Golf's Mental Game Aspect

[Ty_Webb]

One from the dead here. But a question.

Take a typical 85 shooter. Someone who goes out with his friends once a week and his scores range from let's say 82-89 or so. Put them on their usual golf course, but with 1,000 people watching his every shot. Tell him that if he shoots under 90 he'll get $100,000 (assume this is a lot of money for him), but if he shoots over 89, he has to cough up $10,000. How do you think his score is likely to compare with his "typical" score?

[iacas]

Some will score better than average. Some worse.

Questions like that assume nobody knows how to deal with stress or something. Plenty of people know how to and do deal with stress every day.

If your golfer is a surgeon, does that charge your opinion? A single father? An air traffic controller? A business owner. A former DII basketball player?

People perform well under trying circumstances all the time.

Your question is pointless too because you’re assuming the conclusion.

[Big C]

Some will perform better, true. But most people will perform worse. There are some people whose performance improves under extreme pressure. But they are outliers. Your typical golfer would very likely shoot worse than his average score under those conditions. 

10 minutes ago, iacas said:

Your question is pointless too because you’re assuming the conclusion.

 Why is the question pointless? It's a hypothetical, but it seems to be pretty pertinent to the topic in question.

[klineka]

11 minutes ago, Big C said:

Some will perform better, true. But most people will perform worse. 

You don't know that for a fact.

11 minutes ago, Big C said:

There are some people whose performance improves under extreme pressure.

Without knowing each individual person it is impossible to determine if the hypothetical situation is perceived at "extreme pressure" by said person. What you consider "extreme pressure" is different than what I consider "extreme pressure"

11 minutes ago, Big C said:

Your typical golfer would very likely shoot worse than his average score under those conditions. 

Why is the question pointless? 

You don't know that for a fact, which is why the hypothetical is pointless, it can't be proven one way or the other.

Edited May 1, 2019 by klineka

[Big C]

3 minutes ago, klineka said:

You don't know that for a fact, which is why the hypothetical is pointless, it can't be proven one way or the other.

C'mon man, think about what you are saying here. The majority of posts on any given message board involve hypothetical discussions. Do you think the Jack/Tiger debate can be proven with certainty? Does that not mean we can't discuss and debate these things? The comment that because it can't be proven, it shouldn't be debated is almost too ridiculous to address. 

And for the record, there are several studies that illustrate performance deteriorates under pressure for most people. I will try to dig them up when I have a bit more time.  Some of the findings are pretty conclusive, if you care to research them.

[chspeed]

Not sure what

 

24 minutes ago, Big C said:

Some will perform better, true. But most people will perform worse. There are some people whose performance improves under extreme pressure. But they are outliers. Your typical golfer would very likely shoot worse than his average score under those conditions. 

 Why is the question pointless? It's a hypothetical, but it seems to be pretty pertinent to the topic in question.

I agree, not sure why people think this is pointless.

12 minutes ago, klineka said:

 

You don't know that for a fact, which is why the hypothetical is pointless, it can't be proven one way or the other.

 

Why can't this be studied? It actually can. This is from Smithsonian a couple of years ago. A psychologist at U of Chicago that studies athletes performance under pressure.

"Beilock lined a room in her lab with AstroTurf and asked golfers to swing on the makeshift green, creating pressure by offering money for good performance and introducing an audience, which pushes people to scrutinize their movements. Experts were about 20 percent less accurate on three- to five-foot putts. Golfers often choke when they think too much, Beilock says. Skilled athletes use streamlined brain circuitry that largely bypasses the prefrontal cortex, the seat of awareness. When outside stresses shift attention, “the prefrontal cortex stops working the way it should,” she says. “We focus on aspects of what we are doing that should be out of consciousness.”

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-choking-under-pressure-133896043/#RdsweX0XL0EpWF75.99
 

[Ty_Webb]

55 minutes ago, iacas said:

Some will score better than average. Some worse.

