Thanks LD
I am too old to reach that state but just out of intrest what is the pathway. I would think that you have to have a certain minimal skill set to even venture on that journey?
Of course, having a reliable and proper mechanical motion is the foundation of the process. Without it everything else is a house of cards.
What I was trying to do was get to place where for lack of a better term where I was more likely to make an ‘A’ swing more often. Create a clear, positive mindset, a more effective proper shot than the competition. Even if I’m not the best player, if I get closer to my best potential I’m going to be very successful.
A lot of this comes on the practice tee, seperating mechanical practice from target practice. Learning to play golf on the practice tee and to either practice or play on the golf course.
[quote=“macs”]
I am too old to reach that state…[/quote]
I would honestly say that it is more realistic to attempt to maximize your own potential rather than to try to imitate the physical motion of those who have spent their entire lives, starting early in chilhood, perfecting a very intricate and difficult athletic motion which doesn’t neccesarily improve overall results. Do the best you can and appreciate the experience rather than be bothered it because it isn’t perfect.
lecoeurdevie,
You are spot on with that …
I was only suggesting about the intellectuals who post science stuff on forums…
Science is applied in our lives whether we like it or not…
but the mind science stuff is still very unexplored in western culture at least.
I actually believe we gravitate to where we need to be… maybe even such a forum as this? 
If we gravitated toward where we needed to be there wouldn’t be a million driving ranges filled with individuals who will never break a hundred and have a head full of a thousand swing thoughts. That’s the problem.
This country is obsessed wih instant results and has a toxic ‘bigger, faster, higher’ mentality which is infecting the rest of the world. Hitting a golf ball is a pretty ‘spiritual’ individual experience which is contrary to conscious effort. The more you try, the more you think the worse you get. To get better you have to expose yourself to truth and reality and an honest view of your own weaknesses and limitations and other darker things. But that’s scary. A quiet mind comes out of that truth and most of us aren’t willing to go there. Doing things that don’t get instant results and that reveal things we don’t want to face isn’t appealling but true achievement isn’t possible without it. Most people couldn’t handle not failing. Just a thought.
Good observation LCDV, you’ve got some interesting thoughts. I imagine Lag was referring to what happens when you do ask those questions and face those realities, scary or otherwise. I speculate that most(or all) here are beyond that brainless ball beating, and in an honest search for truth have gravitated towards this site. I do believe that we move towards the places and people that will encourage our truth when we face those real questions with openness and honesty. And in meeting those people we realize that they are just like us and are on similar quests for that thing, and we end up encouraging and being encouraged. The fact that we could be even having this conversation is evidence of that in itself. It’s very interesting stuff. And I don’t think it’s not just about golf or the thing you’re specifically looking for, it can often be more. In the particular lies the universal.
Cheers…
Bent - perhaps you can re-phrase your question to me? I’m not understanding your point.
Not just a thought, I wholly believe it is the truth. Definitely worth renting out the “Bigger Stronger Faster” movie if you haven’t seen it.
There’s a fine line between the self-fulfilling prophecy of having belief in yourself and keeping self-expectation in check. I don’t know if it’s Anthony Robbins who was largely responsible, but there’s so much of a ‘you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it’ attitude out there. Just watch “So you think you can dance” and see some fat girl with no rhythm and a year of tuition get told by the judges she’ll never dance professionally and hear her retaliate saying she is a dancer and will get more lessons and be back next year. Or the contestants on ‘Big Break’ - boy, they talk like they’ve never missed a 20 foot putt before and collapse in a ball of disappointment every 9 times out of 10 when they miss them. Too much ‘wishing’, too many Prozac prescriptions.
LCVD,
I agree with what you say about a person’s search to find a way for one to maximize his potential… to get the full horsepower out of the engine he/she was provided. Annika Sorenstam’s coaches, Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott have a book “Every Shot Must Have a Purpose”. This book is all about that, and how they prescribe to do it…similar to what you seem to be saying. Their fruit, Annika, certainly seems to have used her horsepower very well.
One interesting thing they advise goes something like this: they say the best training device might be a 3 foot piece of yarn, placed perpendicular to the target line behind the ball. You stand behind it before the shot and do all the mental stuff…target focus,environmental assessment,planning, visualizing, feelings,etc… then turn off the mental as you step over the yarn, set up, and hit it. Bang.
I tried it, and it seemed to help. I had much less anxiety and feelings of “grinding”.
