Golf Flow

final look at the hole and beginning his stroke, he intentionally allows his vision to become blurry, his physical trigger for letting automaticity take over. I’ve heard similar reports from scores of PGA Tour golfers who putt well with their eyes closed. Of course, sensory information often interrupts automaticity, so these reports make sense.
    Indeed, automaticity theorists would argue that greatness in golf—in fact, greatness in any endeavor—boils down to the ability to turn oneself over to automaticity and let awareness fade out to the blurry periphery where automatic processes lead to greatness.
We must be sure, however, that the habits we’ve turned over to the automatic pilot of our subconscious mind are excellent habits that have been formed and nurtured through careful preparation, execution, and effort.
Indeed, when the magic influence of flow on awareness is combined with the paradoxes of control, effort, and time, the result is the uncanny ability to make highly complex decisions quickly and efficiently. Tiger captured all four—time, effort, control, and awareness—in the following summary:
The best way to describe it is that is the only thing that’s going to happen. The ball will go in the hole. I think when my concentration is at its absolute peak . . . I have what I would describe as a blackout moment, where I don’t remember later actually performing it. I would never say that I have telekinesis, but I do think when I am in that moment when my concentration is the highest, when it’s at its peak, I see things more clearly, and things happen slower, and I think they happen easier.
    The paradox of awareness is characterized by being completely focused on the task at hand while also being vaguely aware of discreet features that seem unrelated to the experience itself—a breeze, a memory from childhood, the sound a leaf makes as it is stepped on. This concept is not new.
    Buddhists use the term
kensho
to describe the sudden bursts of enlightenment that people sometimes feel. As with flow, one of the characteristics of kensho is the realization of nonduality of subject and object or, to put it in flow terms, the merging of the individual with the task that he or she is doing so that the person becomes one with the task. Finally, kensho is characterized by a blissful realization whereby a person’s inner nature, the originally pure mind, is directly known as an illuminating emptiness. Although flow is a present-day construct that lives under the scrutiny of modern science, with all its empirical demands and technologies, the historical references to kensho provide a rich, descriptive, and timeless understanding of this transcendent state.

Part II
Your Flow Toolbox
    Flow states emerge from disciplined processes, a focus on the present moment, high levels of awareness and emotional control, and commitment to energizing the right frame of mind.
    But flow is not simply a cognitive activity. We don’t just think our way into flow. Although flow is partly a cognitive change in the sense that we think differently about experiences, we also have to feel and behave our way into flow.
    Sustained hard work, a sincere desire to master the task for its own sake, willingness to evolve as an athlete and person, commitment to persevere in the face of difficulty, and a firm belief in yourself and your abilities are the tools for flow highlighted in this section.
    Flow has a motivational component in that the quality of our experiences is tied to the underlying reasons why we are engaging those experiences in the first place. Flow maximizes the skills that you’ve developed, but there are no shortcuts when it comes to developing those skills. A special kind of motivation is required to continue working on something, such as skill development, that doesn’t provide an immediate, highly pleasurable reward. Practice sessions don’t always go as planned. Some days you show up and you are hooking it. On other days you are slicing it. Some days you’re skulling it, and on others you’re hitting it fat. But to improve, you have to force yourself to stay there on the driving range, digging it out of the dirt until you find something that works.
    To be truly successful, you have to love the game, and not just the rewards or accolades, because in golf we all go long stretches without any tangible, external rewards. Those who play for glory fall victim to distractions and often fail to achieve what they seek.