Questions like that assume nobody knows how to deal with stress or something. Plenty of people know how to and do deal with stress every day.

If your golfer is a surgeon, does that charge your opinion? A single father? An air traffic controller? A business owner. A former DII basketball player?

People perform well under trying circumstances all the time.

Your question is pointless too because you’re assuming the conclusion.

Whether a golfer being someone who knows how to and deals with stress every day affects the answer to this question is surely the entire point of the discussion. If some people will score better and some people will score worse, then the people who score better are the ones better equipped to deal with that pressure and have the stronger "mental game". The difference in their scores here will be the difference in their mental games. Some people thrive under pressure and some people implode.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Ty_Webb

[klineka]

20 minutes ago, Big C said:

C'mon man, think about what you are saying here. The majority of posts on any given message board involve hypothetical discussions. Do you think the Jack/Tiger debate can be proven with certainty? Does that not mean we can't discuss and debate these things? The comment that because it can't be proven, it shouldn't be debated is almost too ridiculous to address. 

And for the record, there are several studies that illustrate performance deteriorates under pressure for most people. I will try to dig them up when I have a bit more time.  Some of the findings are pretty conclusive, if you care to research them.

My point is that through the hypothetical, there is no way to factually prove whether the hypothetical golfer is one of the people that performs negatively under pressure, or if they are one of the people that performs better under pressure, so in order to answer the question, you first have to make an assumption about how the player performs under pressure.

If I assume that the player performs well under pressure then I could argue that sure he would break 90 and get $100k. 

But you could just as easily assume the player performs poorly under pressure and argue that he wouldn't break 90 and not get the $100k, and there isn't any way that each of us could prove the other wrong since we had to make an assumption before answering the question.

In a discussion like Jack v. Tiger, you don't have to make any assumptions before looking at the facts.  

24 minutes ago, chspeed said:

Why can't this be studied? It actually can. This is from Smithsonian a couple of years ago. A psychologist at U of Chicago that studies athletes performance under pressure.

"Beilock lined a room in her lab with AstroTurf and asked golfers to swing on the makeshift green, creating pressure by offering money for good performance and introducing an audience, which pushes people to scrutinize their movements. Experts were about 20 percent less accurate on three- to five-foot putts. Golfers often choke when they think too much, Beilock says. Skilled athletes use streamlined brain circuitry that largely bypasses the prefrontal cortex, the seat of awareness. When outside stresses shift attention, “the prefrontal cortex stops working the way it should,” she says. “We focus on aspects of what we are doing that should be out of consciousness.”

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-choking-under-pressure-133896043/#RdsweX0XL0EpWF75.99
 

Ok so maybe the hypothetical player putts 20% worse on those 3-5 foot putts, but what if they have extra adrenaline from the situation on their tee shots and hit it 10-20 yds further than they normally do? From a strokes gained perspective that could be huge and could potentially result in lower scores.

The point still remains that the hypothetical is asking you to make an assumption about how the player performs under pressure before you make your decision on what you think the outcome would be.

[Ty_Webb]

11 minutes ago, klineka said:

My point is that through the hypothetical, there is no way to factually prove whether the hypothetical golfer is one of the people that performs negatively under pressure, or if they are one of the people that performs better under pressure, so in order to answer the question, you first have to make an assumption about how the player performs under pressure.

If I assume that the player performs well under pressure then I could argue that sure he would break 90 and get $100k. 

But you could just as easily assume the player performs poorly under pressure and argue that he wouldn't break 90 and not get the $100k, and there isn't any way that each of us could prove the other wrong since we had to make an assumption before answering the question.

In a discussion like Jack v. Tiger, you don't have to make any assumptions before looking at the facts.  

Ok so maybe the hypothetical player putts 20% worse on those 3-5 foot putts, but what if they have extra adrenaline from the situation on their tee shots and hit it 10-20 yds further than they normally do? From a strokes gained perspective that could be huge and could potentially result in lower scores.

