1/31/19 - Mind the Gap

I believe the time gap between planning and action is what makes golf the hardest game.

In baseball, you do not have time to overthink how to swing at a fastball.

In tennis, there's no time to judge the best way to sprint over to return a ball smashed down the line.

In golf, we've got nothing but time...

Time to be distracted, scared, confused, excited, all sorts of thoughts and emotions... Not an ideal mindset when making an athletic move.



The best we can do on every golf shot is to form an honest plan and wait for honest comfort before pulling the trigger. 

I like to say the plan creates comfort, comfort creates the plan.

Ideally there will be a seamless hand-off of the baton between the planning phase and comfort phase in your mind.

It will help you tremendously to figure out what works for you to make golf more of a reactionary, athletic game.

Here's what seems to work for me:

I feel most comfortable stretching my planning phase all the way up until the beginning of my back swing. This makes the time gap between planning and action as small as possible, in theory promoting a more athletic, reactionary move.

My Process:

First Look

When I first approach the ball on any particular shot, I'm staring at my target visualizing the shot from the ball's perspective. I like to superimpose a shot tracer over the scene in front of me of how I'd like the ball to travel.  When I near the ball, I glance down just to make sure my body is roughly the proper distance from the ball but my conscious attention is still 51%+ visualizing the target and the shot tracer in my mind's eye. 

Second Look

As I move my gaze back to the target one last time, I am still watching the movie of the ball flight from the ball's perspective. Seeing the shot from the ball's perspective helps me do what I need to do subconsciously to achieve the desired plan. It is difficult to be distracted by a swing thought when you are using the majority of your brain power to render a realistic 3D video of your ideal ball flight. I often feel 90% of my brain is at work creating the final visual. During this final glance, my feet, hands, and body adjust automatically to accommodate the desired shot, less than 5% focus is spent in this pursuit. 

Once I'm happy with the look (comfort seeps in), I move my eyes back to the ball while simultaneously beginning my back swing.

That two look process with the trigger being pulled during the final transition from target to ball seems to be my sweet spot.

It's hard to describe in words, it just feels like what I'm meant to do. If I had to try and describe it, it would be like my feeling of preparedness for the shot is perfectly counterbalanced by the acceptance of any outcome, good or bad. I feel like I have done everything in my power now to get a good result in a few moments. I don't feel unprepared, rushed, or antsy. Just content. Comfortable. 

Usually if I've hit a bad shot, I'll have taken an extra look or two during the process, lost the 51% visualization battle to a particular swing thought for a moment, felt something weird or unexpected in my stance, etc.

If at any point something distracts you from your in-flight movie, back off the ball as the plan will only be conjured consistently from a place of comfort, and honest comfort will only arise from honest planning. 

Play around with your process to find your sweet spot.

If you are having trouble, give me a call and we'll figure it out.

413.IWP.GOLF
413.I.WANNA.PLAY.GOLF

1/30/19 - Be the ball, Danny.

Ty Webb, the underachieving trust funder played by Chevy Chase in Caddyshack is famous for encouraging his caddie, Danny, to "be the ball".

All jokes aside, I think this is great advice.

As I've written before, I like to teach golfers how to PLAY golf which involves creating an honest plan followed by waiting for honest comfort before pulling the trigger on each shot.

A golfer must have an arsenal of experience to put together an honest plan based on their capabilities. If you've never hit a solid fairway bunker shot, the ignorance of how to do so will sabotage your plan and comfort from the very start.

If you've hit plenty of solid fairway bunker shots in your life, have a honest plan about what you are trying to do, but still hit a bad shot, it's time to consider what corrupted your honest comfort in that moment.

This could be anything from a swing thought, a distracting sight in your peripheral vision, or your playing partner pulling up blasting "Dirt Road Anthem" on their Bluetooth speaker.

Long story short, once the ball is airborne, you'll know if you felt honest comfort before you pulled the trigger.

What's honest comfort feel like?

I like to think about this from the perspective of driving a car. When you're a brand new driver at 16 years old, you're nervous as hell driving on a curvy road. You're nervous about damaging the car, nervous about confusing the the gas and brake pedals, nervous about accidentally driving off the road, all sorts of stress. Once you've been driving for a few years, a switchback road is fun to drive.

Believe it or not, I actually had a class in college which described fun or "flow" as the sweet spot intersection of one's ability and the perceived challenge at hand. 

As a new driver traversing a winding road, your ability level is quite low relative to the perceived challenge, so it's a miserable experience. A few years later once you've gained experience, the same road honestly feels much less challenging, and often fun to drive. The road has remained constant, what has changed is your ability level and the perceived challenge.

An honest plan is that I am going to drive the Rav to the post office to mail off some OPG swag.

Honest comfort comes from driving the car to the post office, not thinking about driving the car to the post office like I would have when I was 16. 

It is no longer you vs the car in terms of arriving at the destination safely, you are very much working in unison, almost as an embodiment of the car as a whole. You do what you need to do subconsciously from the car's perspective in order to achieve the desired plan of going to the post office without smashing everything along the way. 

So when Ty Webb says, "Be the ball, Danny" he is really saying, do what you need to do subconsciously from the ball's perspective in order to achieve the desired plan.

Come see me at Marsh Lane Golf Center.... nanannananananna

1/15/19 - A better scorecard

Traditional golf scorecards set us up for failure by encouraging us to be outcome oriented vs par. It is my opinion that we are better off challenging ourselves to become fully invested in the process of hitting each shot the best we can. 

Try your best to follow each of the steps mentioned on the attached scorecard for every shot you hit the next time you play golf. 

My hope is that it will help you recognize the correlation between good golf shots and honest planning/honest comfort. 

It will also show you how your bad shots were often doomed before you even pulled the trigger.