Have you read the book and what did you think?
eagle
Great book, sets a scene at the very least, went through it some time ago, but I think Annika was on a whole other level. The string is a physical manifestation of the trigger mechanism. Personally I like the string down the target line so there is no timeframe but that’s semantics. What the book does is teach you how to aim the gun and pull the trigger. But what you hunt, why you’re hungry and how you load the gun I didn’t see as I recall.
When Annika said there was no reason she couldn’t shoot 18 birdies in a row I thought that was awesome, totally transcendent. Take every conception of expectation and chuck it out the window. Completely change the nature of the beast and play every shot regardless of what has happened before or what will happen after. Who cares… Just like Mickey Wright, it takes a great woman to cut through all the bullshit.
Google Dr Carey Mumford and go from there. He has the keys to the castle. I have my own views and secrets but without Doc I never would have even gotten started.
I need to remember what sleep is but as to the fatchick and prozac insertions, I tell ya what. I’ll call a few friends and you’re invited to a private game I played in for a long time. here’s the house rules: About 10 or 12 players, individual match play against everyone else, nassaus with unlimited 2 downs everywhere. Drop it on every tee, back foot has to be at least touching the back rough of the furthest block. Any score over a 4 on any hole forfeits the following hole unless the opponent is also over. Best I ever did in this game was a stretch of 6 rounds back in I think '02 with two 5’s total. Oh yeah, no hazards or unplayables, hit it. Would rather not discuss the units here but Cash only please. I got invited into the group a long long time ago and I’m sure you’d be welcome. I’ll keep a light on.
I heard of Clearkey about a year ago , but did not check it out. Sounds like you are saying it is very worthwhile.
As for the golf invitation, I don’t think it was directed at me, but if it was, I have I’ll turn it down. My golf engine doesn’t have the horsepower yours must have…so I’ll save my cash for more Modules and ebay deals!
I would recommened both the clearkey and the double connexion books. but realize a couple things. First the clearkey is just like the piece of yarn, a trigger mechanism to turn off the conscious, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Secondly he’s not going to lay out everything which was his Magnum Opus in a Paperback, nobody would. This isn’t something to end up gathering dust on a shelf! The real Double Connexion was introduced to me in a 2 day 20 hour seminar he did which I attended in October 1993. Most in depth views of athletics I’ve ever seen, the first hour was an individual personality profile and the last two hours was how to create and use the ClearKey. I don’t know if he travels or does the clinics anymore, haven’t talked to Doc in a long time but if he doesn’t I’m sure he’ll keep the school alive somehow, it’s too important not to. Other than that I’m not his press agent, so… But it took about a year for the most practical applications to hit for real, for a stretch in late 94 and 95 I was going deep, a lot of course records and really good stretches of matches and tournaments. The good days meant I was 5 under in the parking lot. One that I was proud of was shooting 63 the first time I saw Hunter Ranch down in Paso Robles. There were a lot of rounds where I felt totally lost in space too but the numbers never added up as high as I thought they would. About 3 years later I was able to kind of tear it apart and go deeper into the process and the guts of it all, when you get to the heart of the skills and techniques involved you can eventually leave them at the wayside like an unneeded coat under the warm sun.
And the invitation is for Steb. This is legit stuff and I have an ego too. If comparisons like THAT are gonna be made then I welcome the challenge of teeing it up.
Which part in particular did you disagree with LCDV?
It is generally accepted that ‘genius level’ is attained after 10,000 hours of practice but that concept has been brought into question recently.
LCD, I also use the concious/unconcious terminology when discussing this topic and I liken it to learning to drive a car.
- You get in a car and don’t even know you can’t drive it (unconciously incompetent)
- You take a few lessons and know how to steer but have to look for gears and levers (Consciously incompetent)
- You pass your test but are still nervous and look for the gears (Conciously competent)
- You can drive from A to B without remembering any of the trip whilst you shaved, had coffee, spoke to a friend on the phone! (Unconciously competent)
I would imagine it was the part about (paraphrasing) that its bad for people to dream big. I also took exception to that Steb. I firmly believe that people should go live their dreams. The reality shows you mentioned are pure tv and you have to be aware that the ‘fat chicks’ are real people with real dreams. The cruelty aspect of the way contestants are spoken to is purposely done for ratings. If the girls only issue is that she is overweight there would be no problem in her reducing her weight if she put her mind to it however, the musical Hairspray is a worldwide smash and they need a ‘fat chick’ to play lead.
As for the Big Break guys, again they are saying things that make for good tv. Have you read “Dream On” by John Richardson? He challenged himself to go from not being able to break 100 to breaking par in one calendar year. At the start of his challenge would you have encouraged him or told him to go get some more prozac?
