An Honest Absence of Doubt
Playing to your capability
consistently involves honesty. I’m not talking about the personal
accountability required by the rules of the game but rather an honest
recognition of your doubt. Doubt is honest and reasonable, a survival instinct
that forces us to think before we act. Doubt is basically a subconscious
calculation off odds. We experience doubt about all sorts of things in life,
and for good reason as bad stuff can happen. While the risks are far less dire
in golf than in life, our minds do not appropriately compensate, as far as our
brain is concerned, doubt is doubt. You might doubt if you have enough club to
cover a bunker, you might doubt if you can draw the ball around a dogleg
without over hooking it, you might doubt you are good enough to win the
tournament, the possibilities are endless, their accompanying noise is equally crippling,
and their cause is the same. Doubt is at its root a symptom of inexperience. If
you were somehow able to know exactly what is going to happen in your life, you
would have no doubt about anything, a predictable, boring existence. I was
struck by a bit in Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special where he commented
that stand-up comedy is no longer fun for him as he’s gotten so good that he
never has any doubt if he is going to put on a good show. Part of the fun in
life is the chance that you will lose. If we won every hand of blackjack, it
would be cool at first but it would eventually become boring. Luckily for us,
golf is an unbeatable game involving unlimited levels of doubt. You cannot excise
doubt with a scalpel of positive thoughts as this is simply treating the
symptom instead of the disease. If we agree that doubt is a symptom of
inexperience, the only treatment is to gain experience until you have an honest
understanding of what you can and cannot do. This could mean hitting enough
balls until you know your average seven iron is going to carry around one
hundred seventy-five yards, this could mean knowing you can hit a spinny cut in
the fairway nine times out of ten, this could mean knowing you can’t
consistently draw the ball around the corner so you shouldn’t try, this could
mean honestly knowing if you play your typical game, you will easily make the
cut. As you gain experience, your honest understanding of your capabilities
become clearer. The key in competitive golf is to hit as many shots as possible
you honestly know you can hit and avoid scenarios where you must dance with doubt.
This paves the way for an
interesting chicken or egg debate in the golf instruction world. The ultimate
question is: how should we teach students to shoot lower scores more
consistently? There are essentially two opinions in this debate. The first opinion
is that you lower scores by improving swing mechanics. The aim is to make a
more precise motion, the tighter the tolerances, the smaller the misses, the
lower the scores. The second opinion is to lower scores by improving access to existing
capabilities. The aim is to dampen extraneous information in the player’s mind
like noise cancelling headphones, so the player is able to access their capabilities
more consistently, place the ball more predictably, and shoot lower scores. As
with most things, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but I’d argue it
leans more toward the second opinion for one reason:
Most golfers simply
do not have the time to repeat a new motion sufficiently to have it re-code their
baseline muscle memory. Even if you are able to eventually make a new swing yours,
this still may not be good enough. I’m reminded of the Sisyphus parable where
the guy spends eternity pushing a boulder to the top of a hill but never quite
gets to the summit before the rock falls back down to the bottom. Unless a
student has a totally clean slate or unending patience and work ethic, the swing
will eventually revert back to a more comfortable place in a stressful money
game or tournament. If this comfortable place produces a somewhat predictably accurate
outcome, I’d argue the student’s swing is good enough, and they should spend
their time learning to play the best version of their game. There are lots of “ugly”
swings that have won lots of money on the PGA Tour. However, there are
different tiers of good enough. To play the game at the highest level, you must
be able to control distance and trajectory which requires a deep war chest of experience,
aka skills. If a player has any honest doubt about their ability to win a
professional event, they simply do not have sufficient experience. Experience
takes time and unlike Sisyphus, we don’t live forever, so would we rather spend
our time chasing an unknown ability or refining a known one. That decision yours,
but in the meantime, I’d encourage you to learn to play great golf with your
flawed swing using the principles of Steven Yellin’s “Fluid Motion Factor”
Program. Steven’s online program is the best investment I’ve made in golf, and
I’m excited to begin teaching the principles myself as my personal competitive
playing journey nears its end. You can learn more about “The Fluid Motion
Factor” at www.fluidmotiongolf.com
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