Golf's Mental Game Aspect

[Phil McGleno]

28 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Why does no one flinch after the ball is gone? They don't flinch then because they expect it after the ball is gone. Which means if they expected it before the ball was gone they wouldn't flinch either. Which means that they don't do that because it actually would be distracting.

They do flinch after the ball is gone-Talk to anyone who has photographed a PGA Tour event.

They do not flinch WELL after the ball is gone because they expect noise.-Flinching because of the camera shutter is not at all mental. Their brain does not process it.-They react instinctively. Like if you are lying down in your cave and hear a noise you do not expect your ears perk up and you worry about being jumped and eaten by a bear or tiger or something. If you are on a nature walk with 10 of your friends you do not instinctively react to a broken twig sound behind you.

14 minutes ago, Dean Walker said:

I think there is two completely different arguments going on here.

Yes but one side of the argument makes no sense at all.

14 minutes ago, Dean Walker said:

So for me, the difference between a round which is 78 and a round which is 69 is quite largely mental. Probably closer to 50/50. But again, this is very hard to quantify as they tend to rub off on each other.

But again you are not going to shoot 120 because of your physical contribution.

Thus the mental game plays a very small role in what you shoot any given day. Like @iacas says-You are taking your physical game for granted.

And @Dean Walker you are an anomaly (sp?) with the yips I agree.

[Ty_Webb]

45 minutes ago, iacas said:

@Ty_Webb, the discussion is not about what separates two identical PGA Tour players. That completely ignores the massive mountain of "physical" work that they had to do to get to that point.

And you're making an awfully big assumption on Paul Casey.

Seriously, you're only hurting your argument at this point, with the TW yelling and the camera clicks stuff, plus the bit about what separates two identical physically skilled players. This discussion is NOT about what separates two players. I've said the mental game can offer a small edge, and if the physical skills are literally exactly the same, and somehow "luck" is exactly the same, and everything else is exactly the same, then "the mental game," despite normally accounting for an incredibly tiny percentage, is not even 50%, it's 100%, simply because it's all that's left.

What kind of a topic would that be? It isn't one.

The vast, vast, vast majority of what contributes to anyone's scores in any given round is their physical skill. Their mental game gets a tiny fraction of the credit. You could put Jack Nicklaus's mental game in the body of a guy who shoots 120 and not only is he not instantly a PGA Tour winner, he's still not breaking 110. Probably not even 115. Because he's still gonna hit the ball like absolute shit.

I'm done (again) for now here. I suggest you take a similar approach, Ty.

The interesting thing to discuss would be how can a particular person improve. Everyone will benefit from working on their physical game (assuming they do it in a sensible fashion and don't hurt themselves in the process). Some people (me for example and no doubt others) will also benefit from working on their mental game. It is my case that it is worth spending more time on mental approach by a lot of people. By way of example:

You have said in regards to a few comments in this thread that when people start their round well, but fall down towards the end that this is a case of reversion to the mean. I assume that's happened to you on occasion. What if that's not just reversion to the mean when that happens? What if it's that subconsciously you are more comfortable shooting a higher score and as a result you do so? What if you could fix that? You could make your scores better by working on that (I'm not sure how to, but discussing it is why we're here).

I'll give you another example of that. This is 15-20 years ago now, but I went through a spell (I've mentioned it before in this thread) where I'd shoot -1 or -2 through 11 holes and wind up shooting 3, 4, 5 over. Every time I played through a summer went pretty much the same way. The back nine at my club then was a little harder than the front, but only by a shot or so and if I started on 10, the same thing would happen. I am 100% certain that it was my mind getting in the way. I'd get excited about my score and then I'd come back down to earth. Then one day, for whatever reason I kept going and wound up shooting 67. That was in a club tournament and was the first time I broke par in a tournament round. A two round thing over two days (Sunday then Saturday). In the second round, I shot 69. I was practicing a lot at the time, but there is no way that my physical skills improved 5-7 strokes in a week.

