Golf’s Grand Illusion
Golf’s Grand Illusion
By Dr. T. J. Tomasi, Keiser University College of Golf Senior Faculty and Director of Research
Bobby Jones, Hogan, Trevino, Floyd, Nicklaus, Woods, etc. – what is the one characteristic all players have once they get the usual suspects on board? It isn’t power, great putting, grit, determination, working hard or any of the things announcers describe or teachers try and teach – although these and their like are essential. Tiger gives us a hint: Remember we’re talking GREAT not just good or very good.
One great to another (Annika on the left, Tiger on the right) while a good player listens in the background.
What was Tiger-2000 thinking about when he was the most dominant golfer ever?
“I get so entrenched in the moment that my subconscious takes over’ he said. ‘I remember walking into the shot, and then I don’t remember anything until I see the ball leave… I get out of the way because of the training.”
This black-out period is the ultimate in hyper-focus where your conscious mind is sealed up during execution and the swing handed over to your unconscious competence. As a six-year-old, Tiger explained when his father asked him what he thought about when he swung. Tiger answered: “I just hit into the picture, Daddy.”
Of course, you must be able to strike the ball correctly – and chip and putt and have emotional toughness, etc.; but, like the great battle commander Napoléon, who was said to have “the eye,” the great players don’t ‘see’ the same golf course as do the rest of us.
We know that the same reality differs by the observer – dogs hear and smell things we cannot, cats see an infrared world we are unaware of, and snakes track their world using thermal radiation in a way we cannot. We also know that the picture our brain makes of the world is actually a grand illusion made up by the brain so it can present a seemingly integrated flow of events that has no gaps. Thus, it follows that if each single mind sees a slightly different picture, then, if there are seven billion people, there are seven billion worlds, none of which are identical, but all of which are created inside our heads. This would explain why people argue (and worse) about something that both think are objective facts as if there was an objective world ‘out there’ where truth is merely discovered.
This manifests in golf where we create the golf course that we play in our mind. With practice, you can learn to improve your visual perception; or said simply – you can develop ‘the golf eye,’ which allows you to ‘see’ more effectively using selective attention. Jay Sanguinetti (University of Arizona) suggests our brains are flooded by meaningful objects (hazards, water, targets, etc.) in the visual scene, but ultimately, for good players, only a few important objects, like the flagstick, are important. Ranking which objects are important enough to focus on is called valancing, and good players playing well have Valance Control (VC) while good players playing poorly don’t. Most golfers don’t have VC control at all because the trouble looms on their mental screen, guaranteeing that the golf course is full of scary pictures – and science tells us that once you focus on a threat, you can’t focus away until the threat is resolved.
Due to VC, the best players ‘see’ a different golf course than do most golfers. The average player sees the golf course as perilous and filled with hazards; the expert sees it as a safe place that’s full of targets. When you control your screen and valance correctly, your mechanical eyes see the hazards, but your interpretive brain sees the targets. To wit – it is much easier to make a stress-free swing when you’re hitting into a picture filled with the target.
Your golf expertise thus depends on a type of selective attention called DMF (Directed Mental Focus), a skill that can be learned. The architect using clever, screen-stealing tricks like optical illusions and visual intimidation, tries to make the trouble loom on your mental screen, but champions have learned to make the target loom using VC.
Takeaway: So, once you’re finished learning your swing, it’s time to develop your DMF, so you always play in an internal reality filled with targets. And, of course, all of this leads to one last question: If acquiring ‘the eye’ is dependent on the pictures in your head, then who creates those pictures in the first place? If someone else does, then they run your brain – if you do, then you run your own brain.
If you’d like to study with Dr. Tomasi and other PGA Master Professionals, contact The College of Golf today.
