Why Sports Still Show Up in My Work Life

I spend most of my days thinking about markets, risk, and long-term value. That sounds far away from a golf course or a hockey rink, but for me they connect directly. Golf and ice hockey have been part of my life for a long time, and they have shaped how I think under pressure.

When I was at Goldman Sachs, I learned the technical discipline of investing. You model outcomes, you stress test assumptions, and you make decisions with incomplete information. At Lake Avenue Capital, we do the same things, but we do them in a smaller, more agile environment. Across both places, the mental habits I built through sports have mattered more than I expected.

Sports taught me focus, resilience, patience, and the ability to stay calm when noise is loud. Those are investing skills too, even if they show up in different clothes.

Golf and the Power of Process

Golf is the most honest game I know. There is no clock to save you, no teammate to cover a mistake, and no lucky bounce that lasts for long. You stand over the ball and the result reflects what you did. That kind of accountability forces you to respect the process.

If you want to play decent golf, you cannot reinvent your swing every hole. You pick a routine, you work on it slowly, and you trust it when the moment matters. That is exactly how good investing works.

In markets, it is easy to chase whatever is hot. It is easy to change your view because a headline made you nervous. Golf trained me to do the opposite. You stick to your fundamentals. You do not abandon your process because you hit one bad shot.

When we evaluate an investment, we follow a repeatable framework. We ask the same core questions every time. What is the real value here? What are the risks? What can go wrong and how do we protect against it? Golf reminds me that consistency comes from routine, not from emotion.

Patience Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait

People talk about patience like it is something you either have or you do not. I think patience is trained. Golf trains it every round.

You can be playing well, then suddenly you hit a shot that lands in the rough or worse. You have a choice. You can rush, get angry, and try to force a hero shot. Or you can accept where you are, take your medicine, and play the next shot smart.

Investing is full of those moments. You buy something for solid reasons, then the market moves against you. If your original thesis still holds, the right move is often to wait. Sometimes the right move is to add. The wrong move is to panic because you are uncomfortable.

Golf makes you live with discomfort. It teaches you that the next good decision is not connected to the last bad outcome. That mindset helps me stay steady when markets get choppy.

Hockey and the Value of Fast, Calm Decisions

If golf is a game of patience, hockey is a game of speed. You do not have time to second guess. You diagnose the play, commit, and move. The great players are not the ones who think the most. They are the ones who see clearly, then act without hesitation.

That skill matters in investing too, especially in alternative markets and niche opportunities. At a boutique firm, speed can be a real advantage. You can move on a good idea before it gets crowded. Still, speed without calm is dangerous. Hockey taught me that you play your best when your head is quiet.

On the ice, if you lose your composure, the game speeds up in the worst way. You start chasing instead of reading. You force passes. You drift out of position. The same thing happens to investors who act emotionally. They chase trends, they overtrade, and they lose the bigger picture.

Hockey trained me to make fast decisions while staying grounded. You stay aware of the whole rink. You trust your teammates. You remember the system. That kind of calm speed is what I try to bring to investment decisions under time pressure.

Resilience Means Resetting Quickly

Both sports teach resilience, but in different ways. Golf resilience is quiet. You miss a putt and you have to walk to the next tee and act like it never happened. Hockey resilience is loud. You get scored on and you line up for the next faceoff immediately.

In both cases, the lesson is the same. You cannot carry failure into the next play. You learn from it quickly, then you reset.

Markets punish people who cannot reset. If you cling to a losing position because you are embarrassed, you double down on ego instead of logic. If you refuse to take profit because you want to be right for longer, you turn a good investment into a bad one.

Resilience in investing is not about feeling tough. It is about staying flexible. It is about letting the data guide you instead of letting your pride guide you. Sports built that muscle in me over years of wins and losses that taught the same lesson again and again.

Focus Is About Blocking Out Noise

Golf demands focus because there is room for distraction. You have time to think, and that can be a problem. The mind starts wandering to score, to reputation, to what the last shot felt like. Good golfers learn to narrow their world down to one swing.

Hockey demands focus because there is so much happening at once. Your job is to see what matters and ignore the rest.

Investing today feels like playing both sports at the same time. There is constant information. Markets move on rumors, social media, and short-term sentiment. If you try to react to everything, you end up reacting to nothing well.

Focus means you keep coming back to the fundamentals. If an asset still makes sense based on value and risk, you stay with it even if the crowd is nervous. If it no longer makes sense, you move on even if the crowd is excited. That sounds simple, but it takes discipline. Sports gave me practice in that discipline.

What This Looks Like in the Real World

When our team looks at litigation-linked assets or other alternatives, these sports lessons show up daily. We need patience for long legal timelines. We need process because the space is still developing. We need calm speed when opportunities appear unexpectedly. We need resilience when distributions get delayed or a case outcome surprises us.

That mix of skills is not theoretical. It is a practical edge in a world where many investors are either too slow, too emotional, or too distracted.

Putting Together the Pieces

I love sports because they are real. You cannot fake preparation. You cannot fake composure. You cannot fake a reset after a mistake. Those are habits you build.

Investing is the same. The numbers matter, but the mind matters more. Golf gave me patience and respect for the process. Hockey gave me calm speed and trust in systems. Together, they shaped the way I make decisions in markets.

The older I get in this business, the more I believe that good investing is not about being the smartest person in the room. It is about being the most disciplined when it is hardest to be disciplined. Sports taught me how to do that long before I ever opened a spreadsheet.