Since then I have heard of high school and college coaches sending their kids out and playing the forward tees. They do that to get them comfortable with shooting good scores. With being under par. I choose not to think that time is wasted. Forgive me for thinking it's interesting to discuss the impact of the mental game on my scores, in the hope that it might help someone to improve their game too.

[iacas]

I understand what you're saying, @Dean Walker, but like I've said, and as @Phil McGleno points out above, you're taking the current state of your physical game for granted.

If "the mental game" had a Separation Value, it would be SV0. It's still possible that it's a glaring weakness, which would mean you'd have to spend a little time working on it (maybe about as much as an SV① skill), but you're an outlier at that point. If you have the yips, maybe you're even SV② for awhile.

6 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Since then I have heard of high school and college coaches sending their kids out and playing the forward tees. They do that to get them comfortable with shooting good scores. With being under par. I choose not to think that time is wasted. Forgive me for thinking it's interesting to discuss the impact of the mental game on my scores, in the hope that it might help someone to improve their game too.

There's a reason our only real "mental game" tips came in the relatively small "Pro Tips" chapter in LSW. (LSW, btw, includes this specific tip.)

Beyond that, I'm not reading your posts in this topic anymore @Ty_Webb. You're not making sense, and I'm not interested in hypotheticals.

3 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Isn't anger just an automatic reaction to a bad shot just like flinching due to a distraction?

No.

[Lihu]

1 minute ago, iacas said:

4 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Isn't anger just an automatic reaction to a bad shot just like flinching due to a distraction?

No.

Please explain the difference?

Neither one seems to take a conscious decision. You just get angry at bad shots. It's an emotional reaction to something.

If your argument is you can train to prevent anger at bad shots, you can also train to avoid flinching. Soldiers are trained to avoid flinching during battle. Martial arts fighters do the same thing, because distraction is one of the ways to defeat someone.

http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=196

[Ty_Webb]

6 minutes ago, iacas said:

There's a reason our only real "mental game" tips came in the relatively small "Pro Tips" chapter in LSW. (LSW, btw, includes this specific tip.)

Based on your definition of mental game in the opening post of this thread, virtually the whole book is about mental game. Here is your definition:

And, because it's going to be necessary, I'm going to define the mental game as such:

• Shot selection, game planning, strategy (though this is pretty simple, and even non-golfers can make these decisions).
• Ability to focus or "get out of your way." (i.e. some people perform best when they aren't hyper-focused, some do). This can also include visualizing shots, not having too many swing thoughts, etc.
• Nerves, even though they may manifest as shaking hands, sweaty hands, accelerated heart rates, etc.

That first bullet is what LSW is all about isn't it? I still find it fascinating that you argue how irrelevant a section of the game is when you wrote a book about it. I guess it's a shame you're not going to read this.

[Big C]

25 minutes ago, Dean Walker said:

I think there is two completely different arguments going on here. 

Yes, I agree.

 

On ‎1‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 10:26 AM, iacas said:

59 minutes ago, iacas said:

You could put Jack Nicklaus's mental game in the body of a guy who shoots 120 and not only is he not instantly a PGA Tour winner, he's still not breaking 110. Probably not even 115. Because he's still gonna hit the ball like absolute shit.

Dustin Johnson, again, could be drunk, stoned, pissed off, and distracted as heck and he'd still kick the asses of almost everyone on this site… because his physical skills are so far above and beyond. You don't get to ignore or take for granted the physical. That comes with you.

I don't think anyone posting here would disagree with these comments, so it seems like you are arguing against a point that nobody is trying to make.

Of course a golfers skillset and physical abilities are by the far the most important factor, hands down no question. A guy with a scoring range of 76-85 (me) will never beat a guy with a range of 60-72 (DJ or comparable tour pro) no matter how "dialed in" I am on that day. Again, I don't think you will get any argument here.

What is interesting to me, and how I define mental game is on what side of my scoring range will my most important rounds (tournaments, big matches, etc) tend to fall. To the extent that they finish on the lower end of my possible range, it means I am playing to the best of my capabilities and handling pressure well. Good mental game. 

To the extent to that they finish on the higher end of that range on a consistent basis, my mental game needs work. Especially if some of those higher scores are caused by "throwaway" shots (yipped 3 foot putts, bladed chips, etc. that rarely occur in my casual rounds. 

