Unless you’re Bubba Watson, you really need to think about your practice and how you’re implementing changes. Your swing was an absolute mess at this point in the journey, held together by insane amounts of volume and not much else. I see how unsustainable this all was now, and it’s just so sad the injury happened, but it seems like an inevitable ending more than anything else now. It’s so difficult reading your blog in this final chapter, seeing you bogged down with gear talk, never truly delving into how to practice golf properly when one hits their plateau.

Am a fan. You are the man. I believe you can. Bam!

*End rhyming*

Seriously, you seem too technical / equipment focused. Start ‘playing golf’ by shooting some numbers. Scoring is far more important. Ignore trackman, fitting sessions, Richard Chen (no offence Richard!

Just get the ball in the hole. Then when you are plus 2 handicap – focus on any technique flaws.

Good luck.

I’ve been keeping up with your blog for the last year and a half or so. I too play golf, but as one of my recreational activities. But I practice a lot and my goal is to become scratch by the time I am 50. So I have about 5 more years to reach my goal and I’m currently on the cusp of breaking 80.

In reading your blog and also the book ‘Outliers’ I have started to come to some conclusions about how someone could master a sport or activity. 10,000 hours maybe be the starting point, but I think you and Gladwell miss one important point, and that’s the ‘IT’ factor. I grew up playing basketball every since I was four yrs old. The teenagers on my block played 3 on 3 in my backyard at that time and all I could do was sit on the back porch and just watch. From there, I developed a strong urge for the game. So when the teenagers would leave my yard, I would go to the driveway and just start imitating everything that I saw. I did this for most of my childhood and soon, I didn’t need to see the older kids out there playing. Instead I just wanted to be out there myself and I started to develop a love/passion for the game. So because I was young and unbiased in how I got info on how to play, I trusted everything that I saw and used it. If it worked, then I kept it as simple as that. I didn’t try to figure out how or why something worked. I saw the older kid shoot a fade away, so I started doing it. When I saw a reverse layup on TV, I went outside and started doing it. If it worked for me once or twice, I incorporated it into my game. I totally trusted the new technique and then I would embellish it even more to make it part of my unique flair for the game. Soon I was one of the better players in my age group when I started playing competitive basketball.

The point is that, at that young age, I had no filter for new info. At a very young age, I blindly accepted new moves and different shots. And being in the backyard and imitating what I observed was simply pure joy for me. There was nothing else I’d rather do with my spare time. If I wasn’t actually playing in a game then I would be in my backyard driveway practicing to my heart’s delight. I didn’t necessarily have to be playing in a game. That’s the ‘IT’ factor that I’m talking about. I had it in basketball. After a short time growing up, I knew all of the specifics of the game. I had mastered the skills because I had an inherent desire to do so. I probably did spend about 10,000 hrs practicing/playing and that led to my success in the game, but I was doing it as a labor of love. And when compared to other kids growing up I didn’t really think my abilities were even that big of a deal. So there was no pressure on me as a youngster to be the greatest. I simply just loved to see and hear the ball going through the net. Everyday that’s all I cared about. That translated to a great high school career and the opportunity to play College Ball and Overseas also.

So that’s the problem with being an adult and attempting what you’re doing. As an adult, you have a very complex view of how things should be. Your experiences in life have brought you to this point. Those experiences are what makes it difficult for you to get past this plateau stage. If you look at a pro in any sport, they practice the sport, not as an ends to a means, but simply because they didn’t want to do anything else with their time. And the naivete of youth helped them to blindly accept the correct fundamental way to swing. The adult filter was not present at the time and any early success at the game would be reinforced. As adults, we tend to analyze too much why something positive has happened and we question new info about the game so much that it hinders our progress. Then we go bonkers when we fail and we want trash everything that we’ve learned up to that point and try it a different way. People with the ‘IT’ factor don’t see things that way.

I taught my son how to swing a golf club when he was 2 yrs old. I remember thinking how could I simplify this for him so that he could at least get the ball airborne with his kiddy wedge. So I told him, ‘make a big circle with the clubhead and hit the ball and the ground at the same time. (not exactly correct, but simplified) And it worked! He still doesn’t really like golf now that he’s 7, but he still will go to the range with me and hit awesome wedge shots simply because he keeps it as simple as that. Plus in his mind, it’s all about spending quality time with Dad. The ‘IT’ factor isn’t present with him in golf, but if his desire to play increase, then it would reveal itself. But for now, he’s just awesome with a wedge and he has no clue as to why.

So after witnessing this and reading your blog, I changed my approach to the game. I no longer keep score, unless I’m playing with work buddies. I love to practice just for the heck of it. And I’ve simplified my swing as per the advice that I gave my son. To put it simply, I just love to hit the ball. I’m not concerned about scores or G.I.R.’s, just hitting the ball high and straight. I really get a kick out of that. I like striking the ball from the high grass in my front yard, I like hitting the ball into my net in the backyard. I try to hit it throught the holes in the net, I try to hit it over the net. It’s just like when I used to practice basketball when I was younger. The only thing is that I have shifted my passion for one sport to another. And I’m completely satified with just hitting the ball. Just like I wanted to see that swish from corner.

All of the masters of any sport have pretty much ascended to greatness in this way. Everything involving the sport for them is fun and not a chore. They don’t have any bad days and when they accomplish something, they don’t seem to think it’s that big of a deal. They seemed to believe that it’s just a fun thing to do or perhaps they felt like they could’ve done better. That mindset brings the necessary clarity to perform under pressure. Just simply act as if it doesn’t exist. The bliss of naivete.

But that’s the difference between a child and an adult in trying to attempt what you’re doing. As adults our minds are cluttered with so much random junk from experience, that it’s to our detriment when we are trying to master something at a latter age. We don’t give full trust to it. Kids do, and that’s why most of the great ones have been doing things since an early age. When the proper mechanics are instilled and they are accepted with blind faithfulness. And with a passion for the game, they develop the ‘IT’ factor.

That’s the problem with seeing Tiger play and to witness his success over the years. He’s tweaked and changed his swing so much and he was still able to win until now. In trying to bite off a piece of his mastery, we’re trying to do the same thing and get lessons, new equipment, or watch too much Golf Fix. When all we need is to simplify the process. Tiger mastered his swing before he was 2. He can tweek things that much because he truly owns his swing through mastery. However, he is the exception. Just like the rest of the guys on tour or in any professional sport. But for people like myself who just started playing golf about 12 years ago (33 yrs old), I can’t function like that. My early years in golf were wasted with teachers that could not articulate properly and watching shows that explain too much. If any change occured then my brain would start to fry. And that happened when I first started playing this game.

So my advice to you is to find your inner child. Play as if you don’t have a care in the world. Simplify things, keep the same equipment and pretend that you’re that 5 yr old boy that is growing up in a house on the golf course and in your spare time all you like to do is go out to the 16th and shag balls. That is kind of where I am. I don’t get in as many rounds as I would like, but by adopting philosophy after seeing what my son is able to do, I have taken as many as 10 strokes off my game in the last year. So when I do keep score, I’m able to blow my friends away and channel that little kid from AL that fell in love with swishes.

This experiement has been interesting to witness and I really enjoy keeping up with your success. But sometimes I think that the mind is the worst thing that can happen to athletes when it comes to sports. Reading books on Zen and the art of Archery, or Zen and the art of shooting a basketball have helped me to come to this conclusion. Why are you really playing a sport? Is it for glory or just personal gratification? Either way the body has to be free from the mind in order to succeed. So either do something because you really love it or just channel your inner child. Once you do that, then you’ll start to gain the ‘IT’ factor. The thing that separates good athletes from great ones.

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