Winning in Business Like Jim Furyk Wins in Golf

This weekend is The Open championship. The Open, commonly known as The British Open here in the United States, is the premier major golf tournament in Europe. It features the best players around the world competing at the oldest and most prestigious golf venue, St. Andrews.

Nearly 200 of the world’s best golfers, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth, will compete to win the top prize, the Claret Jug. The world of professional golf is cutthroat, competitive, and arduous. These players and many others will exert an extra level physical and emotional strength to win this major.

Much like in the business world, there are many players and the competition can be fierce. However, only a few businesses turn out to be winners. You can learn a lot from the style and habits of the most prominent business winners or the most rapidly expanding companies, but those traits may not be so easy to duplicate.

Instead, to truly win in business, focus on longevity, focus on consistency, and focus on character. In other words, to truly win in business, you need to win like Jim Furyk wins in golf.

Undeniably, even for those that do not follow professional golf, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are widely regard as household names. More recently, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth can be added to the list of household names as truly great and rising stars in the game of golf. But for those that do not follow golf, here’s a name you might not know: Jim Furyk.

Jim Furyk has been playing golf professional since 1992. Since then, Jim has climbed to number four on the all-time money earning list, collecting nearly $65,000,000. Mr. Furyk has won 17 tournaments, including the 2003 U.S. Open. His first tournament victory came in 1995 and he most recently won in April of this year. He also won the 2010 FedEx Cup. Since 1996, he has collected 22 top-10 finishes out of 75 major appearances. 

Yet, despite all of these accolades, you probably have not heard much of Jim Furyk outside of the golfing world. That is exactly how Jim Furyk likes to win. He focuses on longevity, consistency, and character. And that is exactly how you should plan to win in business.

In the business world, we are often caught up with the greatest of all time or the brightest stars of today. Think of the IBMs, the Coca-Cola’s, the Berkshire Hathaway’s, and the AT&T’s of the world. These companies are behemoths that have been winning in business for a very long time. Everybody knows who they are and everybody likes to talk about them. In the golfing world, you can compare them to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Then, there are the rising stars of the business world that everyone can’t stop talking about. Think of the Ubers, Facebooks, and the Teslas of the world. These are new companies with new ideas that are out to change the world. In the golfing world, rising stars like Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth are looking to shift the conversation to the next generation of stars.

While there is nothing wrong with being a big company or a growing business, are you focusing on the right things to win in your business? Are you focusing on longevity? Are you focusing on consistency? And are you focusing on character? Jim Furyk has been playing golf professional for over 20 years, winning a tournament nearly every season, ranks number four on the all-time career earnings list, and has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars through his foundation.

If you focus on winning in your business like Jim Furyk focuses on winning in golf, you can truly be one of the great companies.