My argument

[Cussin hacker]

I have to agree with the OP. Natural talent plays a large part in becoming a tour level pro. It's the same with most any sport. Practice will help the average Joe get better, but he or she may just not have the talent to ever become great at the game of golf. My .02 anyway.

[Taggsy]

I honestly believe anyone with full use of their faculties (i.e. no missing limbs or serious physical impediments, and no mental health issues that would impede control over one's body), can reach a low single figure handicap.

Let's take the most physically demanding part of golf- a full swing with a driver. Do you need to be exceptionally strong to hit the ball 200+ yards (enough to reach par 5s in regulation)? No you don't. If that were true, you'd have to assume that average strength women and the elderly could never hit it that far, but they do. How about better than average flexibility? Again, no, or else anyone past 60, or your average Joe who can't touch his toes wouldn't be able to hit the driver. What about cardiovascular fitness? Colin Montgomerie, Angel Cabrera anyone? Hand to eye coordination; how much of this are you actually using? You're swinging the club head at 100+ MPH, no human can control it through impact. The easiest part of golf is actually hitting the ball. If you can't even do that consistently, then I suspect you're in my list of exceptions mentioned previously.

I see a lot of people mention "talent" or natural ability. Personally, I do not believe in talent when it comes to golf, only technique. When someone has a great swing, can smash the ball 300 yards, can get the ball to land 3 feet from the hole from 150 yards away, people call it "talent", as if it's some magical property. It's not magic, it's technique. That person has learnt how to move their body in such a way that makes hitting a ball with a stick go far enough, and in a straight enough line consistently to score well.

Once learned, a great golf swing isn't hard. If it were, it would take considerably longer than 1.5 seconds to perform, and no one on earth could do it more than twice in a row, let alone day in day out for the rest of their playing lives.

Another argument is practice. How comes some people can practice for years with little results, and yet for others it comes naturally with little practice. Again, it comes down to technique. If you have a poor technique, and spend years practicing that poor technique, you're simply ingraining that poor motion.
Practice doesn't make perfect- practice simply makes permanent. The golf swing is like a foreign language- you can "practice" it all you want, but if you haven't been taught it, or you don't understand it, then you're wasting your time, and shouldn't be surprised when the locals can't understand a word you speak, despite your years of practice.

What makes golf so hard isn't the "doing it", it's the learning how to do it. What sets apart a professional from someone like myself (who scored 102 today!), isn't that they can physically or mentally play better golf than me, it's that they know how to, and implement how to, play better golf than me.


(Disclaimer - Before you guys point out the irony of that rant from a very high handicapper, I'd like to point out I first picked up sticks a year ago, and have only taken lessons and been spending serious time implementing what I'm learning for two months now. I expect to be scoring in the 70s in a few years time.... watch this space!)

[DavidFehertysBike]

I honestly believe anyone with full use of their faculties (i.e. no missing limbs or serious physical impediments, and no mental health issues that would impede control over one's body), can reach a low single figure handicap.

I agree completely.

[Fourputt]

Heh. Threads like this are a riot.

To you as a 1.6 handicap index, I imagine that all makes perfect sense. To me as a player who has only for one month in his life ever had his index below 10, those obstacles reach mountainous proportions. I also can't dance, nor have I ever been able to learn a musical instrument, again, not for lack of trying. I was apparently born with no sense of tempo or timing, both essential factors in consistent ball striking. I have had streaks when everything came together, but I've never been able to maintain it, no matter what I did. On days when I played well, everything just made sense (as it apparently does to you), but those days have always been rare, and were even more rarely repeatable for consecutive rounds.

Just because Corey Pavin doesn't hit the ball a long ways, it doesn't mean that he isn't an exceptional ball striker... quite the opposite. He is as good a ball striker as most anyone on tour... or he wouldn't have been on tour for all these years. In fact, he probably had to be a better ball striker than many in order to overcome his lack of distance. To compare him to any amateur in that respect still doesn't hold water.

