What Are Your Personal Feelings On Luck?

I find this an interesting topic and I wondered what your opinion would be. Usually Golfers fall into a few categories on "Luck Theories".

A) Luck doesn't exist, things happen for obvious observable reasons. ex) Ball his tree and kicks back into the fairway... well it hit the tree at an angle that was clearly going to project it towards that particular path leading back to the fairway.

B) Luck is almost mysterious, like "Lady Luck" and helps or hurts us at different intervals in our round.

C) Both A and B ex) You may say "You need luck to win a major championship." but what you really mean is "You need to get some good breaks, that obviously caused by a particular action" and just call this action "Luck" out of habit.

I guess if I had to pick I would probably take group C. I often refer to luck when I'm having small talk but I don't really believe in it at all. I take a scientific approach to the golf course. When things like unfavorable bounces or lipped putts happen I don't get upset because I know the reason as to why they happened. Most of the time it's all my fault anyway :)

At any rate I'm interested to know your thoughts, mine are humble and possibly unknowing but That's the approach I take.

Luck is obviously a factor in the game, both good and bad.

Having said that, I do believe in Gary Player's quote - "The more I practice the luckier I get" - the implication being, if you get good enough, bad breaks don't have as much impact. But even Gary got bad breaks...he just had superior mental discipline. And enough practice time logged to overcome them.

In another thread we were parsing words when it came to luck. Specifically, Kyle Stanley's third shot on the 18th hole at Torrey Pines. I stated it was 'bad luck' that the ball went into the water. Others stated there was no 'bad luck' involved with it - he hit it there & got what he deserved.

Whatever. Difference of opinion.

Point being though, good or bad breaks are part of the game. And on the PGA Tour level, it is often the determinant as to who holds the trophy. Ask any player about their chances to win in a given week & they'll say something along the lines of, if they have luck on their side they like their chances. They know it's important to how they perform. Put another way, they recognize there is a part of this game beyond their control. And they're right - once the ball leaves the clubhead everything else is out of their control.

For those who care, I wrote a story about this on my blog. I use the interplay of life & golf often, and this story talks to it -

http://zipsclips.blogspot.com/2010/07/life-is-weird.html

So I agree with the B definition. Luck is that uncontrollable intangible of golf. But I do believe, over the long haul, it evens out.

I am not sure how to line it up with your choices, but my belief in golf, and in life, is that you need to give luck a chance to happen.  So I think the best players do this through their skill and attitude.  So I think luck happens but you can help it along and I think that people who appear to be lucky have earned the luck.

"Luck" normally has a tight correlation to exposure. If you expose yourself to the possibility of winning more often then you will statistically win more often than someone who doesn't because although you both have the same percentage chance you're cycling through chances quicker.

As an example:

Player 1 bets on the grand national each year but places no other bets. He bets on whatever horse has odds of 4/1. He therefore has a 25% shot of being correct (assume that racing isn't corrupt of course) and will in the long term win once every 4 years. He'll likely see himself as "unlucky" because of the time in between races.

Player 2 bets on every race every day and backs the 4/1 shot. Again assuming racing isn't corrupt (hah!) he will win 25% of his bets. He feels far luckier as on any average day he wins multiple times.

Like you I'm in group C.

Id say I believe in a combo of A and B.  IMO, luck/getting good breaks does play a factor but you also need to put in the work and put yourself in a position to win if you expect to win on tour.

Of course "luck" exists.  Not only does it is immanently unbiased.  Over time it will be bad as often as it is good.  Just a bunch of "lucky" and "unlucky" bounces.  But I agree that the more skilled a golfer you are, the less often  "luck" will be a factor in your final score.

I talk about "luck," but have never really considered it that much. ie. luck shot, lucky bounce, lucky bastard.......like Bill Clinton said about golf and life, you get brekas you don't deserve both ways. however, as my grandpa once said, "I'd rather be lucky than good. "

Luck is an illusion derived from humans to define something that they can't rationally explain, a lower percentage outcome happening. Its not luck or bad luck, its just a probability that occurs. To name it luck or bad luck is just superficial.

It's the same as thinking scientifically. The fact is that when something happens, there is always a scientific explanation golf-wise, usually under the laws of physics, that will explain what happened. If we stopped and went back to take a look at the ground beneath the 12th hole at Augusta when Freddie Couples ball stopped I'm sure with investigation we could tell you exactly why. Was this reasoning for or against Freddie? I would say neither. Had his playing partner hit the same exact shot he did then the outcome would have been the same. If you are looking to better your mental game this is a good area to look at, if you can accept blame and keep everything in front of you so that you understand why things happen then you can only get better. If you leave things out of your own hands then you will feel an internal feeling of being blocked. No one truly wants to believe they lost or won a tournament based off anything other than their failure or hard work.

In the words of Ted Ray, "Luck is a residue of Hard Work."

But that's not to say this opinion is totally right, if that were the case then golf would be totalitarian. Luckily the best thing about Golf is at the end of the day the Score is the only thing that matters. Regardless of what happened, the numbers are a canon truth. And there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Eh, I'm not sure I can get with that. There are just some things that are unexplainable. I'll give you one. A few years back there was a pro trying to get his card at Q-School. He was on the bubble. One the next-to-last hole he had a 3-footer. He hit it in the exact middle of the cup, the ball went into the bottom of the cup, and popped straight up and out, hanging on the lip. Sadly, he missed getting his card by that one stroke.

He it it exactly as it was supposed to be hit...but it didn't end up in the hole.

And the Freddie thing at the 12th at Augusta. I bet if you went out there that day and dropped 10 balls at the top of that embankment, most would have rolled into the creek. But Freddie's didn't. Why? The ball has dimples. Grass is not uniform. The ground is not smooth. Add those up, and "luck" enters to determine the result. It cannot be controlled, canont be accounted for. It just happens. It's an imperfect world, and a golf course is an imperfect place played by imperfect people.

Like Kyle Stanley on 18 at Torrey?  ;)

There are events outside of a golfers control that affect the round and I would consider those  luck. At the British Open, competitors often face drastically different conditions depending on if they get a morning round or an afternoon one.  Or having a zillion  guys in front of you so you can make the field at a major that you go on to win. There are also some low probability events that I would consider luck. If you tee shot hits a flock of birds, I would consider that bad luck. Things like hitting balls into divots is bad luck. Sure in theory you could avoid them all but that would require an unreasonable level of accuracy.

Hitting a golf ball with backspin isn't luck. That is execution. If you think of the ball being at least 15 yards (rough guess) from where it should be it comes across as a much worse shot than if you think of it as one that rolled into the water by a foot.

I think that's what he and others (saevel25, x129, and iacas, mainly) were getting at. Those things that happened were highly, highly unlikely, but "luck" can't break the laws of physics.

Ask Jean van de Velde if luck is a factor in golf

He needed double bogey on 18 to win the 1999 British Open...

-Dan

Doesn't matter though, if freddie's ball held up, then there was the one possibility in the infinite possible that occured, we just name it luck.

I guess when you think about it, "luck" is just the lower probability outcome of an action. When you swing the club, there are an infinite number of outcomes that could possibly happen, and the lower percentage is bound to happen at some point, just not as often. So when we call things "lucky," whether for good or bad, it's just that lower percent coming up. Now in terms of the categories listed, I would say that to win, you do need some good luck from bad shots because you can't guarantee that you're going to hit perfect shots 100% of the time. So when you do hit those inevitable bad shots, every once in awhile you need the low percentage good result to come out of it.