Golf's Mental Game Aspect

[golfonly]

You keep bringing it back to the average golfer.  I have never stated that the average golfer could compete with pros regardless of mental ability.  My consistent point even though you want to bring it away from this is that among elite golfers the mental side is significant.  I have posted quotes corroborating that position. 

I have no desire to go through and show where you have stated things as fact.  However, I haven't stated anything as fact.  I just said that they are right.  That is clearly my opinion, but you have been much more direct in trying to show your opinion is more factual than others.

16 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Ask him. He's told you.

 

 

Actually he didn't tell me what he meant he simply told me that I was inferring incorrectly and you agreed with him.  So I thought you knew what he meant because you agreed that he did not imply what I thought he did.

[billchao]

37 minutes ago, golfonly said:

You implied that I said somebody that has no physical skills can be good just by being strong mentally.  I never said that.

No, I didn't.

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, golfonly said:

You keep bringing it back to the average golfer.

Nope.

The single biggest thing separating Dustin Johnson or Tiger Woods at their best from, say, Jason Dufner is physical skills. By far.

5 minutes ago, golfonly said:

I have never stated that the average golfer could compete with pros regardless of mental ability.

As with your misunderstanding of @billchao's posts, you've greatly misunderstood mine. Apparently.

5 minutes ago, golfonly said:

My consistent point even though you want to bring it away from this is that among elite golfers the mental side is significant.

I don't agree.

I agree that some players think it's significant. I have also talked to many who feel it's almost completely irrelevant. Insignificant.

5 minutes ago, golfonly said:

I just said that they are right.

Only facts can be "right" or "wrong." Opinions cannot be.

5 minutes ago, golfonly said:

Actually he didn't tell me what he meant he simply told me that I was inferring incorrectly and you agreed with him.  So I thought you knew what he meant because you agreed that he did not imply what I thought he did.

He replied just above.

[golfonly]

Just now, iacas said:

 

He replied just above.

He did not clarify, only again saying what he did not say.

2 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Only facts can be "right" or "wrong." Opinions cannot 

I can have an opinion that somebody is right.  Should I just say "it's my opinion" before every statement?

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, golfonly said:

I can have an opinion that somebody is right.  Should I just say "it's my opinion" before every statement?

There is no "right" or "wrong" here - it's not a fact-based thing we're discussing.

I don't even know that we'd agree on what "significant" is.

[golfonly]

6 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Only facts can be "right" or "wrong." Opinions cannot 

I can have an opinion that somebody is right.  Should I just say "it's my opinion" before every statement?

 

1 minute ago, iacas said:

There is no "right" or "wrong" here - it's not a fact-based thing we're discussing.

I don't even know that we'd agree on what "significant" is.

It's a  little immature to upload a picture for my profile without my consent.

[billchao]

13 minutes ago, golfonly said:

He did not clarify, only again saying what he did not say.

Read what I wrote without injecting any assumptions you made about me or my position on this topic.

8 minutes ago, golfonly said:

It's a  little immature to upload a picture for my profile without my consent.

https://thesandtrap.com/a/faq/#avatarplease

[golfonly]

1 hour ago, billchao said:

Read what I wrote without injecting any assumptions you made about me or my position on this topic.

https://thesandtrap.com/a/faq/#avatarplease

I read and ask you what you meant.  You failed to explain.

[bones75]

Maybe the top 50 golfers @iacas was discussing already have great mental games?  Likewise nearly all experienced tourney players and tour players (regardless of tour) have already got their nerves under wraps, so they can take their solo game to a tournament.

I just know too many people (amateurs) who can fall apart when the pressure is on (including myself).  If you only experience 5 putts a year that will have a direct impact on your life, vs 500 a year, then you're certainly not going to be as used to it. I guess I'm again throwing my vote that amateurs (esp weekend warrior types) do get impacted by mental game, and substantially so when it comes to pressure conditions.

In my experience, it's statistically undeniable the # of golfer's i've seen that mishit a 100 yard shot over water, vs how they perform w/ a 100 yard shot over a fairway. And i don't see the same differential w/ pro's

Edited May 4, 2019 by bones75

[Ty_Webb]

How Performance Coach Dave Alred Helped Francesco Molinari Play Under Pressure

---

He knew that he was missing the mental edge and completed his coaching team by recruiting mental performance coach Dave Alred,

I know a couple of people who are quite good at this game. One of them shot 61 in a local event. He played in the British Amateur at RSG and Princes. He shot 89 at RSG and 71 at Princes. His game was better than almost anyone I've ever seen, but he was an absolute lunatic. We called him bungalow, as in there's nothing upstairs. He hit it close more often than anyone I've ever seen and I include people you watch on the TV, but no one will ever hear of him because he has no idea what he's doing. He will always go for the hero shot because that's who he is. And he'll never win anything, because, as stated, he's a loon. But it's okay. He's actually not very good and his mental game only makes a tiny impact on his game. Either that or he's an "outlier" - outlier being anyone who doesn't fit in with the narrow specification provided for here.

Sometimes I wonder how many more majors Phil would have won if he'd been a little more conservative with his strategy. He was always pretty aggressive. No matter though. Aggression doesn't matter more than 5%.

I am however curious how we are supposed to deal with the goalposts being moved like this:

When we started, this was mental game (direct quotes from the opening post and a subsequent one:

Quote

 

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), and you can be taught this in 45 minutes and do it almost perfectly for the rest of your life.

