The Target-React Loop
The Target-React Loop
By Dr. T. J. Tomasi, Keiser University College of Golf Senior Faculty and Director of Research
The way to play your best golf is to run your shot routine for every shot.
As part of your routine, you image the shot, then simply respond to that image as your body creates the proper movements. But this Target-Player React Loop is not how most golfers play the game. They have invested so much of their valuable time and energy in learning the mechanics of the swing – where their right elbow should be or what the left knee is doing – that they can’t let all this valuable info go while they hunt targets.
Let me repeat something my students know by heart: “You don’t play this game the same way you learn it.” This implies that there should come a time when, except for updates, you are done with your swing. In this regard, ask yourself this: “Why don’t I play better golf than I do?” Does it take an exceptional physical build and the blessing of youth to play this game well? No – it does not. The best players in the world are deceptively normal. Jim Furyk looks like a middle-age UPS delivery man minus the shorts. Jason Duffer’s profile suggests he’s smuggling a basketball, while golf’s answer to the most interesting man in the world, Miguel Angel Jimenez, smokes cigars, drinks fine wine and sports a ponytail – a plus 50-year-old bon vivant who almost won the British Open in his mid-forties, the same major that 59-year-old Tom Watson was one bad bounce away from winning in 2009. And, of course, there’s Tiger and Jack who have won the Masters in their 40’s. So, if rather normal physical specimens can play great golf, then why can’t you?
Takeaway: My intention is to drive home the concept that golfers, even at the world-class level, are much more like the general population than other professional athletes – you cannot play center in the NBA unless you are giraffe–tall, nor tackle in the NFL without being as wide as a building. But in golf, there are no such restrictions, so the door is open to all who are willing to work hard to learn to swing the club effectively.
But there is one more criterion necessary to play your best. After (1) working hard and (2) learning the swing, the third criterion involves selective amnesia – meaning that every time you step onto the first tee, you ‘forget’ the HOW (mechanics) and simply react to the target. Scientific studies show that under stress you will revert to your highest level of training, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, to be in control of the ball while you play, you must be able to let go of mechanics. This is an acquired skill that’s characteristic of all great players.
If you’d like to study with Dr. Tomasi and other PGA Master Professionals, contact The College of Golf today.