And again, there are now 3 posters on here (two scratch included) who are supposedly outliers because of some high pressure lapses. I really think it is more common than you are giving it credit for and those that haven't battled it at some time or another are far more rare than those who have.

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Please explain the difference?

Neither one seems to take a conscious decision. You just get angry at bad shots. It's an emotional reaction to something.

@Lihu, anger is not an instinctual reaction.

14 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Based on your definition of mental game in the opening post of this thread, virtually the whole book is about mental game. Here is your definition:

And we even list GamePlanning as an SV④ skill, because it is a high SV skill until you read the book. Then, you know it, and it quickly becomes something you don't really have to actively consider. I even said "though this is pretty simple, and even non-golfers can make these decisions."

None of the other skills in golf are like that. We honestly considered not listing it with an SV value at all, but since the last 1/3 of the book is about it, we ultimately decided to call it SV④.

(And in no way is "virtually the whole book" about the mental game. The first two sections [of three] are about your physical game. The fact of the matter was that we couldn't actually "teach" individuals the physical stuff through a book, because we don't know what their unique swings look like, function like, etc. If we were going to write a book about how to help golfers improve the most, it would be "come see us for lessons. the end." )

13 minutes ago, Big C said:

I don't think anyone posting here would disagree with these comments, so it seems like you are arguing against a point that nobody is trying to make.

As the guy who started the topic, this IS the topic. I think it's stated pretty clearly in the OP, in fact, as a reaction to the other topic wherein you and some others voted that golf was 50% (or more) mental.

People give far too much weight to their mental game.

13 minutes ago, Big C said:

What is interesting to me, and how I define mental game is on what side of my scoring range will my most important rounds (tournaments, big matches, etc) tend to fall. To the extent that they finish on the lower end of my possible range, it means I am playing to the best of my capabilities and handling pressure well. Good mental game.

Colin, this discussion stemmed from the idea that the mental game accounted for 50% of your "abilities" on any given day.

That's poppycock. The vast majority of your abilities on any given day, as you've acknowledged now, is from the physical.

I'm not interested in discussing whether you shoot 72 or 76 because of your mental game. If you can save a shot or two by working on your mental game at that level, then work on it. You have a glaring weakness.

I was interested in dispelling the myth that a lot of golfers have that the mental game is 50% of their ability on a given day, or that they'd be scratch with a better mental game.

13 minutes ago, Big C said:

And again, there are now 3 posters on here (two scratch included) who are supposedly outliers because of some high pressure lapses. I really think it is more common than you are giving it credit for and those that haven't battled it at some time or another are far more rare than those who have.

And @mvmac and I are saying the opposite. Three is an incredibly small number. One guy has the yips. And @mvmac said you likely had a deficiency in your physical game.

---

I've never argued that the mental game is not a bigger problem for some people. It can affect them. But it's nowhere near 50%, or higher as some people voted, and it's generally not a big factor at all. People who attribute a higher percentage are often not considering the massive amount of work they've put into their physical game. They're looking at one or two shots difference here and there.

I've always been discussing the contribution to the whole. You and others are the ones wanting to discuss the contribution to the delta.

Discussing the delta ignores the entire physical contribution.

[mvmac]

Yesterday I hit three wedges shots, varying between 85 and 105 yards. Before each shot I had visions of me chunking each shot right before I took the club back, mostly because of the lie, super tight dormant bermuda.  One shot ended up being a gimme and the other two were inside 15ft. On another 80-ish wedge shot I felt really good over the ball and semi-thinned it to 25-30ft over the flag (got lucky it stopped).

How's that for mental game? 

On 1/27/2018 at 8:02 AM, Big C said:

Most of us on this site have worked on our games for years, and know the excruciating difficulty of improving our skills to the point that we drop 1 stroke, let alone 3-4. If we can agree that 3-4 strokes is the difference between someone who performs well under pressure and someone who doesn't (given identical physical abilities), then I assume there be a consensus that the mental game is pretty darn important.

