th edition of the US Open at Pinehurst No. 2 this week. There has been some fantastic golf on a gorgeous (and treacherous) course and it is shaping up to be a great final round on Father’s Day. These are some miscellaneous thoughts I’ve gathered after following along for the weekend
Patience, Patience, Patience:
The theme that seems to be the biggest commonality for this week’s tournament, with broadcasters and players alike agreeing that US Open golf demands a unique level of patience relative to other tournaments (Rory even said this explicitly before the week began). The US Open is my favorite golf tournament for this exact reason - each year, the USGA puts together a remarkably difficult setup with which to challenge the best golfers in the world. What’s even better is that the style of challenge is entirely different from year to year: last year at LACC it was 4”+ rough, while this year at Pinehurst it is greens rolling at a 6 foot faster pace than the average course. The result is the highest average finishing score for any of golf’s major championships on a yearly basis.
While talent and skill certainly play a role, I think the US Open tests a key trait at a higher level than any other tournament: emotional control. You can’t win any major without it, but especially this one. It will test you to limits few others have, and how players respond makes all the difference. So sure, we can look at stats like driving distance, greens in regulation and strokes gained to assess the performance of the field. But to me, the lowest total posted at the US Open says a great deal more about the things we can’t measure - namely those two organs that sit in the middle of head and chest.
Experimentation
If there is one trait golfers deserve the most credit for and possess above all other athletes, I believe it has to be this: the willingness to experiment: I find it endlessly fascinating the lengths to which they will go to pursue a competitive advantage, leaving no stone unturned. Here are a but a few of the small details documented on big names near the top of the leaderboard currently:
Tony Finau - Changed his standard putter grip this week to a ‘claw grip’.
Bryson DeChambeau - Customized the curvature of his 5 iron to prevent overcorrection of the club at his high swing speeds.
Patrick Cantlay - Played the practice round with 4 different putters, all the same model but with variations in weight distribution to change takeway/follow through length.
I just don’t think we see these types of examples at this level/frequency in any other sport. Athletes tend to be so highly routine and comfort driven prior to competition that making sweeping changes to equipment or style prior to a big event is a rare occurrence.
But in professional golf, it seems to be more of the rule than the exception - if you aren’t evolving alongside the rest, the probability you will be left behind on the leaderboards becomes increasingly high. I wonder what other sports would look like if they followed in the same mold.
Who are the ‘Bryson DeChambeau’ of other sports? Do they exist?
First they laugh, then they mimic - that is the story of Bryson DeChambeau, professional golf’s ‘mad scientist’. Over the course of his career, he has been the subject of much ridicule for his ‘curious’ methods to optimizing his game: from 3D printed irons, to how he marks his golf balls to align dimples for putting, and even his amped up swing speed training regiment. But now, he has evolved into the crowd (and media) favorite. It has been quite the journey, and quite the transformation.
I’ve long been fascinated by his approach to golf, as well as for his relentless conviction in that approach even in the face of all the backlash. Which got me thinking, who are the ‘Brysons’ in the other professional sports?
It’s hard to think of other athletes that match his relentless attention to detail and scientific rigor. Tom Brady comes to mind, certainly, for his TB12 training, nutrition, and recovery regiment (and perhaps deflation of footballs). But where are the others? Do they exist?
I think much of this owes to the fact that golf is so highly ‘equipment’ dependent: it is the sport where individual athletes have the most control over the implements they use in the midst of competition, which in turn provides a very fertile ground for experimentation. Visibility plays a big role too, I’m sure: because this equipment is easily viewable on the course, both fans and media are much more likely to take notice and stories emerge as a result. After all, we only know a scientist is mad if we get a look at the dark magic he is performing.
But still, the question remains. I’m not sure anyone matches Bryson’s level of wizardry when it comes to this stuff, but surely others with a similar determination have to exist.
Off to do some work to find them.
As your father, and with your mother putting up with me for over 40 years, I’m one proud and fortunate dad. Thanks for the shout out. I love you more than mere words can convey.