 

Now, it's  

Quote

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.

 

 

[Vinsk]

On 10/4/2017 at 6:39 PM, iacas said:

I said, IIRC, that game planning isn't difficult. It's making a decision. If I said it wasn't "mental game" I was probably thinking that the mental game, at the time, was more about getting nervous or whatever. After all, Rotella really doesn't talk about gameplanning much. His game planning advice is basically "swing aggressively at conservative targets," IIRC.

You give a bogey golfer a brilliant gameplan and he's still not putting up a better score than Dustin Johnson with the worst (reasonable) gameplan.

I believe he explains this here.

43 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I am however curious how we are supposed to deal with the goalposts being moved like this:

In a discussion such as this, moving the goalposts can actually be part of the discussion. We’re not given a set of facts then changing them. It’s peoples opinions that may or may not be supported by facts.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Vinsk

[Patch]

Interesting thread.

I was watching a little pro tour golf today, and a player (I forget who) was standing over his tee shot. Just before he was to start his back swing, he stepped out of his stance due to some distraction from the gallery. I can only assume that distraction broke his concentration on the shot at hand. He stepped out to regroup his thought process. 

When he did hit his tee shot, he missed the fairway by a large margin. 

As he was walking off the tee, he turned pointed, and said something in the direction of the gallery. 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, golfonly said:

It's a  little immature to upload a picture for my profile without my consent.

What's immature is you bitching about this here, as it's off topic and you were told of this in the PM you got when you registered for the site:

Quote

P.P.S. If you didn't create a unique avatar for yourself when you signed up, please add one. A unique avatar lets people recognize you better. If you post a few times and haven't uploaded an avatar, one of our staff may upload one for you so that we can tell your posts apart from the others at a glance!

Change your avatar if you don't like it.

53 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I am however curious how we are supposed to deal with the goalposts being moved like this:

It's not like this was sprung on you all of a sudden, dude. It's back on page 2. And page one, where it's defined, says:

Shot selection, game planning, strategy (though this is pretty simple, and even non-golfers can make these decisions), and you can be taught this in 45 minutes and do it almost perfectly for the rest of your life.

2 minutes ago, Patch said:

As he was walking off the tee, he turned pointed, and said something in the direction of the gallery. 

Whoopty doo. Doesn't say anything except that perhaps a fan was misbehaving. He might have missed the fairway regardless. And, he reset and still missed the fairway, so… it says nothing.

2 hours ago, golfonly said:

I can have an opinion that somebody is right.  Should I just say "it's my opinion" before every statement?

They can't be "right" about an opinion. You can agree with them, you can't say they're "right." If I say "2+2 = 4" you can say I'm "right." You can't say I'm right if I say "Chocolate ice cream is the best."

[Ty_Webb]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

It's not like this was sprung on you all of a sudden, dude. It's back on page 2. And page one, where it's defined, says:

Shot selection, game planning, strategy (though this is pretty simple, and even non-golfers can make these decisions), and you can be taught this in 45 minutes and do it almost perfectly for the rest of your life.

So simple you wrote a book about it...

[iacas]

1 minute ago, Ty_Webb said:

So simple you wrote a book about it...

Do you think “Shades or Grey” is complex? You’d be the first. We use it to teach ten year olds.

And we teach them in about 30 minutes.

Most of the third section of LSW is just building the case to throw away old course management maxims.

[Ty_Webb]

19 minutes ago, iacas said:

Do you think “Shades or Grey” is complex? You’d be the first. We use it to teach ten year olds.

And we teach them in about 30 minutes.

Most of the third section of LSW is just building the case to throw away old course management maxims.

I don’t know shades or grey. Nor do I think it’s particularly relevant what it’s complexion is. Why would you write an entire book about something you teach kids in 30 minutes? I wonder how Phil feels knowing that it’s taken him 40-odd years to learn what you teach kids in 30 minutes. If only he could have been more sensible with his strategies, perhaps he’d have won 10 majors. 

[golfonly]

5 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

I don’t know shades or grey. Nor do I think it’s particularly relevant what it’s complexion is. Why would you write an entire book about something you teach kids in 30 minutes? I wonder how Phil feels knowing that it’s taken him 40-odd years to learn what you teach kids in 30 minutes. If only he could have been more sensible with his strategies, perhaps he’d have won 10 majors. 

Just because he teaches the basics, there is much more to it than he is letting on, especially at the highest level.  Their strategy is going to be much more complex am done difficult than his personal style of teaching.  Unless there are some tour pros he has taugh/coached that I’m not aware of.

Edited May 5, 2019 by golfonly

[saevel25]

3 minutes ago, golfonly said:

Their strategy is going to be much more complex am done difficult than his personal style of teaching. 

How so? You want to back up this claim with actual evidence? Are you just spouting nonsense again? 

8 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

If only he could have been more sensible with his strategies, perhaps he’d have won 10 majors. 

Yea, that may be true. May be not.

Look at Tiger at Augusta this year. The only member in his group not to hit it in the water on #12. He knew his shot zone (intuitively). He knew he couldn't miss it short right (Black Death). He intuitively knew that the bunker is slightly better (Gray) and the green is the best. He placed his shot were he had the best chance of having a two putt par on a notoriously difficult hole.

Would Phil have done that?