I think you're missing that working on your game not only helped you improve a little but also kept you around the same level of physical competence. If you never did the practice/work on your game think how negatively that would affect your ability to hit the shots.

3 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

Why would you think that being nervous equates to poor mental game?

Seriously? There's many books written on dealing with nerves in golf. 

I'm saying even if you don't alleviate the nerves you can still hit good shots. We've all done it. We've all made short putts with something on the line when we were thinking about missing it or bombed a tee shot with shaky hands on the first hole with people watching.

3 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

Also, why would DJ and Rahm being top two mean that mental game has nothing to do with it? DJ is, with the best will in the world, too dumb to have poor mental processes really affect him. I would suggest anyway that the key thing is to have a mental process that is in sync with who you are. Rahm may be a hot head, but that's who he is. Being hot headed is not poor mental process.

I'm saying it's less important because if having a good mental game meant being always being calm like DJ, then what about someone like Rahm who is fired up all the time.

3 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

Nearly two shots worse. Unless you can suggest something that makes his physical game deteriorate between Thursday and Sunday by two strokes every single week, I think we have to chalk that one up to mental game.

No one is saying that mental game doesn't play a role but to me it seems with using Paul Casey that you're helping the argument that mental game plays a much smaller role than physical. So if he does have a variance in mental game from round to round he's still basically shooting the same score because his physical traits are so good.

3 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

Lastly a question. Do you like silence when you play? Does it bother you if people around you are talking? Someone yelled during Tiger's putting stroke on 13 yesterday and he hit a pretty wild putt. Noise doesn't have a physical impact on a player. Only mental. If you do like silence, why? Do you think that applies to everyone? Just wondering why marshals at tour events hold up quiet please signs

I don't mind noise or talking when I'm playing because it has nothing to do with the shot I'm hitting. The only thing that can be distracting is when it's a sudden noise or a loud-sudden noise.

Marshalls at a tour event, dealing with crowds of people yelling Baba Booey with their cameras out is much different than a few guys talking in my backswing on a Saturday morning.

2 hours ago, Phil McGleno said:

go play Lefty and tell us what you shoot.-You will have the same mental game as you do now and since it is such a big part of your score you will shoot and play not much worse than you do now with your +0.4.

Love this.

[saevel25]

1 hour ago, Dean Walker said:

So for me, the difference between a round which is 78 and a round which is 69 is quite largely mental.

Probably not as equal as you think. Not all strokes are equal. Shooting a 78 is not nearly as daunting as shooting a 69.

Lets take it to an easy scenario. You hit 18 greens in regulation, each with 30 FT putts. Lets say you make those putts 5% of the time.

You have a 39.7% chance of not making a single 1-putt.
You have a 2.1% chance of having a single 1-putt, and 17 missed first putts.
You have a 0.11% chance of having two 1-putts, and 16 missed first putts.
You have a 0.01% chance of having three 1-putts, and 15 missed first putts.

That is a very simplistic model, but it shows you that the odds of going from a 72 to a 69 drops to nearly zero percent.

[Ty_Webb]

26 minutes ago, iacas said:

And we even list GamePlanning as an SV④ skill, because it is a high SV skill until you read the book. Then, you know it, and it quickly becomes something you don't really have to actively consider. I even said "though this is pretty simple, and even non-golfers can make these decisions."

Couple of questions for you if I may:

1. How many strokes do you think a typical 80 shooter who aims at the flag all the time could save on his score by instead picking his targets using LSW? Feel free to give a range or some other answer.

2. Do you think everyone out there makes optimal decisions for their strategy every time?

3. Do you think that some people make optimal decisions and others don't?

4. Do you think non-golfers could make optimal decisions?

Edited January 29, 2018 by Ty_Webb

[Phil McGleno]

Guys @Big C this seems pretty clear to me-

On 10/4/2017 at 4:56 PM, iacas said:

In the other topic (now locked), the question was posed: is golf more mental or more physical.

