Golf Flow

speed and hit long irons the perfect distance. Although they always talk about the amount of control that they feel, they universally state that forcing such control is impossible. If you’re a golfer, then you fully understand the impossibility of trying to force a shot to go where you want it to go. That is true for golfers at all levels: The act of consciously trying to control is famously counterproductive and produces the kind of overthinking and subsequent tension that makes the control that emerges from mental freedom, and the corresponding flow states, virtually impossible to achieve.
    To understand the paradox of control and make a huge leap toward getting into flow with more regularity, ask yourself two simple questions:
What is the purpose of practice in golf?
Why do professional golfers spend so much time rehearsing their golf swings on the driving range?
    As simple and seemingly obvious as the answers to these questions are, I find that few golfers truly understand the purpose of their practice. Understanding the purpose of practice and the way that skills develop helps golfers transfer those skills to the golf course as well as create the best mind-set for peak performance.
    As you delve a little further into the neuropsychological explanation of why we practice, you begin to uncover a mystifying and exciting universe—a universe that elucidates and deciphers Adam Scott’s 11-shot thumping of the world’s best golfers. This universe is inhabited by scientists in lab coats who rarely leave their labs long enough to think of Adam Scott or playing golf. I know, because I’ve spent time with these self-named lab geeks and have come to find that they are as passionate about their work as PGA Tour golfers are about their work. The result of their passion has been a decade of discovery about how learning takes place at a physical, structural, neural level.
    It all begins with understanding a substance in the brain called myelin. Although scientists have known about myelin for years, they’ve spent much of that time ignoring its role in learning and skill development.

Myelin Matters
    To illustrate how learning occurs and why myelin should matter to you, consider an experiment that I recently conducted with a student in my sport psychology class at Rollins College. I set up cameras in the front of the classroom, where I have built a mock putting green. I ask the student to take the putter and try to make a 6-foot (2 m) putt on the artificial green that I’ve laid over the carpet. With the entire class watching, she lines up over the ball, aims the putter in the general direction of the hole, and makes a jerky, clumsy stroke that hits the ball without any grace or touch. The ball speeds by the hole, missing in both direction (it is left of the hole) and speed (as it rolls 6 feet past). The student pulls another ball in front of her, aims a little better, adjusts her feet, hips, and arms, and makes a softer, less chaotic, and overall better stroke. Although the second ball still misses the hole, it stops inches from the hole, an improvement in both direction and speed. The third try takes her less time to get into an even better position at address, less time to start her stroke, and less time to hit the ball, which rolls with flawless speed into the cup. She smiles and the class cheers.
    What the class witnessed was our participant learning through the process of self-correction, with no instruction whatsoever. What’s even better for my students is that I’ve captured it all on film so that the class can watch it a dozen times in slow motion to dissect exactly what happened.
    We are able to see several things. As the trials proceeded, the student’s focus changed. Rather than look out in the general direction of the hole, her eyes narrow in their focus. In succession, she begins to trace the track that the ball will take on its way toward the hole. With her eyes fixed on the target, she adjusts her hips, feet, and hands so that they are pointing more in the direction of the hole. She adjusts and readjusts her grip a few times until it feels just right. What began as a jerky, recoiled stroke becomes a more committed, determined, complete stroke that follows the ball down the line and into the hole. In the microseconds after the hit, we can see her eyes and head lift, because she is eager to see whether the ball is on line. This habit of peeking is something that I would correct in my clients.
    But we