Golf Flow

family. I enjoy life as a professional golfer. I think it’s a great life. It’s a great way to make a living. And I feel awfully fortunate.
    The crucial point here is that Matt doesn’t only love golf when he’s playing well. He loves everything about the game—the highs and the lows, the challenges and the successes. To put Matt’s remark into perspective, realize that he made it after a disappointing finish.
    Also note that he won a PGA Tour event in 2002 and promptly went into a prolonged slump. It was during this slump that he decided to revamp both his golf swing and his attitude.
    When people say that they too would love golf if they made a million dollars a year playing it, they’re guilty of reverse causality. Matt doesn’t love golf because he makes money at it. Matt makes money at golf because he loves it. He loved it when he was struggling, and that’s what took him from losing his card to receiving the 2010 Byron Nelson Award for lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour.
    As part of my doctoral program I took a course in human achievement. For one assignment my advisor gave me the task of exploring the underlying patterns of excellence, not just in athletics but across achievement domains. “Research the best of the best, Gio,” my advisor said, “and look for the patterns. What do they all have in common?” That question has been the cornerstone of my work for the past 15 years.
    At a general level, the patterns are common and well known: discipline, work ethic, practice, intelligence, composure, and commitment. You can peruse the self-help section of any bookstore and find no shortage of advice on living a better life. But there are also intangible variables such as interest, engagement, enthusiasm, and love for what you’re doing! It is well documented that people generally fall into flow when doing their favorite activities, so keeping alive the passion for the game helps fertilize the field for flow.

Keeping It Real
    To illustrate, in his 2009 book
Born to Run
, author Christopher McDougall chronicles the modern phenomenon of distance runners who make traditional 26-mile (42 km) marathons seem like wind sprints. These ultramarathoners tend to think of 42 miles (68 km) as their normal distance, and sometimes run more than 75 miles (120 km) at a clip. While exploring this unique subset of the population, McDougall uncovered the life of a native tribe who live in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico called the
Tarahumara
, a people who are widely recognized as the leading distance runners on the planet. The Tarahumara not only run superhuman distances but do it on a diet based largely on corn meal and beer and while wearing simple leather wraps on their feet in lieu of pricey running shoes. Even more amazing is that the Tarahumara rarely report fatigue, illness, or injury.
    Many explanations have been offered for the high-performance running capabilities of this tribe, but none are more compelling than their psychological traits, which contrast strikingly with those of American runners. While the Tarahumara were increasing their distances and lowering their times, America’s best distance runners were doing the exact opposite. The people running in leather straps and drinking beer were improving, whereas those eating energy bars and running in the most technologically advanced running shoes ever created were getting worse. According to McDougall,
By the early ’80s, the Greater Boston Track Club had half a dozen guys who could run a 2:12 marathon. That’s six guys in one club in one city. Twenty years later you couldn’t find a single 2:12 marathoner anywhere in the country. . . . So what happened? How did we go from leader of the pack to lost and left behind?
    The American approach . . . was too artificial and grabby. Too much about getting stuff and getting it now. It wasn’t art; it was business, a hard-nosed quid pro quo. No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end, then why stick with it if you weren’t getting enough quo for your quid?
    McDougall explores the decline of American running in more depth and in doing so asks a number of provocative questions that could be applied to the game of golf:
How is it that all the research and technology of modern science has reduced the progress in running?
How do the Tarahumara incur fewer injuries without access to modern shoes?
How does cornmeal fuel them better than our modern-day energy bars