Golf Flow

the only path toward expert performance is through abundant repetition, deliberately crafted, over long periods.
    I have spent 15 years traveling with, teaching, learning from, and studying the world’s greatest golfers. I can attest that they all worked hard for a long time. Players do not excel at the game because the game comes more easily to them than it does to everyone else. They have become the best in large part because of their ability to persist and to absorb the difficulties of bad golf better than those who fail to achieve excellence. In other words, regardless of talent or pedigree, no one is immune from golf’s inherent difficulty. If you plan to improve, you shouldn’t expect to avoid adversity; rather, you should prepare your mind to absorb adversity. Anyone who doubts this fact should track the careers of the top 100 junior golfers over a 20-year period. If excellence were primarily inherited, then the attrition rate would not be as large as it is and the game would not leave behind so many casualties.
    This explanation is not meant to be negative or discouraging. I simply believe that the best way to improve at golf is to be realistic and accurate about the inherent nature of the game so that you can effectively prepare for the implicit ups and downs. What do you say, for instance, about a game in which one of the best players in the world, Sergio Garcia, can make a 12 on a par 4 (as he did at the 2012 World Golf Championships at Doral)? What do you say about a game in which another one of the best players in the world, Ryo Ishikawa, can shoot an 85 at the 2011 PGA Championship in a round that included five double bogeys, no birdies, and one triple bogey?
    In a book titled
Extraordinary Minds
, Harvard educator and psychologist Howard Gardner dismisses the notion that greatness can ever emerge solely from genetic traits. He points out that Mozart practiced so hard under the tutelage of his father that his skill was myelinated just as any other skill would be. Further, Gardner explains, to move forward, “Mozart had to make sharp and difficult breaks—a break from his teachers and models, a break from the accepted practices, and most painfully, a break from his father.”
    Similarly, besides spending a great deal of time honing their craft, all top golfers whom I have met have had to endure painful experiences and failures. Outstanding players not only suffer occasional defeat in competition but also face adversity on a daily basis. In their hours of regular practice, golfers miss shots they “should” make and keep right on practicing. Through this relentless dedication to work through adversity, golfers become more resilient.
    Like any other habit, resilience is strengthened through experience and practice. Albert Bandura, former president of the American Psychological Association, coined the term
normative failure
to explain why successful people are generally those who fail the most and keep on persisting. “When failure is the norm,” Bandura contends, “resilience becomes second nature.”
    Renowned for beating balls until his hands bled, Ben Hogan was famous for his work ethic and his success: 64 PGA Tour wins, 9 major championships, World Golf Hall of Fame membership. Common golfing lore has it that, while he was alive, Hogan would have a recurring dream in which he would make 17 hole-in-ones, only to lip out on the 18th hole for a 2.
    Golf torments and teases golfers of all levels. Just when you are ready to quit, that magical round appears. Then with newly raised expectations, you can’t putt, can’t drive, or can’t chip. You go through stretches where you hit it pure, but can’t make a putt and as soon as you figure out your putting, your driver takes a vacation. With rare exception, these are the recurring, agonizing tales of golfers everywhere.
    In terms of the mental suffering involved, golf shares commonalities with distance running, cycling, and triathlon. A client once told me that golf does to the brain what boxing does to the body!

Golf Is Not an Easy Game—Except When It Is
    Against this backdrop of overwhelming challenge we find the anomaly of the flow state. When golfers describe playing golf while in flow, they almost universally report the game as being effortless. Even more interesting is that the aftermath of effortless flow leaves golfers feeling exhausted and in a state of fatigue that we see only after an athlete has expended enormous amounts of energy