[Chief Broom]

iacas' post really threw me for a loop. I was all ready to launch into a post about how natural talent and innate physicality can't be earned or even trained, and while those properties certainly aren't the entire equation for doing something well they are insurmountable once you get to a particular level. And yet the one aspect of golf that we all can easily acknowledge is that golf is unique in sport as something that can be played across a person's entire lifespan. Sure an octogenarian can throw a football, but they can't play against guys less than half their age at any competative level, but they can do it in golf and not just using handicaps or flighted competition, but straight up! So I have to conclude that iacas' point is valid that an "average" person does have a reasonable chance at playing golf competatively at any level given the right circumstances, and those circumstances are controlable by that person. Interesting!

[iacas]

To you as a 1.6 handicap index, I imagine that all makes perfect sense. To me as a player who has only for one month in his life ever had his index below 10, those obstacles reach mountainous proportions.

I bet someone could teach you to dance if they could find the proper way (d) to instruct you. And if you truly lack some sort of innate quality, then you wouldn't really be eligible via "b," making my whole point moot. You wouldn't be within a standard deviation of "average."

Just because Corey Pavin doesn't hit the ball a long ways, it doesn't mean that he isn't an exceptional ball striker... quite the opposite.

Yeah, that was my point... which is why I'm not sure you really read what I wrote. I tried to define what "hit a ball as well as a PGA Tour player" was, and clearly we only need to meet a minimum for speed. But yet speed is important, because if I swing 1 MPH I can hit a golf ball as "well" as a PGA Tour player every time. Better, even. So my definition of "well" included the players who swing slower, making the definition of "as well as a PGA Tour player" something similar to "center contact within a tolerable range at a speed within a tolerable range."

In fact, he probably had to be a better ball striker than many in order to overcome his lack of distance.

Well now that's not true at all. A fictitious golfer who hit nine greens a round but took 18 putts and so shot 9 under every round would win every PGA Tour event ever played. There's more to playing golf than ball striking and distance.

That's not to say Corey's not on the upper half of ball striking quality, but you're proving my point: we can't limit "ball striking" to distance. Too much "b" limits people in the same way we can't discuss dunking as if that's "basketball." I do think "talent" exists. John Daly's loaded with it. He has more than Tiger, I think. But who's the better golfer? Talent simply makes it easier for someone to not have perfect a, b, c, and d and still get to the level we're discussing.

[Shindig]

The best pro golfer would be the one that practiced the most......not true.

I don't think I saw this pop up yet in this thread: this statement is true. Tiger practices more than anyone else, save for maybe Vijay ... who used to be the best pro golfer.

[sean_miller]

I don't think I saw this pop up yet in this thread: this statement is true. Tiger practices more than anyone else, save for maybe Vijay ... who used to be the best pro golfer.

Where did you get those stats? I'll take the Vijay statement at face value, but Tiger maybe was somewhere else when he claimed to be "at the range".

[James_Black]

Where did you get those stats? I'll take the Vijay statement at face value, but Tiger maybe was somewhere else when he claimed to be "at the range".

He trains all the time.

Stop with all the digs at tiger, he's the world no.1 for a reason. He practices all the time and when he isn't practising he's working out trying to get better and better.

[senorchipotle]

I have just one thing to say.... Charles Barkley. Very athletic, coached by Hank Haney who had him practicing like crazy, and he still plays like Lucy Ricardo. You guys with the low single digit handicaps simply can't possibly identify with those of us who don't and never will play to that level. You can argue til you're blue in the face and it wouldn't make the answer any different. Some people do NOT have the physical ability to EVER be able to play even to your level, no matter how hard they try. Just accept that you are wrong.

you do know that charles used to be a single digit handicap, right?

[sean_miller]

He trains all the time.

I seems like Tiger has (had) a lot of irons in the fire, but if you have insider knowledge that he trains harder than guys like Charles Howell III or the aforementioned Corey Pavin, share it. Anecdotes not accepted. If you're saying he works harder than Adam Scott, I'll give you that one.

Q. How many balls do you think Kenny Perry or Freddy Couples hit in a week? A. As many as they need to.

[iacas]

The Tiger/Vijay stuff is not really on topic, guys. Let me re-state a few things...

I think that everyone (who is physically able to, b) has the capacity to hit a golf ball as well as a PGA Tour player, BUT that it would basically take a perfect blend of the a, c, and d parts I listed to get there.

Talent can overcome shortcomings in a, b, c, and d but I think the theoretical potential exists for everyone (who, again, is physically able). In the real world, that doesn't happen much at all.

