Anirban Lahiri’s quest to rediscover joy begins with Players Championship

Anirban Lahiri began an in-depth assessment of his current mental framework vis-à-vis his golf with this brief one-liner. And a smile. 

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The last few months have been a bit of a struggle for the 34-year-old professional golfer. In the six events on the PGA Tour in 2022 so far, the Indian has had three missed cuts after ending 66th (The American Express) and tied-46th (Farmers Insurance Open) to start the year.  

Lahiri couldn't earn a spot into the weekend action at the WM Phoenix Open, The Genesis Invitational, and The Honda Classic, and broke the chain of consecutive missed cuts only with a tied-74th finish that saw a disastrous 10-over 82 in the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational over the weekend. 

Hardly the kind of form that exudes confidence while competing at The Players Championship -  “the fifth Major, at least among the players", as the Indian called it, in Florida this week. 

The lull hasn't been a recent trend. Lahiri has managed only five cuts across the 12 events on the PGA Tour in the 2021-22 season, for which he received the exempt last year after being in the top-125 in the 2020-21 standings. He is currently placed 209th in the rankings this season, with no top-25 finishes and a best of tied-40th at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba in November last year.         

Yet, more than seeking prettier performances and outcomes, Lahiri is chasing something else that he feels has been missing from his heart, mind, and game of late: Joy.  

And that, as his “simple answer” stated, he hasn’t quite been able to find yet.   

“I've had this conversation with a few people, especially on my team. I think for me personally, I expect to play at a certain level. I expect to be able to have a certain amount of efficiency through all the different departments of my game. I think the inconsistency that has crept up can be irritating, can sometimes be infuriating, frustrating… a lot of those negative emotions. And those get in the way of actually enjoying your golf,” Lahiri said from Florida. 

“Enjoyment doesn't necessarily mean winning or coming top five or top ten. Enjoyment, to me, is to be able to hit the shot as I'm visualising it or as I'm feeling it or seeing it. And I think that's where the challenge has been for me,” he added. “When you play so far below the level at which you expect yourself to play, you kind of lose the enjoyment for the game.” 

In the quest of rediscovering that happy nerve, the Pune-born Lahiri chose an extended stay in India after a below-par fall last year that he drew the curtains on with a missed cut at The RSM Classic in November. Lahiri spent the following month-and-a-half at home, enjoying some time off with family, relishing playing golf with his friends again while also working on certain facets of his game with his long-time coach, Vijay Divecha.   

“I think I'm very close to enjoying my golf more than I have in the past,” Lahiri said. 

“There’s a couple of links, I would say, in the entire chain that have been weak or broken or missing. I'm working away diligently to fix it because then it's a matter of kind of building that enjoyment to some positive momentum and just putting two or three good rounds together. Those are the kinds of things that make it fun. I just haven't done enough of that in the recent past.” 

One of those links in that chain is motivation. Lahiri has 18 professional victories to his name - including two on the European Tour and seven on the Asian Tour - besides being a two-time Olympian and twice Presidents Cup participant. He has plied his craft on the PGA Tour since 2015 but doesn't have a title to show in it thus far. However, it’s the style of golf, and not the sum of success on the Tour, which remains the primary motivating factor for the 34-year-old.     

“Ultimately you have to be motivated towards being able to play the way you want to play. I want to play a certain brand of golf. I want to play aggressively. I want to play the way I have played when I've played well and when I've really gone out there and attacked the golf course and backed myself to pull shots off. 

“I think that's a much greater motivation for me at the moment. Because once I'm able to achieve that, the other things, the secondary motivations, so to speak, like ‘Okay, what am I doing this for?’, then they come into the picture. If you don't have the foundational structure and balance, then the motivation for something else is meaningless,” he said. 

Heading into The Players Championship, Lahiri has been working remotely with his coach while also making slight tweaks to his equipment. The goal is to get better at his iron play and short game.  

“You just have to try to go back to the drawing board, try to clean up the areas that are kind of making the scorecards dirty, so to speak. And then you work your way back from there,” he said. 

Lahiri has had some amount of experience doing that. In the 2020-21 season, the Indian had five missed cuts from seven tournaments at the start of last year, before producing a couple of top-five finishes at the Valero Texas Open (5th) in April and Barbasol Championship (tied-3rd) in July that painted a brighter picture for him deeper into the season.       

“I don't want to wait until the end of the season (this time),” Lahiri said with a chuckle.

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