Lessons From Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate

With the U. S. Open Golf Championship in San Diego
this past week, there were many stories about how
the golf course had been prepared to challenge the
golfers and to identify the champion.

Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate battled over 91 holes
with Tiger persevering for the Championship. If you
follow sports at all, you now know that he was
competing with a torn ACL in his left knee, and had
two stress fractures in his tibia and played through
the pain to win.

The drama of the golf tournament provides an analogy
to the mortgage business in today's environment.

**The USGA took the Torrey Pines Golf Course from a
forgiving layout that allowed the players to achieve
low scores, and created a new layout that challenged
the players on every decision for every shot on every
hole.

Over the last year in the mortgage business we have
seen the underwriting standards go from a lenient
approach that allowed most borrowers to be approved
on their loan requests, to a restrictive environment
that challenges borrowers and mortgage originators to
strategize every step of the process.

Because the underwriting changes have "toughened up"
the course, borrowers and originators can no longer
only rely on techniques that worked in the past. A
fresh approach to the process is required: doing new
research of underwriting guidelines and changes,
talking with the lenders' representatives and our
peers about what tactics can be successful, and dev-
eloping a new experience base in this new lending
world.

**Rocco Mediate was quoted as saying that there were
many ways to be successful on the golf course. Even
though Tiger Woods was able to hit the ball farther
than Mediate, Rocco was still able to compete by
executing the shots in his arsenal extremely well.

When we consider that the goal for the borrower and the
originator is to have a lender approve the loan request
with acceptable terms and conditions, we must also
realize that there are many ways to accomplish this goal.

As a mortgage broker, we have access to over 50 lenders,
and they each compete in many categories of lending.
Some of these lenders may be more concerned with the
property, others less so. Some lenders may be more
concerned with credit histories, others less so. Some
lenders may be more concerned with the debt-to-income
analysis, others less so. Some lenders may be focusing
on the amount of money borrowers have in checking, savings,
investment and retirement funds, others less so.

A golfer is allowed 14 clubs in their bag to be used as
tools for different situations. An old saying is that if
your only tool is a hammer, you will treat everything like
a nail.

This is always what has differentiated us as mortgage
brokers from direct lenders. When you walk into a bank
branch, as an example, they will have a limited menu
of loan choices and they will try to fit you into one of
their loan products, whether it is the best thing for you
or not. If they are even aware of a better choice for you
that the bank does not offer, it would be the rare case
for them to recommend that you seek the better loan else-
where.

As a broker, we start with understanding your goals, your
risk tolerance, your time horizons, and your priorities.
We serve as an advocate for you to the lenders. Because
we have access to so many more lenders and lending programs
than the direct lender has, we do a better job of finding
custom solutions to fit your needs.

**Tiger Woods is probably the most gifted athlete of our
time when it comes to mental toughness. One of the traits
that is so admirable is that he focuses on what he needs
to do to get the ball into the hole from where the ball
lies, and does not carry a lot of mental baggage about the
quality of the last shot that put him into that position.

He understands that he may hit the "perfect" golf shot,
but the result may not be what he wanted. He can only
try to hit the next "perfect" shot to get him closer to
his goal.

In our business right now, we have to develop that same
mental toughness.

We can develop a game plan based on your priorities and
what is important to you. We can make sure that the lender
we have chosen offers the best program for you, and
research the guidelines to develop a sense of confidence
that your loan request is compatible with what they are
offering. We can strategize about the best way to package
your loan request to show all the favorable reasons why
the lender should approve it for you.

But we can't always know if we are going to get the
"bad bounce". The underwriter may have received a
directive that morning saying that guidelines were
tightening, and it may be something that specifically
applied to your request. All our best efforts to put
together the "perfect" package did not give us the
immediate result we wanted.

That's is where we need to focus on how to get the loan
request from where it now stands to an approved status.
It takes patience, research, knowledge, experience, and
the willingness not to give up when confronted with a
new obstacle that was not able to be anticipated.

When you pick the right person to work with, you know
that they are using their best efforts to help you get
what you want. Obstacles will arise, and it may put
our hearts in our throats, just like Tiger Woods faced
repeatedly.

We are measured by our honesty, integrity, communication
skills and our tenacity to do everything we possibly
can to achieve the final goal for you. We want to put
that Championship trophy on the shelf for you!