“No golf for at least a month,” my doctor said, taping up my wrist. I felt frustrated and disappointed; I had expected to join my team’s starting lineup, maybe even rank among the top five varsity golfers. All of that changed early in the 2014 season. One day, after practice, I felt a terrible soreness in my wrist. When I swung, it felt like a needle was piercing me. I knew that couldn’t be good. Soon it hurt even to hold a club. The coach saw how much pain I was in and didn’t think I should be playing through it. She taught me a bunch of wrist exercises and sent me home.

I started getting up early to do the exercises, and worked my way up to tentative practice swings at the back of our house. My “putting green” was in our courtyard, surrounded by shrubs and bamboo, all green and white and serene at 6:00 a.m., with nobody else around or even awake. Even the birds in the big oak tree had not yet begun their morning chorus. Eventually, I was able to start playing again, but I couldn’t shoot below 95. My season was a wash, but all that summer I kept working hard on my drives, chips, and putts, usually starting at dawn. I was determined to bounce back and finally claim my rightful spot on the 2015 team roster.

Slowly but surely, I started shooting around 85. By the time tryouts rolled around, I felt unstoppable. I won the skills challenge and earned my varsity position. When I arrived for the first day of practice in August, I knew nothing would stand in my way or in the way of our team. Thanks to hard work, a positive attitude, camaraderie, and team spirit, this was going to be our year.

We lost our first tournament, a pretty big upset in a match we had expected to win. “No reason to panic,” I told myself. “We’re just getting started.” I was right: we had plenty more losing to do. With each tournament, our scores climbed higher and morale sank lower. I fantasized about single-handedly saving the team, but something strange kept happening. At practice, I could drive the ball farther than any of my teammates, but in tournament play I simply couldn’t hit with the same power and accuracy. My skills were there, but always failed me when it counted most. I played well when it didn’t matter, horrendously when it did. After one particularly devastating loss, I was benched—the worst player on a losing team.

Luckily, I had a perceptive coach. Seeing that I was in a major slump, she recommended that I go out and try to remember what I liked most about the game. Remembering that I had told her that, more than anything else, I love playing golf with my dad, from whom I inherited my passion for the game and with whom I’ve been playing my entire life (yes, it’s our special daddy-daughter thing), she suggested that my father and I spend some quality time on the links. It turned out to be just what I needed. Playing a leisurely eighteen holes with my dad brought me back to those first days on the course, when it was just him and me and maybe a couple of his friends or customers, not worrying about scores or driving distances—just laughing, chatting, and enjoying time together. For the first time in a while, golf felt like an enjoyable pursuit rather than an exercise in frustration.

Back at practice, my brightened outlook caused me to reassess my situation. I realized that, even if I wasn’t playing well, I could still do my part to boost the team’s morale. To reinsert some fun into what had come to seem like an interminable chore, I invented a hodgepodge of games that my teammates and I could play whenever we began to feel that all our efforts were futile—little contests like seeing who could get their ball closest to a certain tree before making the green or trying to land a drive between two sand traps. Any time one of my teammates seemed exasperated or downtrodden at practice, I’d suggest playing one of these games. More often than not, it would do the trick, eliciting smiles from teammates who had been close to throwing in the towel. With each of these smiles, I felt like I had made a hole-in-one. As I turned my attention from my own performance to the wellbeing of my teammates, I began to realize that the game was not all about me—that by focusing on others, I was able to make a bigger impact on our team’s performance than if I had continued to focus on myself.

Little by little, our scores began to improve—mine included. I managed to reclaim my varsity spot just in time for the mission league finals, and I played better—and with less stress—than I had managed to do all season. It probably helped that we had nowhere to go but up. We didn’t achieve anything spectacular, but after our last tournament, I wasn’t the only one smiling, and I don’t think anybody was forcing it. We had a good time, we felt like a team, and I walked away with a new take on the game. I still push myself to do my best, but I’ve come to realize that, in golf, as in so many other pursuits, it’s not just about you. I’ll always feel the need to beat my best score, and to outdistance my longest drive – and that’s okay. But I’ve also learned that even more important is keeping it all in perspective and seeing that there is a bigger picture. You can make a difference not just with your ability, but even better, with your attitude.