The point still remains that the hypothetical is asking you to make an assumption about how the player performs under pressure before you make your decision on what you think the outcome would be.

If you believe that some people will play substantially worse under pressure while others will play substantially better, then I think by definition you think that the mental game differences between players impact their scores substantially. i.e. by more than 5%...

[klineka]

4 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

If you believe that some people will play substantially worse under pressure while others will play substantially better, then I think by definition you think that the mental game differences between players impact their scores substantially. i.e. by more than 5%...

First, I never said "substantially worse" or "substantially better".

Second, you are trying to relate the mental game differences between two players to a difference in score which isn't a great approach IMO, as was said in the first post on this topic

On 10/4/2017 at 12:56 PM, iacas said:

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.)

The player with the lesser mental game can still break 90 in your hypothetical, just like the player with a stronger mental game can still shoot 90+.

A player can be nervous from the crowd, hit the ball worse overall than they typically do, but get a couple of lucky bounces and make a long putt or two and shoot 5 strokes better than the person who wasn't nervous about the crowd, but got a couple bad bounces and had some long putts lip out. 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Big C said:

But most people will perform worse.

You don't truly know that, and even if we stipulate that "most" players will play worse, averaging 85 you can still shoot "worse" and still break 90. Plus the odds are 10:1.

I'll stipulate that the average score would go up a little, but only to that. If you have a bell curve centered around 85, going from 82 to 89 (why -3 to +4 I don't know), then the bell curve will simply be shifted a bit to the right (higher scores) and flattened somewhat to be a bit wider: some players will shoot a bit better, the majority will shoot a bit worse, and that's about all I'd stipulate to. I think most would still break 90 and win the bet, and I think virtually everyone should take the bet given the 10:1 odds. Especially if they get a second crack at it. 🙂

1 hour ago, Big C said:

The majority of posts on any given message board involve hypothetical discussions. Do you think the Jack/Tiger debate can be proven with certainty?

That's a pretty different situation, as @klineka already pointed out. There are a lot of facts and figures to be had there.

What people fail to do with the "mental game" is that they fail to account for it at all when they hit a good shot. Invariably, they attribute that to their skill, even if they had an utterly shitty mental game before hitting that great shot. Also, you can hit a horrible shot after a great mental game… and people still often blame their mental game.

It's a nebulous, means-nothing sort of thing.

50 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

If some people will score better and some people will score worse, then the people who score better are the ones better equipped to deal with that pressure and have the stronger "mental game".

Or they just got lucky that day. Or they had a good day ball striking. Or they're great under pressure, and their mental game was great, but they had a sore wrist that day. Or their game just wasn't on point and they had a bad round.

18 holes is an incredibly small sample size; yet another reason this type of hypothetical is pointless. You can basically conclude - and support - anything you want.

27 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

If you believe that some people will play substantially worse under pressure while others will play substantially better, then I think by definition you think that the mental game differences between players impact their scores substantially. i.e. by more than 5%...

Two things:

• I've been very clear in saying that the 5% thing is not related to your score.
• Who said the words "substantially"?

---

At the end of the day, Rory McIlroy could be drunk, hung over, half-asleep, and just be told that his wife cheated on him with Tiger Woods, and that he has four seconds to hit this 7-iron, and he's still gonna hit it better than just about anyone on this forum.

The mental game, except in extreme outlier type situations (glaring weakness), has a minimal impact on your actual performance.

P.S. Your bet could also constitute an "extreme outlier type situation."

[Ty_Webb]

29 minutes ago, iacas said:

Or they just got lucky that day. Or they had a good day ball striking. Or they're great under pressure, and their mental game was great, but they had a sore wrist that day. Or their game just wasn't on point and they had a bad round.

18 holes is an incredibly small sample size; yet another reason this type of hypothetical is pointless. You can basically conclude - and support - anything you want.

Two things:

• I've been very clear in saying that the 5% thing is not related to your score.
• Who said the words "substantially"?