Dreaming big is fine, it gives excitement to life, but expecting those dreams to be met if one persists is a formula for depression. I’ve seen it time and time again, most intimately with my brother. Attempted to turn pro as a teenager, got reality check when he teed it up with the local cream of the crop. Tony Robbins overruled, “You can achieve anything if you really want it and persist” was the message. He remembered the feeling of power and belief he got from his seminars.
So he did persist.
20 years later, he’s still persisting, intensely. 40mg Prozac daily for the last 15 years, marriage on the brink of failure due to his persistence and obsession to get reward for the effort he’s put in, kids alienated because his mind is just never in the present with them.
I played comp with a guy yesterday, a 17 handicapper whose ball striking is more like a 5 marker when he’s on, but he struck the ball like a 30 marker. Clubs were thrown, swearing at the top of his voice and his heart started playing up (he had a ticker). Wanted to hit the alcohol hard after the round. His crying plea was ‘I’ve practiced for hours every day this week and I play like shit’. Again, this overwhelming expectation that effort gives reward. If he puts no effort in and play like shit, he’s fine.
To a degree these judges on television are acting for the cameras, but they also have had a career in dance and have seen thousands try and fail. My wife was an acclaimed dancer and later an instructor and we’ve talked about it at length–when you see thousands try, you spot the x-factor that it takes to succeed, even if the ability isn’t there yet. In dancing, a fat girl might think that if they just lose weight they will be back on track. The instructor knows that successful dancers are graceful from early childhood and demand to be looked at and appreciated constantly. They don’t get big to start with. The instructor also knows losing weight is easy compared to talented dancing so can only be confused when they see someone audition with the weight on.
So the choice is to lie to the student and parents who both start asking questions when auditions are failed time and time again, and continue to take their money, or give them a reality check and and a more achievable short term goal and take it from there.
Very interesting discussion here. I could see what Steb was trying to get at and I don’t think he was talking about not trying or not dreaming, but to be able to look at the odds. I don’t think he was recommending prozac so much as lamenting the fact that it’s used as an answer to counteract the inevitable disappointment that comes from aiming for unreal expectations. And I mean unreal, not just unrealistic. The happiest and most successful people I know understand odds, they understand the difference between probability and possibility. Jackie Burke makes some great points regarding this type of thing in that Classic Conversation piece. In simple terms it comes down to whether or not you would keep taking your 3w over the water to reach a par 5 even if you’ve made 7 every time you’ve tried it, or would you look at the odds. Would you spend your life learning to hit that 3w shot at the cost of every other part of your game. I’m not recommending giving up, just that you try another route and maybe have more realistic intentions about what score you can make on the hole.
I’m a firm believer in chance and possibility, and I honestly think there’s a chance that I could catch a good gust of wind and land in a pile of feathers if I jumped off a building. It’s actually possible that that could occur. A million and one different and unlikely events have to align at just the right moment in order for me not to die, but they might happen. I’m more likely to take a look at those odds and decide not to jump. As far as we know we only get one shot at living, and similar thinking in terms of odds can and possibly should be used when looking at how to manage that time. Where would Fred Funk’s career be if he had have been determined to learn to hit the ball 300 plus yards instead of looking at what he was good at and playing the game that way?
It’s a social issue in a lot of ways. Commercialism and marketing has created a false reality of what life is and what it can be in oder to sell products. The line is basically, “buy this and this will be your life”. Look at car commercials, they’re insane. They sell lifestyles, or at least promise to. A car has 4 wheels, an engine and a steering mechanism. This is the same for all cars. But if you look at how each one is sold, and the different styles of living they claim to represent or even create, you’d swear they were each as different as night and day. We can eat summer fruit and buy flowers all through the year, this can’t be good. We’re completely detached from the natural course of the seasons, we expect it to be summer everyday. I do think this type of thinking is socially created and really does create terrible unhappiness and depression. It’s a question of expectation in a lot of ways. In a way, prozac is the natural reaction to the world, or at least to this type of thinking. The concept of ‘being positive’ has gotten out of control and sacrificed good judgement. As a great man once said, “the world needs ditch diggers too, ya know” 
This isn’t meant to be depressing, but I do have a lot of difficulty with how commercialized the world is. How on earth we as people can accept being referred to every day as ‘consumers’ and not even blink an eye, I will never know. These points are connected in some way though I’ve gone off on a little tangent here. Expectation might be the common thread.
Now this has become an interesting topic of conversation.
