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Article

Psychology and Golf

23-07-2009

This year’s British Open finished last Sunday. Tiger Woods had missed the cut. Tom Watson, aged 59 years, lost the title in a play-off to Stewart Cink.

Woods is the outstanding player of the 300,000,000 people who play the game worldwide. His predecessor in that role, Jack Nicklaus, said of Woods “that young man is playing a game I don’t understand”. Such is the new level to which Woods has propelled his skill.

So, the best player had, for him, two uncharacteristically bad days. Also, a 59 year old, who last won a golf tournament 32 years ago, played like a man possessed for the entire tournament.

The vast majority of amateur golfers receive handicaps exceeding 18 shots per round, yet even they can identify with Woods’ predicament and with Thompson’s euphoria. We also gain some insight about the inherent difficulties of the game and the common psychological dilemmas it produces.

No withstanding the constant flow of equipment aimed at making the game easier, one basic issue remains. We are trying to use a small piece of metal attached to a long shaft to contact a small, solid ball. This ball is propelled over varying distances and trajectories towards a small hole. This is occurring in variable weather conditions and over variable terrain, craftily designed to make the whole process a test of our skill at doing so.

It is no surprise that Woods or Nicklaus are happy to admit that they only hit one or two perfect golf shots per round.

A walk around any suburban golf course will likely expose us to the antics of a range of humans, not all of it pretty. They don’t play the game for a living yet often behave as if their very livelihood depended on their ability to do so

Success or Failure

One of the key psychological features of golf is the constant, repeated reminders we receive about success or failure. Every shot attempted is evaluated according to some personal rating scale. The problem is that this scale usually has only two possible outcomes – success or failure. There are not as many shades of grey as there should be. This hints at an expectation we have of perfection (or the lack of it) every time we hit the ball and yet, at an intellectual level we all know how rarely the perfect shot is hit, even by the greats.

The very nature of perfection is that it is something to be aspired to rather than actually attainable. As soon as gymnasts started scoring 10’s the bar had to be raised.

This drama is played out usually in a very public arena. Golf (in competition anyway) is played in the company of others. This adds an element of scrutiny to performance which increases the sense of humiliation and shame when failure occurs. Not only that, but emotional responses to failure are also up for appraisal, as if golf can unearth carefully hidden personal flaws.

Golf Addiction

With such potential psychological pitfalls this game sounds like an emotional minefield. Yet, it is one of the world’s most popular participant sports. What is going on here?

The answer to this conundrum lies in the area of “intermittent, positive reinforcement”. If you put a rat in a cage with a lever, you can do things to alter its behaviour. If nothing happens when it presses the lever it ceases this behaviour fairly quickly. If every time it presses the lever food appears, it quickly learns only to press it if it needs food. If however, food is presented intermittently, the rat will continue to press the lever. Human behaviour around poker machines is based on this model.

The intermittent positive reinforcement in golf is “that shot” most golfers (irrespective of handicap) will hit about once per round. The jargon is “that one will bring you back”. You will notice Woods et al only hit about the same number of perfect shots per round. It is just that their “not so perfect” shots are a tad better than the weekend hackers’. This is powerful stuff. An event lasting no longer than a matter of seconds (in a game of 4-5 hours duration) can result in a high likelihood of the whole process being repeated. This is why golf becomes an addictive game. We tend to remember the good moments and erase the others (conveniently) from memory.

The Search for Magic

Much of the literature of golf concerns matters of technique. It tends to be ravenously consumed by the adherence to the game, who are in search of that one clue which will magically unlock the mysteries of the golf swing. The success of driving ranges is evidence of the belief that practice is an important component of game improvement. Swings are analysed by teachers using video technology. Huge numbers of gimmicks and teaching aids promise a speedy journey to golfing nirvana.

There are some basic skills from psychology which can be of help with this potentially frustrating game.

Cognitive Approaches

Cognitive therapy addresses the way we automatically think about ourselves and the world. Often this defies logic and cognitive therapy uses a logical approach to our presumptions about the world to effect our thinking.