---

At the end of the day, Rory McIlroy could be drunk, hung over, half-asleep, and just be told that his wife cheated on him with Tiger Woods, and that he has four seconds to hit this 7-iron, and he's still gonna hit it better than just about anyone on this forum.

Saying that they could have got lucky that day or had a sore wrist is a cop out.

Sure 18 holes is a small sample size. That's why I said "likely to compare" not "will compare". Likely to compare is excluding the "oh he's got a sore wrist so his score is worse" nonsense.

you explicitly addressed the 5% thing as being in respect of a "strokes gained" type approach. You said 4% for that. You're saying I think that you mean that 4% of the difference in scores is due to mental game. I think I said the same thing earlier in the thread and you denied it, but I don't see how you can apply it to the strokes gained thing without it being related to scores. I think when you said that you don't mean of score, that you mean it's not 5% of 80 or whatever a score is. I think you meant 5% of the difference in scores. i.e. that a 90 shooter might be 0.4 strokes worse than an 80 shooter on the mental game, but that the other 9.6 strokes would be based on physical ability. Is that not what you meant? If it's not, then perhaps you can explain what you did mean when you said this:

Quote

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.)

In any case, I'm pointing out that if you did my thought experiment with a million people and gave them a million goes each at playing this game, then the range of scores would be wider than if you sent those same million people out to play a million normal rounds with their pals. That additional width is entirely down to the difference in mental game between those people, given that a million goes with a million people will eliminate the random variation that would normally impact scores.

[klineka]

9 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

In any case, I'm pointing out that if you did my thought experiment with a million people and gave them a million goes each at playing this game, then the range of scores would be wider than if you sent those same million people out to play a million normal rounds with their pals. 

Isn't that basically the same thing that was said here?

51 minutes ago, iacas said:

If you have a bell curve centered around 85, going from 82 to 89 (why -3 to +4 I don't know), then the bell curve will simply be shifted a bit to the right (higher scores) and flattened somewhat to be a bit wider: some players will shoot a bit better, the majority will shoot a bit worse, and that's about all I'd stipulate to.

 

10 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

That additional width is entirely down to the difference in mental game between those people

We aren't saying the mental game doesn't have an impact, it's just not anywhere close to as big of an impact as people make it seem.

Edited May 1, 2019 by klineka

[iacas]

27 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Saying that they could have got lucky that day or had a sore wrist is a cop out.

No it isn't. It's anything but. There are days when I lose strokes putting and days when I gain strokes putting. I'm the same putter; the game is fickle and 18 holes is an incredibly small sample size.

Someone could perform worse under the pressure but get lucky a few times, and someone else could perform better but simply be having a bad day or have a sore wrist and shoot worse. Their scores wouldn't tell you much of anything about their mental game.

---

Here's the thing, @Ty_Webb: your entire proposition is an extreme outlier situation. It's not all that likely to happen.

It's like if I said "how hungry you are plays an insignificant role in your ability to play golf" because most people operate within a pretty narrow range of hunger, and suddenly you say "okay, we'll starve people for a week and then have them play golf and see if you're right." I'm not making the claim that an extreme outlier situation is going to reveal anything, because it's just that: extreme and an outlier.

This thought experiment doesn't do anything to convince me of the importance of the mental game, because, like always: 

1 hour ago, iacas said:

At the end of the day, Rory McIlroy could be drunk, hung over, half-asleep, and just be told that his wife cheated on him with Tiger Woods, and that he has four seconds to hit this 7-iron, and he's still gonna hit it better than just about anyone on this forum.

Skill matters way, way, way more. And people hit great shots after a horrible "mental game" all the time.

[chspeed]

51 minutes ago, iacas said:

Someone could perform worse under the pressure but get lucky a few times, and someone else could perform better but simply be having a bad day or have a sore wrist and shoot worse. Their scores wouldn't tell you much of anything about their mental game.