First of all, to Steb, if you think that your brother’s Depresssion was caused by turning pro too early I feel sorry for you. I also think your ignorance and arrogance is astounding. Depression is a genetic disease, a Type II Psychosis that people are born with in their very chromosomes which may or may not manifest itself in a cyclical manner during the individual’s lifetime, mostly dependent on early childhood experiences and some other things. Very akin to the genetic predisposition to Alcoholism. I happen to know this because I have it. I wish your brother all the success and happiness I can possibly express, God knows this world is hard enough to deal with at your best. I know personally how hard it is to create real connections with anyone when your family, the ones who should offer unconditional love and support could give a shit less when there’s nothing in it for them. Robert Johnson wrote a hundred years ago, ‘Nobody knows you when you’re down’.
I always figured on a self-absorbed note that anyone who had the guts to take a good look at the world and what people really are and do to each other and their environment, anyone who didn’t get a little depressed was insane. Get’s harder the older we get to find the good and the beauty out there, makes it all the more sacred and special when we do.
It pissed me off when I read your comparison of my blood, sweat and tears searching in ways that only I know for the very core of my life’s passion to Gladiator Mentality mass consumption garbage made for the lowest common denominator of a throwaway society. And then throw on top a side show scheister and an oversimplified drug reference in an attempt at a holier than thou judgment. What a joke.
As for the golf, that’s a variation upon the same threads. This is supposed to be Advanced Ball Striking, so I figured this was as good a place as any to propose a couple of things I’ve considered through my own experiences. When I was getting into the aspects that go along with increasing real mastery of the game a lot of hard questions were put to me. What the hell is the good of increasing technical and mechanical skill of a game like this if you can’t put your skill level and expertice of the game in a real life perspective and have a real and healthy sense of self in relation to the history of the game and competitive levels therein? How is anyone supposed to know how good they are if they haven’t the knowledge of what ‘good’ or ‘great’ is? And then go deeper, how will the psyche allow the body to accomplish great feats if it has no prior experience of success and what is the justification for greatness itself? Then what happens after, how does the psyche justify the rewards of the accomplishments and maintain itself doing something so difficult so consistently?
Answers to questions like these are not available through technical study and hitting modules.
Styles analogy of driving a car in the application of Unconscious Competence is still the best I’ve found. That was the way Doc explained it to me and the way I try to explain it. With a caveat. As Bobby Jones said, there’s golf, and then there’s Tournament Golf. To apply that to driving, there’s driving down the freeway talking to the wife, and then there’s Formula One. The best of the best of the craziest pushing it constantly to the breaking point, the point of disaster.
Now I saw something else about odds and the horrible odds of being able to make it as a tournament golf professional. Well duh, I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen lists over the years having this as the most desirable profession in America according to ‘polls’. Of course it’s hard, and if the odds are what worries you ya got the wrong horse to begin with. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what scores win golf tournaments, you either shoot them or you don’t. The end.
If there is a show or whatever where the physical qualifications are blatently obvious and someone who obviously doesn’t meet any of them shows up and then makes a spectacle of themselves when they are told so, I would want to know why the individual either has no realistic view of themselves or feels the need to punish themselves in an overt public manner. That says something about them and the people propping them up.
You’re extrapolating my views incorrectly LCDV. Something has touched a nerve with you and I apologize, for it was not my intention. It was your initial post that I agreed with and added my views on top, in an aid to furthering my understanding of the dynamic I’m seeing in golf, spurred by both my concern over my brother and concern over myself.
I also agree with your subsequent posts, especially the bit about what happens if you do take a good look at the world. Your responses to me however show misunderstanding of my points. Bomgolf didn’t misunderstand, neither did Styles even though he disagreed. But those two also know me better than you so maybe my post was ambiguous.
But nowhere did I say turning pro caused my brother depression. Whether it is a born genetic disposition or whether it is environmental biologists argue themselves despite the popular beliefs. The cause is irrelevant to my point. The trigger is not. I simply believe the lack of reward in golf that his effort has brought him triggers his bouts. For his explicit cry is not to win tournaments, not to shoot course records, but solely to get paid for the effort he has put in. Prior to golf his extended effort was truly rewarded on the cricket field and there was no sign of heightened anxiety. A brief absence from golf where he got into the gym and saw muscles appear in direct proportion to effort exerted saw both his bouts and medication disappear. We’ve heard it so many times in golf: ‘let a score happen, don’t force it’, ‘you’re trying to hard’, ‘I was hitting it great at the range’… I’ve definitely never come across anything as excruciating as golf.
My belief may be incorrect, but it is not ignorant.
Thank you for your wishes towards my brother. Similarly I wish you peace.