Allie White, second-year member on the Epson Tour, will be sharing her adventures throughout the 2014 season. If you, the fans, have a question or topic you'd like Allie to cover just e-mail us at Epson Tour. Be sure to take a look back at her blogs from her 2013 Rookie season.

Hard Work!

This past Tuesday the American World Cup team took a gut wrenching loss to Belgium in overtime. Even in defeat I hope you took a real good look at USA World Cup Captain Clint Dempsey’s face. His nose is broken, his eyes are dark and deep, and his jaw set. Everything about the dude says hard work, effort, persistence. Even then, sometimes we don’t win.

Sometimes we do. Think back to a week ago when American Michelle Wie won the U.S. Women’s Open. It was a gutsy victory. Perhaps no golfer besides Tiger gets ridden by the media harder than Michelle Wie, but despite constant observance and many failures preceding this victory she not only won the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open but she did it with more class than most and a college degree that she earned for herself. All of the ups and downs of her life led her to that smart double bogey, incredibly clutch birdie, finishing par, USGA Championship.

Okay, now take a moment to think about your fellow American regular folks. Like Dempsey and Wie, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. And even though every American might not be able to score a goal in the World Cup or win the U.S. Open, chances are, just like Dempsey and Wie, if your friends are anything like mine, there is a lot of hard work that goes into their jobs.

This was very apparent with the three host families I stayed with the past few weeks. I had an editor, a hospital marketer and a salutatorian with me in Decatur; in South Bend, Amy, a pharmacists was working on her MBA; and finally Yvonne in the Michigan had spent years working as an orthodontist assistant.

Personally I have quite a few friends who I am really proud of for what they do. (I get a little annoyed when I hear some folks comment about my generation being lazy or apathetic because it just isn’t so.) My roommate, Christopher is a Music Teacher/ IT man/ and Behavioral specialists at our local charter school not to mention a wonderful wedding pianists. My friend Ridge just got work as a flight attendant. Friends Erin, Mary Catherine, Zack and Allie all work for the community either in social work, helping with school behavioral issues, or job placement for mentally challenged folks. Brooke is a pharmacists, Nick is a 70 hours a week finance guy, Nora is going to run that bank, Blake and Ben cook all day at the grill, Dan is an army intel guy in Afghanistan now, Kevin-public health. That is a short list but you get the idea. Not to mention, I have like 200 co-workers busting their butts on the practice green every off week trying to win one of the 20 Epson Tour tournaments out here. And then there are my friends working those golf tournaments. They spend days on the road and the mornings are early.

We all idolize outstanding professional athletes for their gifts and hard work. The truth is though that great champions are a concentration and representation of the best things that are spread out in all of us. That is why we love it so much when we watch our NFL team pull down a touchdown because we know what it’s like to stand out there and beat balls for hours, or to work a fifteen hour day cooking at the grill, or to spend that extra hour helping out a student with his or her math homework. Win or lose we go do the work.

So I have a kind of love for all of my American co-workers even though life is competitive as well. From the folks who work on the 40 hours of highways I just drove, to my mom who busted it as a caddie for me in Decatur and South Bend (and has worked hard her whole life), to our American World Cup Team-- You go! I’m proud. Happy Fourth of July to all and it is good to be here!!!

Inside the Ropes with Allie White

Related Articles