Motivation and preparation go hand-in-hand. All great athletes, anglers included, are motivated. And it's interesting that different things motivate different athletes. At the end of last season, I was motivated by failure. I wasn't getting the job done, and I knew had to get myself in gear.
Failure drives some people backward, it depresses them. Others use failure as a motivation.
In the Bassmaster Classic this year, I didn't win, but I was leading after the first day. Kevin VanDam - the best angler in the business - had four pounds on his first day, and he was in 45th place. On the dock before the second day, a reporter asked me what I thought about Kevin's first day, and what did I think he would do on the second day.
I said, "Kevin's never had two bad days in a row that I know about. He takes a bad day personally. Watch what he does today."
He caught more than 18 pounds the second day. Failure drives him.
I heard a really interesting thing last year about motivation and preparation.
Before the Classic, I was one of three anglers that got a chance to film a commercial with Bobby Knight, one of the greatest coaches of all-time. He was still coaching Texas Tech at the time, and Gerald Swindle, Timmy Horton and I went to Lubbock to spend a little time and film a commercial with him.
We joked around a lot. He joked with us and talked to us. But several times he got really serious and told us what he believes makes a champion. I'll never forget when he said to us, "If your desire to win ever exceeds your desire to prepare, you'll fail."
He's absolutely right about that, and it's true of competitive fishing. What that means to us is, if we're motivated coming into a tournament or a tournament season, and we really, really want to well, that's important. But if we only "want it," but we're not willing to go 100 percent in our preparation to win, wanting to win won't help.
Wanting it is a start. But it's not enough.