[DavidFehertysBike]

He trains all the time.

And he can use the technical skills he has developed to execute shotmaking we would never think of. A shot by Anthony kim hit at tigers tourney last year comes to mind. He hit some kind of crazy side spin pitch into a bank and spun it down. With practice, i could hit a side spinning pitch like that, but i would never think to use it in the way that Kim did. In alot of ways, i think that is what really seperates them from us. Application of skills is what makes a player. It doesnt mean we cant all learn the skill itself.

[Meddle]

We can't ever truly create a situation which met all of these conditions:

iacas, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "b", and the conclusions you are drawing from it. There is an undenyable degregation that takes place in a player's ability to score as they get older, for example, Jack Nicklaus will never be able to play again like he did in the 1970's. Back then he had a certain "physicality" that was there, and is diminished now. It happens to everyone in every sport. Things like hand-eye coordination, muscular strength, and flexibility are what I'm talking about. If you think of it like a bell curve on a graph, with "physicality" on the y-axis and age on the x-axis, wouldn't it be fair to say that the maximum quantity Nicklaus reaches on the y-axis may be higher than whatever mine is/will be? In other words, our physicality changes with time, but Nicklaus probably reaches a higher level than I will ever reach, due to natural ability determined by genetics.

I bring up age to show that our ability to do physical things changes with time, there is a ceiling past which point you can never reach, no matter how hard you practice. It's not pessimism to say there is a ceiling to our natural abilities, it's truth. It seems to me that you are saying there is no ceiling as long as you don't have a physical disability, but I could be misunderstanding you.

[sean_miller]

. . . degregation that takes place in a player's ability to score as they get older, for example, Jack Nicklaus will never be able to play again like he did in the 1970's. Back then he had a certain "physicality" that was there, and is diminished now.

It's funny you'd use Nicklaus, and specifically his game in the 70s, as an example.

I'm reading "Jack Nicklaus, the Full Swing" which was written in 1982. In the forward (Titled "An Easier Way To Swing") he details his deteriorating swing, which hit its low point in 1979. He spent the first 5 months of 1980 learning more about the mechanics of a proper golf swing and retooling. He had a good 1/2 dozen years or so with that "new" swing. BTW - what 70 year old does anything as well as they did in their prime?

[Fourputt]

iacas, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "b", and the conclusions you are drawing from it. There is an undenyable degregation that takes place in a player's ability to score as they get older, for example, Jack Nicklaus will never be able to play again like he did in the 1970's. Back then he had a certain "physicality" that was there, and is diminished now. It happens to everyone in every sport. Things like hand-eye coordination, muscular strength, and flexibility are what I'm talking about. If you think of it like a bell curve on a graph, with "physicality" on the y-axis and age on the x-axis, wouldn't it be fair to say that the maximum quantity Nicklaus reaches on the y-axis may be higher than whatever mine is/will be? In other words, our physicality changes with time, but Nicklaus probably reaches a higher level than I will ever reach, due to natural ability determined by genetics.

And my point is that some of us simply don't have the necessarily level of physical coordination in the first place, never mind what happens with the aging process. That happens to be a fact. Some people who are perfectly healthy and in decent physical shape still lack the muscular coordination that a pro level golf swing requires.

I believe that it's easier to learn the mental side of golf than it is the physical, which is the opposite of what many have said here. They are saying that anyone can develop the physical skills, but the mental skills elude them, and that is all that keeps anyone from being a professional golfer. I contend that the opposite is true. It's easier to learn how to develop a strategy for the game than it is to execute that strategy.

[Jameshooper]

Absoultley not. Its a learnable skill.

I guess since there is no quantifiable way to prove this we will just agree to disagree……but I couldn't disagree more

It might be a learnable skill, but I don't believe everyone has the ability to lear how to hit a ball like a tour pro no matter how much time they devote to it. Some people are just not athletic enough or have the body coordination to swing the club like a tour pro.

[Meddle]

And my point is that some of us simply don't have the necessarily level of physical coordination in the first place, never mind what happens with the aging process. That happens to be a fact. Some people who are perfectly healthy and in decent physical shape still lack the muscular coordination that a pro level golf swing requires.

My point in bringing up aging was to show that physical limits exist, and the degregation of physical ability with age proves it. So I'm agreeing with you.