Huh? There is a negative correlation between pressure and performance in athletics. That's been studied repeatedly. In terms of causation, a good study will rule out all the other variables (wind, off-days, on-days, luck, etc.) and attempt to show that stress causes a drop in performance in athletes. I'm not 100% sure, I haven't read about it, but I would think that is relatively easy to show, and likely has been shown in studies.

What one person does on a given day, and whether one person performs better or worse under pressure is clearly pointless, but I don't think that's what @Ty_Webb was asking. I think he was asking that if you had to bet on a person performing better or worse in his thought experiment, what would you bet? I'd bet they perform worse.

 

Edited May 1, 2019 by chspeed

[ncates00]

11 minutes ago, chspeed said:

Huh? There is a negative correlation between pressure and performance in athletics. That's been studied repeatedly. In terms of causation, a good study will rule out all the other variables (wind, off-days, on-days, luck, etc.) and attempt to show that stress causes a drop in performance in athletes. I'm not 100% sure, I haven't read about it, but I would think that is relatively easy to show, and likely has been shown in studies.

What one person does on a given day, and whether one person performs better or worse under pressure is clearly pointless, but I don't think that's what @Ty_Webb was asking. I think he was asking that if you had to bet on a person performing better or worse in his thought experiment, what would you bet? I'd bet they perform worse.

 

Yes, but you're greatly over-exaggerating the mental side of it.  Stress/mental game is an easy way to dodge that the athlete messed up.  Most of the pros don't even talk about the mental side of it; they constantly talk about execution.  Usually it's a mechanical error and not a mental one.

[chspeed]

3 minutes ago, ncates00 said:

Yes, but you're greatly over-exaggerating the mental side of it.  Stress/mental game is an easy way to dodge that the athlete messed up.  Most of the pros don't even talk about the mental side of it; they constantly talk about execution.  Usually it's a mechanical error and not a mental one.

I didn't mention mental vs physical at all, how could I be exaggerating?

Seems like their are two topics going on that have nothing to do with each other. Physical skill could be 99.99% of golf, but that doesn't mean that stress doesn't affect performance. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Edited May 1, 2019 by chspeed

[saevel25]

10 minutes ago, chspeed said:

Seems like their are two topics going on that have nothing to do with each other. Physical skill could be 99.99% of golf, but that doesn't mean that stress doesn't affect performance. Those are not mutually exclusive.

To me, stress is a reaction, not an ingredient that causes issues. How many bad shots does a person have to hit before they get stressed out? Their swing is their swing. It's volatile because of how bad it is. No amount of mental game will fix that other than realizing they need to improve their golf game. 

4 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

Take a typical 85 shooter. Someone who goes out with his friends once a week and his scores range from let's say 82-89 or so. Put them on their usual golf course, but with 1,000 people watching his every shot. Tell him that if he shoots under 90 he'll get $100,000 (assume this is a lot of money for him), but if he shoots over 89, he has to cough up $10,000. How do you think his score is likely to compare with his "typical" score?

First, a typical 85 shooter probably shoots high 70's to low 90's. The higher the average the higher the volatility. I would say 82-89 would make up 60-70% of their scoring range. 

Second, are we forcing the guy to do this? If so, then the thought experiment is highly unfair. The correct question would be, would the guy take the bet. If he knows his game, then there is probably a more likely chance of shooting over 90 and he walks away. If it's just to win $100,000 dollars, take the bet. 

Also, this is an unrealistic thought experiment. There are too many unknowns. What is the background of the golfer? I know guys who shoot in the mid 80's who've played other college sports. They would be highly excited. By your definition, they are your typical 85 shooter because you didn't stipulate the type of person we are talking about. There are some people who are just super competitive who don't have the ability to swing a golf club well. 

Yea, I don't find this thought experiment worth while because it's unanswerable due to the fact that the thing needed to answer the question is an unknown. There is no way to accurately generalize the mental makeup of a golfer who averages 85.