I think it's safe to say that if you throw away the "well, the brain controls everything you do, so it's 100% mental" side of the argument, it's pretty clear that your physical skills affect your score the most: Dustin Johnson on his worst mental day will basically always beat a 20-handicapper having the worst mental game day of his life. Golf, like every other sport, is ultimately a measurement of how well you perform, and the bulk of that performance is physical.

Things got contested when we branched out from that original question to begin to discuss how much the mental game plays a role. I'm on record as saying it's pretty small: Dustin Johnson is going to shoot a pretty narrow range of scores if you normalize his physical performance somewhat, and a bogey golfer isn't going to break par on a PGA Tour course any time soon… his scores are also typically 85-100 owing, mostly, to variations in physical performance that day (as well as the mental game and, well, a little bit of luck good or bad).

---

So, the purpose of this topic is two-fold:

• To discuss just how much the mental game affects golfers generally, as well as individually (please be clear about this distinction when you're posting).
• To discuss methods and means of improving your mental game.

And I'm on record as saying it's pretty minimal on the first part, as I noted above. If I had to put a number on it, generally speaking, 5% of your performance that day is mental. (And I don't mean as a percentage of strokes, because you can't shoot "0," and the math just doesn't work: a shot you hit slightly fat because you were nervous about the hole location might hit a firm spot in the fairway and bounce up to four feet, while the shot you flush catches a gust of wind you couldn't feel and buries in a bunker.). Individually, of course there are going to be outliers.

..............

I'm also likely, speaking for my side of things, to hold onto the idea that a lot of the root cause of some mental issues is physical. If you regularly top or thin your 3W, and you face a 218-yard carry over a pond with a quartering wind into you and out of the right, and you proceed to mis-hit your 3W… then the root cause I'd suggest is physical: you don't have the skills to pull that shot off, and so of course you're nervous, anxious, etc. Yes, there's a small component to tricking yourself into being confident, and that can likely slightly improve performance… but you're still gonna hit the ball poorly overall compared to someone who is much better physically.

I made one part red. How about people start to actually talk about that?-Or is this thread too far gone now where another topic is probably better there?

[iacas]

6 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

4. Do you think non-golfers could make optimal decisions?

Absolutely. Computers can do it these days. They don't golf.

As for your other questions, I'll answer them all with this: none of those things are going to have you going from shooting 72 to 132. And, per the OP, as noted by Phil, that's what the topic is about. It's not my fault you've continued to misunderstand that. My position on this has been clear and consistent.

2 minutes ago, Phil McGleno said:

Or is this thread too far gone now where another topic is probably better there?

I think this is likely the case. So…

There you go.

[Phil McGleno]

Saw your poll on Twitter.-Bunch of idiots out there I think.

https://twitter.com/iacas/status/1070030644502282241

I can not imagine how-Right now anyway-so many people are voting for basically five or more shots out of ten all coming from the mental game. No way at all.-Even the 2+ people are nuts.

Problem for you is that people will think this is one of those appeal to authority type things-Ignoring that you are an authority on the topic too-ANd that they are "right" cuz of their numbers.

I voted for the first one.

[iacas]

Nice necro bump, @Phil McGleno. 😛 We almost made it a year.

Yeah, the results of the poll thus far are frightening. I was just iMessaging some people about how scary it is that 1/4 of people think that HALF or more of a ten-shot difference between two different classifications of players is from the mental game. I feel like I'm getting punked.

---

In the year since the topic died (and of course, for the past eight years), I've continually talked with people about the mental game. The instructors I trust who have shown to be smart guys almost all unanimously state that the difference is negligible.

I told a few guys that if I added a fifth category to the Strokes Gained tables, they'd be:

• Driving: 27%
• Approach Shots: 38%
• Short Game: 18%
• Putting: 13%
• Mental Game: 4%

That's 0.4 shots out of 10. Two instructors said back to me "I wouldn't give it that much!" (I replied that I wouldn't either, but I was sticking to whole numbers.)

One related a story of a Tour pro he teaches, who had a mental game coach for awhile, but who ditched him because he didn't see the point. The Tour pro, a recent winner at that, said "I feel the same over every shot. I think the same things. I do the same things. Some shots are good. Some shots are bad."

