Every single thing he says in that video is correct. How is that being hard on himself?
There's probably a couple of different ways of looking at it.
If I were out on tour and finishing where he's finishing, I might say to myself, "Man, I really wish I was finishing higher. But 980 golf ain't too bad, and I'm having lots of new experiences traveling to these new places and playing in these really cool tournaments."
He seems to not have that attitude. He's saying "Man, I really wish I was finishing higher. I'm not playing good enough, I'm not playing smart enough, this sucks. What's the point in playing if I'm not even giving myself a chance to finish well?"
What he said in his video is completely true if he thinks he should finish in the top X% of the field. And that's a decision only he can make. Is it worth it to keep playing if you're gonna keep finishing in the bottom half of the field? There's a lot of casual joes out there who have spent the last 20 years improving from 850 to 890, and that's totally cool if they're cool with it.
Not necessarily my personal opinion, but it was really easy back in April to say, "dude, why are you signing up for DGPT events? Take a year playing B tiers and get your feet wet and figure out how to play." And now that he's stepping off the tour it's easy to say "Jeez, stick with it. Don't run away just because it turns out golf is a little tricky at times."
That is to say, it's pretty easy to criticize anything anyone does from my couch.
