Golf is the Most Out-of-Control Game You Can Play
Golf is the Most Out-of-Control Game You Can Play
By Dr. T.J. Tomasi, Keiser University College of Golf Senior Faculty and Director of Research
When Pavlov conditioned his dog’s behavior, the dogs didn’t have much to say about it. When B.F. Skinner taught pigeons to play ping pong, the birds put up no resistance, and some of them got to be quite good. The process by which their actions were controlled by an outside agency (in this case a scientist) is called behavioral conditioning.
Conditioning, of course, plays an important role in human behavior as well. The slots in Las Vegas hand out rewards on a schedule calculated to keep us playing. Our lover conditions us to be nice; our enemies condition us to be nasty. Food can be a stimulus to eat yourself into obesity or starve yourself into anorexia. Whatever else the human being is, it is a stimulus-response animal. But unlike other animals, it’s possible to have a time frame or space separating the stimulus and the response. This space provides a reflective period necessary to make a choice.
When the stimulus is tight to the response, with no space in-between, we call this a compulsion. There is no time for reflection, and therefore no deliberate choice is possible. In compulsion, the behavior is totally dependent on the appearance of the stimulus, and every time a particular stimulus occurs, you can expect the same response. When you’re playing golf, the pin is a stimulus. It signifies the location of the hole, which is your final destination. If your response is always to go at the pin, regardless of its position, your ability or the conditions under which you are playing, then there is no space between the stimulus and the response, and your behavior is compulsive. It may be you are making the mistakes, but it is not “you” who are calling the shots. Said another way – you are not running your own brain.
To be able to run your brain effectively on the golf course, you must “own” your own experience. If you do not have self-ownership, then as your round unfolds, the stuff that’s in your brain is someone else’s catalogue of do’s and don’ts, and you are simply performing on cue as the golf course stimuli present themselves. If you get favorable stimuli, you’re OK and so is your game. But when you get stimuli that you have learned to interpret as unfavorable, you’re not OK, and your golf scores skyrocket. In other words, on the golf course, you are not in control because the stimuli are running your brain. In one way, the golf course is a giant stimulus-response loop in which you can either be controlled by the stimuli or learn to be in control of it. The latter is the key to playing your best golf.
Like a behavioral magnet, the pin draws my attention, and if I’m not constantly wary, its power will overrule my best golf judgment at some point during the round. A good player will tell you that you must be patient as you work your way around the golf course, and now you know that “patient” means not giving in to the demands of your conditioned responses without careful negotiation.
Your foremost tool in this negotiation between previous conditioning and current exigencies is your shot routine, a procedure I call the 30 Second Swing because that’s how long it takes to play a good golf shot.
If you’d like to study with Dr. Tomasi and other PGA Master Professionals, contact The College of Golf today.