The push-back I get on this topic is so strong that I'm constantly seeking out to see if I've somehow got it wrong, but I can never find any real evidence to make me change my position that, generally speaking (I'm not talking about the outliers who have actual mental problems or anxiety).

I think that the average golfer is a poor judge of their own abilities. In the same way that the golfer will blame the ten-footer he missed for par instead of the three poor shots he played before that, the golfer looks for something to blame and settles on the mental game despite perhaps all of the shots he just hit falling well within his normal range of shots. They often fail to notice when they have a poor mental game or approach, and get away with it by hitting a good shot. Just like when they hit a bad shot and blame the lie, or their club, in the absence of those things they often blame the mental game. Or they over-value the mental game for the mistakes they do make, like when they try a shot they shouldn't and fail to pull it off, it might cost them one shot at the time, but it lingers with them. AND, those same golfers seem to assume that the guy who is ten shots better than them NEVER makes that type of mistake, when in reality they probably make that kind of mistake just about as often, but because they're better, maybe it only costs that better player 0.4 or 0.7 shots instead of a full shot.

A lot of the mental game coaches have vanished from the PGA Tour. Those that are out there are more likely dealing with life and family stuff, not golf stuff. They're dealing with the feelings Tour players have feeling guilty or sad leaving their families behind, or their wife or parents being sick or needing care, or other life events like that.

I can improve people's swings and see their scores go down. I can see the same kid continually shoot lower and lower scores as they improve and grow and develop more shots. Many of them will even improve despite what you could call a worsening mental attitude due to increased expectations.

I even have a mental game coach for @NatalieB, but that's to save her a shot or two every eight to ten rounds that she plays. If it could contribute any more than that, we'd meet with her "guy" much more often.

In all the time I've continued to spend studying this, reaching out to people on both sides of the debate, studying what I can study, I've found nothing to change my mind that, except for the outliers, the true head cases, virtually all of the difference between one class of player and another class of player is physical - how they swing, how they hit the ball, how they putt, etc. At any level of the game, the mental game can, in a small sample size, affect the outcome of a tournament, but that's all that is - a small sample size. And, that's ignoring the fact that people have won events relying on their physical skills while admitting fully that they were choking their guts out mentally - again, people often fail to discount the mental game when they pull off a shot after a poor mental process.

---

TL;DR - The results of that poll are scary, because IMO people still don't get it. They're conning themselves. Yet, if they honestly think that the difference between them shooting 85 and them shooting 79 is mental… why aren't more people spending their time, money, effort, etc. learning the mental game stuff? Because deep down, I think, they know it's an excuse. They know it's not what's causing them to shoot 85.

[Buckeyebowman]

On 1/29/2018 at 11:25 AM, Phil McGleno said:

They do flinch after the ball is gone-Talk to anyone who has photographed a PGA Tour event.

They do not flinch WELL after the ball is gone because they expect noise.-Flinching because of the camera shutter is not at all mental. Their brain does not process it.-They react instinctively. Like if you are lying down in your cave and hear a noise you do not expect your ears perk up and you worry about being jumped and eaten by a bear or tiger or something. If you are on a nature walk with 10 of your friends you do not instinctively react to a broken twig sound behind you.

This may be a bit OT, but it is something that interests me. I have seen several PGA players, including TW, who could stop their downswings with their hands at about waist high when they heard a camera shutter or other extraneous noise. 

I can't do that. Once I start down, I'm committed! My buddy got me pretty good a couple years ago. I was kicking his butt when he decided to "pop the top" on a can of beer when I was at the top of my backswing teeing off on a tight hole. I yanked it into the tall and uncut, and cussed a blue streak! 

Makes me think I might be doing something wrong. Any ideas? 

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Any ideas? 

No, because it's off topic.

Once you get to about A5, the muscles literally can't even be sent a signal fast enough to stop anything before impact. So no, Tiger hasn't ever stopped after hearing something after he started the downswing.

Back to the topic, please.

[iacas]

Here is an image that I will use to explore a little bit of my perspective on this.

