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By GolfLug ·
Relatively speaking I think golf is the most stupid monkey sport there is. A proper scratch player can garden-walk away with a ho-hum 75 while making the grocery list. It doesn't require supreme mental acuity to know/decide course management... i.e., you can't go wrong with FIRs/GIRs. Mentally, just need to cut out the noise and hit your stock shot shape all day to play to your physical potential. OTOH, a quarterback, a point guard or a midfielder prolly spends an order of magnitude more mental energy in decision making every play with way more options and way more negative outcomes they have to navigate and then execute. I find these sports much more cerebral. Physically, they are all hard depending on the level most avid sportsperson strive to achieve. -
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By saevel25 ·
Some things I classify under mental 1) Ability to maintain or regain focus. 2) Ability to maintain strict adherence to the craft at an elite level. The floor to even be an NFL player or NBA player is so high. In the sport itself, there is still a wide range of athletic ability. Sometimes, a person who is uber athletic has a very short career versus someone else. That could be inability to maintain a strict regime to learn the craft and execute at a high level. That is where I think the mental game matters the most. Hand eye coordination, and touch, that is almost all physical. Your ability to swing the club with the precision needed to achieve high level results is so difficult its really absurd. Again, I think the mental game falls under this bin. 1) Sticking to the gameplan. 2) Practicing at a level that matches the level of golfer you want to be. 3) Ability to focus on the course. 4) Probably, knowing what type of person you are emotionally. Can you turn pressure into focus. Does pressure distract you. How to mitigate that. Stuff like that. I think professional athletes say it is mental because they are at the top 0.00001% of their sport. So, to them the only edge left is that focus, not making that one mistake. There could just be a gap in physical talent as well. Good luck covering Randy Moss in his prime. Weighting how much all that stuff matters when you can't hit the ball 250 yards off the tee. Physical ability is king. -
By Carl3 ·
Ah, my wife just booked us for the theatre tomorrow. We will watch the original again tonight. It is too easy to fall asleep in those recliners🤣. -
By Ty_Webb ·
At the risk of opening a can of worms... I'm curious how people think golf falls in the physical/mental split vs other sports/games. I would think something like basketball is basically 100% physical. There might be a tiny bit of mental fortitude in being able to focus at the free throw line or MJ getting the ball with 2 seconds left and 2 points down and making the shot, but there's no amount of mental ability that's going to help you dunk it over Shaq for example. A lot of athletics is perhaps even more physical. Who can run the fastest is really just a question of who can run the fastest, not who can focus the most or anything remotely like that. It's hard to come up with anything in the sporting arena that's all mental, which is why I included games up above. Something like chess is clearly 100% mental and 0% physical. Not sure that's all that interesting. But then there are other things - pool or snooker for example - yes there's physical skill involved and there's mental ability too. I'd say the difference between a top level player and some idiot in a bar is still more physical than mental, but I think the percentage that's mental is higher than it is in golf. So on that basis, I would think pool was weighted more towards mental than golf is. In the range of sports that are out there, do you think golf is on the more mental side or the less mental side? I recognize that this could be difficult to say because something like soccer for example, there is a huge physical element - can you keep up for a start and then can you kick the ball where you want to is entirely physical. But watching the movement of the game and seeing where gaps are and are about to open up I would think is all mental. With American Football, it kind of depends on your position. If you're a lineman, then it's 100% physical. If you're the QB, then it's more like soccer where there is still the physical skill required to throw it where and how you want to, but also the need to know where to throw it. Golf is, by its nature, a game where you have time to think about what you're going to do. You can take a cool calm collected view and choose your target and so on and then it's a question of whether you can pull it off, so there isn't the need to make any on the fly decisions. I think that tends to reduce the mental level of the game. Conversely having the ball not moving can make it harder - hitting a ball coming towards you like you would in tennis say is more reactive and there is less opportunity for bad thoughts to come in and mess you up. I think on balance I would say golf is roughly in the middle. There are some which are more physical than golf (track and field) and some which are more mental than golf (pool). Curious what others think though.
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