Golf Flow

to make sense of golf.
    Sometimes the game can be so elusive that you are left without a clear direction on what to fix. In fact, at the highest levels of competitive golf, what holds golfers back is not that they can’t swing the club properly but that they cannot make any clear sense about the state of their games because what they experience on the course does not always agree with what the objective numbers say. These golfers have access to the best instruction and technology on the planet, yet they still struggle with the multifaceted nature of the game. They may feel like they are playing well, but the money suggests that they are not. They may have confidence in their putting until they realize that they rank near the bottom. They may view themselves as great wedge players until they learn that their average proximity to the hold with a wedge in their hands is not quite as high as they would have thought. Compounding the problem is that the real answer may lie in composite statistics like overall driving or strokes gained in putting, which, while helpful on a general level, do not help isolate a solution.
    In Camilo’s case, it took a long time to make sense of things. From February 2011 to June 2012 we couldn’t quite figure out why he was playing well but couldn’t squeeze a good finish out of a tournament. As usual, the numbers guided us. Accompanying all those great statistics in 2012 were some score-crushing statistics, including these three:
Total putting: 142nd
Sand saves: 151st
Final-round scoring average: 154th
    So which numbers are more indicative of the overall state of a golfer’s game? Even the poor statistics just listed, when combined with statistics such as 4th in greens in regulation for the season and 24th scoring average before cut, can lull you into thinking that there is nothing wrong.
    But as we began to reflect on the previous several years, we realized that while he was doing many things well on the course, he was having the occasional lapse in concentration that, at just the wrong time, might cost important strokes. Another partial cause was that his posture and setup had shifted slightly over the years so that he was now standing more upright. This change rerouted the club and his angle of attack. Camilo has such gifted hands that he can hit shots, even from poor posture. However, occasionally when he didn’t rescue the shot midswing, he would hit foul balls that were much worse than his historical misses. These rogue shots happened only occasionally, but they were definitely costing strokes and spots on the money list.
    That may sound like an easy progression of puzzle solving, but that’s my point about why good psychology is so important to golf: These things are not always obvious. Golf’s elusive nature sometimes means it takes an entire summer, or sometimes an entire season or two, in order to make the right sense of this game. In Camilo’s case, it took combing through a year’s worth of data to finally see the pattern. Performance dips are common, even for history’s greatest players, for the same reason recreational golfers go through slumps: The game requires that golfers go through times with poor results and still maintain confidence. It is something that every golfer has to learn.
    By midsummer 2012, when Camilo began to improve his posture and work on a new routine to focus his concentration, his performance numbers began to look like the numbers of old. Many of his important metrics began to reappear (greens in regulation) and his putting stats improved dramatically as well. And that is when he was able to make 7 of his 8 cuts and begin moving things back in a positive direction.
    While things are still not perfect for Camilo, his experiences present a realistic picture of the ebbs and flows of competitive golf and how being just a little bit off can have a measurable impact on performance statistics. It is this elusive and often frustrating feature of the game that prompted Jack Nicklaus to write, “And that, friends, is the nature of this game, and all you can do about it is lick your wounds and go on and wait for another day, hopefully with at least a wry smile on your face” (Nicklaus 1997, p. 266).
    More often than not, the best thing to do when you’re playing badly is to simply remain very patient, accept that the downturn is a natural part of your development, and trust that if you stick to your process, things will eventually correct themselves.