What you see below is a Shot Zone overlaid with a green and the nearby hazards. The size of the green and the Shot Zone and the hazards and all of that is irrelevant for this take, as is the player's ability level. It could be a second shot on a reasonably short par five for a PGA Tour player coming in with a 3-iron, or it could be a short wedge shot for an 18 handicapper - it doesn't matter.

What matters is that this is the last hole of a match or tournament and that the player needs to get up and down (the actual score doesn't matter here - if it helps you to think of it as being for birdie, so be it) to win and to get down in three to tie. Finishing second is irrelevant.

I've positioned the Shot Zone to maximize the chances of the player making 2 or 3. It comes at a higher average score, regardless of where the hole is located, but increases the chances of the player making 2 or 3.

As you can see there are 30 shots in this Shot Zone. Were there more, we might see a bit more clustering toward the middle, but not a lot (Shot Zones are often pretty wide, flat bell curves - the "middle 50%" often occupies about 70%+ of the area). Five of them are in the drink - offering virtually no chance of making 2 or 3 (he'd have to chip in from the drop). Three are in the bunker - he might get up and down 0 to 2 times, or hole out 0.2 times (out of 3). Four are in the rough - he may hole out about 0.3 times out of 3, or get up and down 1-3 times out of the four. 18 are on the green, and he'll one-putt some of those for birdie, and will average two-putting the rest.

In this type of situation, you can't play for the lowest average score - you've got to GamePlan for the highest odds of getting 2 or 3. So, the player built a proper GamePlan here.

Yet five out of 30 times, when his ball finds the drink, hitting what is a perfectly normal shot this player is going to look to blame something, and quite often, that player is going to look to blame his mental game. Seven more times, when he pulls it into the bunker or long/left into the rough, he's likewise going to seek out something to blame, though not quite as severely as he still has a small chance of holing out or getting up and down. Roughly 8-12 times out of 30, this player is going to look to blame something, despite every shot seen here fitting within his normal distribution of shots, within his Shot Zone.

THIS is one of the reasons why the average golfer vastly over-states the mental game aspect. Everyone is going to be a bit nervous on this shot, and yes, there are rare cases where a guy flubs this shot so badly that it doesn't come close to fitting into the Shot Zone (remember, though, a Shot Zone for a 90s golfer includes only about 80% of their shots - the other 20% aren't even really true "outliers"). The player who shanks this shot or lays the sod over it might have had a mental game issue, but those times are quite rare. Most of the time, players hit pretty normal shots that fit within their Shot Zone.

But because of the small sample size of one, because of the human nature to try to find a pattern and/or to place blame, they often arrive at "the mental game." Though baseball has recently slightly softened its stance that there's no such thing as "clutch" hitting (and if you look at the "clutch" hitters, you'll often find that the list is full of nobodies, not the stars of the game), the truth of the matter is that we as humans seek out patterns, and the larger the emotional weight, the more we seek out a pattern and/or blame.

For example, as a kid, I remember thinking that every time Lee Smith came in to close the game against my Pirates, that the Pirates were going to win. It felt like the Pirates owned Lee Smith, despite him being one of the pre-eminent closers of the era. The truth is probably that the Pirates had a slightly better chance against him than average, but that Lee Smith still did his job more often than not. But because overcoming a 4-2 deficit with a walk-off homer one time (or whatever), followed by a scrappy 4-3 victory when he came in at 2-3 and a runner on first… it cemented a pattern that was really just two random events occurring close together. A small sample size.

Is this player more clutch than the one above? Less of a choker?

No. That player is just better. They aimed at the same place; if they were truly attempting to get 2 or 3, they'd aim a bit further left to get rid of those two water balls. But I kept the center of the Shot Zone the same to make the point more clearly that two players could literally have the same GamePlan, but the better player is still going to win more often through skill, not mental game.

A lot of people will tell you that Tiger Woods is a "clutch" putter, right? Heck, he made a 15-footer on bumpy greens to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate in the 2008 U.S. Open, right? "Expect anything different?" Well, if you understand the statistics, you would have and should have expected that putt to miss. That was what was likely to happen.