An underlying sense of perspective is important. Presumably golf is adopted as a pastime for the enjoyment it provides. If this fails to be the case (ie. the pain outweighs the pleasure by a long way) then some serious questions need to be asked about whether this pastime is doing you more harm than good.

If we have overcome that hurdle, then some thought needs to be applied to what is a “reasonable” measure of your own success in the game. Ultimately golf competitions are won by the person who gets the ball around the course in the fewest number of strokes (accounting for handicap). The golf handicap is a constant badge of proficiency. However, it says very little about whether someone actually enjoys the game or not. For some, the numerical goal is very tangible and easy to understand.

Goals

The jargon of goal setting often refers to what are described as SMART goals. The S in this acronym refers to goals being “specific”. This means that they are described in very specific terms. In golf this could be something as specific as “to reduce my handicap to 15 or below by the end of the year or to reduce the average number of puts per round by 2 by a particular time”. The M in SMART refers to the fact that goals should be “measurable” in some way. This doesn’t always mean a numerical measure, as referred to above. It could be a rating scale from 0-10 about your general enjoyment at the end of a round of golf. The A in SMART refers to goals which are “attractive”. As such, goals should be consistent with our general life values and align with the notion of providing us with some sense of achievement and pleasure. In golf this will generally mean that there is an improvement in either our performance or our enjoyment of the game. The R refers to goals being “realistic”. This should be obvious to most in the sense that our inherent ability to play the game and the time and money we have to commit to the process of improvement will effect what we can realistically aspire to. The T refers to “timing”. It makes goals more effective if there is some reasonable time constraint eg. by the end of the year, within 6 months.

Swing Thoughts

During a golf swing our brains are processing a lot of information – concerning awareness of the external environment, the important visual cues and a whole lot of data about what our joints and muscles are doing ie. our brain is BUSY. Adding more than one simple conscious operation to this process is a formula for failure. The time to think about particular aspects of the swing is on the practice range, with maybe one simple trigger during a practice swing. End of story.

Imagery

The great players of this game are all able to construct an accurate rehearsal of their impending shot without moving a muscle. They “imagine” the feeling of hitting the shot and the ball’s flight before they go anywhere near the ball. Research in the USA in the 1980’s on high school basketball players divided them into two groups. One group practiced free throws for 30 minutes per day on the court. The others simply imagined shooting baskets from the free throw line for 30 minutes per day. You guessed it; the ones who used imagery performed much better when they were later tested.

This is a skill which can be practised on the range, but also in that 10 minutes before you fall asleep each night. Simply imagine playing a couple of holes at your course, but do it in some detail – from assessing the shot, choosing the club, taking it from your bag, teeing the ball up (if appropriate), the practice swing, hitting the shot then seeing the ball fly through the air and landing.

When on course you imagine hitting this shot and seeing the ball fly during your pre-shot routine. For the pros, the imagery is the most important aspect of their pre-shot routine. Often when a pro backs away from a shot it is because his imagery of the shot isn’t clear, sometimes because there is a change in conditions since he first imaged the shot. You will notice this on television coverage of major events.

Mindfulness

Some of us operate with a lot of intrusive emotional and psychological background noise. A lot of it is about our concern for what “might happen”. We imagine the worst case scenario for situations, then play them out in our minds. This is hard work and personally very taxing.

Mindfulness enables us to reduce this noise. Rather than focusing on worrying stuff the focus is on things which are much more in the present. Exercises teach us how to monitor simple things like the feel of our feet on the ground, the wind on our face, the rhythm of our breathing. We also monitor the gymnastics of our thoughts and feelings, but we don’t make judgments about them. We simply note what’s going on. Practicing these simple exercises will eventually enable us to achieve a certain centered, still feeling. This can be of enormous value in many aspects of our lives, not only sport.

There are several books on the subject and my colleague Dr Elizabeth Foley is a highly skilled expert in this area.

Golf is a fertile area for sports psychology for the reasons I have outlined. I can be contacted for individual work on this and other matters and am happy to discuss your needs from a coaching perspective.