Golf Flow

following the same routine while playing a round in competition. Play each shot as if it were part of an actual round.
    Ben Hogan
All my life I’ve tried to hit practice shots with great care. I try to have a clear-cut purpose in mind on every swing. I always practice as I intend to play. And I learned long ago that there is a limit to the number of shots you can hit effectively before losing your concentration on your basic objectives. I have to believe that some of the guys who virtually live on the practice tee are there because they don’t have anything better to do with their time. And I have to believe they often weaken their games by letting their practice become pointless through sheer monotony or fatigue.
    Jack Nicklaus
At a tournament, I don’t really spend a whole lot of time there on the range, or even on the putting green or anything like that. When I get to a tournament site, I feel like my game should be ready. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t play as many weeks as a lot of these guys do, because I spend a lot of time practicing at home. I do most of my preparation at home. Once I’m at a tournament site, I’m there just to find my rhythm, tune up a little bit, and get myself ready to go play the next day.
    Tiger Woods
    Hogan, Nicklaus, and Woods all practiced with purpose. Hogan didn’t simply hit balls. He hit balls while developing his powers of concentration. Hogan knew that those two things—the physical movement of the golf ball and the mental act of concentration—become associated through repetition and time. Indeed, the meaningful elements of practice will group together into a cohesive framework when you are practicing the right way in a process known to cognitive psychologists as chunking.
    Nicklaus was also working to habituate high levels of concentration while also attending to the third principle of skill acquisition outlined by Anders Ericsson: limited, focused practice sessions that had clear purpose. In reading his comment that “my game should be ready,” you can interpret that as “my habits should be ready.” If you practice effectively—purposefully with high levels of concentration—then you will not have to think about those habits on the golf course. They will already be there.
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Habit and Flow
    By now, I am sure that you have made the connection between practice habits and flow. Flow is a state of mind characterized by effortless effort and a quiet mind. Almost every golfer I spoke to about their flow states attested to the fact that they have few, if any, technical thoughts while they are in flow. All they have to do is think about the target or the shot that they want to hit, and they can execute the shot with ease.
    Regular, deliberate practice develops habits by wrapping myelin around neurons that make circuits fire with more efficiency. When it comes to practice, there is no substitute for careful, focused, repetition. As Daniel Coyle wrote in
The Talent Code
, “Nothing you can do—talking, thinking, reading, imagining—is more effective in building skill than executing the action, firing the impulse down the nerve fiber, fixing errors, honing the circuit” (Coyle 2009, p. 87). The more you practice, the more your habits follow the rules of automaticity. That is to say, the more you repeat an action, over time the less you have to think about that action. Actions become automated in the brain. And characteristics of automaticity share many characteristics with flow: unthinking, automated habits that emerge when we are not consciously thinking about them.

Improving Your Skills
    All this research leads us to some practical applications as they relate to effective practice in golf. Practice in golf consists primarily of two types: practice to ingrain the mechanics of a swing, short-game shot, or putting stroke and practice to compete. Time on the range practicing your golf swing is undoubtedly time well spent. But while you are paying attention to your take-away or your position at the top, that process is becoming a habit. In other words, the more times that you repeat a move while putting your attention on that move, the more habituated both the move and the focus become. And that process is what is required to ingrain a sound habit. The problem is that if you were to go out and try to play on the golf course, you would likely find it difficult to hit many good shots because your focus would automatically go to where your hands are at the