And you should have expected this putt to go in, and yet… it didn't:

Why? Sample size. From 2.5 feet or so, Tiger is gonna make 99 out of 100. This was the 1 that missed. The putt mattered, too, as it was in a major and as we know, Tiger Woods hates making bogeys… so how do you think he feels about making double bogeys?

What's Scott Hoch remembered for? Missing a short putt at Augusta National. But that's one putt, and Scott Hoch was known for years as a human ATM, as he cashed good sized checks at a ton of PGA Tour events, winning 11 times.

Humans are really, really bad at detaching emotion and failing to understand randomness. I've said it a few times, but you can have a crappy mental approach to a shot, and still hit a good shot. In the post-shot routine, you don't go back and "blame" your mental game because you feel there's no "blame" to assign. Likewise, you can have a good mental game, but if you put the shot in the water, humans will often go back and play a little revisionist history (or blame a gust of wind that didn't affect the shot at all, or something) - they'll say "you know I was never quite ready over that one" or something.

I'm a pretty darn good putter. I win a lot of putting competitions and I'd be one of the better putters on the PGA Tour if I was put out there. I once holed 15 out of 28 putts in a match against Dave, all over 20 feet, including the final putt from about 25 feet to close out our second match which went to a tenth hole (the first match was 18 holes and he lost by about six). I realize, though, that I'm no more "clutch" than anyone else. I just make a few more putts over a large enough sample size than someone else.

Another thing people don't realize? Out of the 30 shots above (golfers often take about 34 full swings in a round of golf - 18 tee shots and ~16 approach shots. Some days you get a pretty even distribution. Some days you hit a few more of the poor shots from the Shot Zone above, and some days you hit more of the good shots.

Imagine you bet $1000 on flipping a coin, and you choose a coin because it was minted in your birth year. You choose "Tails" every time, and the first three times you flip the coin it lands on tails, and you win $3,000. You'll probably go around saying "this is my lucky quarter, it never lets me down." Then suppose that the next time, you get heads, and lose. But then you get tails two more times… your mentality continues to be reinforced. It doesn't matter that if you continued to use the coin, it'd average out to 50% over time. You're looking at a small sample size of random events and, because of the emotional context, assigning far more value to it than you should. The coin isn't "lucky" just as the guy with either the smaller Shot Zone or the guy who randomly hits a good shot instead of a water-bound shot isn't "more clutch" or "have a better mental game."

When Trump was elected, I heard a bunch of people saying "oh, the polls have him at 10 or 15%" or something. That statement would often be followed by "he's got no chance at all!" A 15% chance is not much smaller than the odds of playing Russian Roulette with a six-shooter and a single bullet… yet humans are bad at understanding chance or probability. Theoretically, if you held that election 100 times, Donald Trump wins 15 of them. It just so happened that 2016 was one of those times when the bullet was in the chamber and not in one of the other five spots in the revolver.

Again, humans are typically very bad at this sort of stuff, because:

• Humans are emotional.
• Humans seek to place blame and find patterns.
• Humans are bad at understanding probability.
• Humans would often rather blame their minds rather than their physical abilities.

All of those things speak to why human beings vastly over-state the importance of the "mental game."

P.S. I'm still not talking about outliers, but those people are outliers for a reason: they're abnormal. If you literally have the yips on short putts with any pressure, or you can't find the clubface when you're down twenty bucks despite otherwise playing to a 5… you're an outlier with a glaring mental game weakness. Get help and improve.

P.P.S. I don't count GamePlanning as a mental game thing. A 90s golfer can learn in 45 minutes how to GamePlan almost perfectly for the rest of his life. It's an SV④ skill in LSW, but not one that you have to "practice" - you just have to learn it once, ideally from the last half of Lowest Score Wins. 🙂

[boogielicious]

32 minutes ago, iacas said:

• Humans are emotional.
• Humans seek to place blame and find patterns.
• Humans are bad at understanding probability.
• Human would often rather blame their minds rather than their physical abilities.

Great post. This section is the part that all of us as players need to overcome.

Once you realize that you need to improve your physical ability and not your 'mental game', you will have a chance to become a better golfer.