The primary differentiators between professional golfers and recreational golfers is indeed physical skill. Now,
the difference between really good pro players and just okay professional players is psychological,
not always, but primarily so. The difference in skill between a professional
golfer and your average recreational golfer is leaps and balance. You could be the
most confident and the most present recreational golfer and at a ten handicap, you're
going to get killed by a professional player, even if that professional player is
playing through anxiety. Like, the skill difference is too I, I don't
want to present to our psychology is the only thing that's important in our performant.
It is not skill matters, but what access we have to that skill
depends on how stable our confidence is. And so if you think about anxiety,
it's a reflection of really unstable confidence, which basically means you're more preoccupied
with trying to avoid a future you don't want than you are pursuing the task
at hand in the present moment. Hi, this is Tony Redden from Such
Daddy Ohio. I play golf at Human golf Course. This is Golf Smarter
Number eight Golf Beneath the Surface The News Science of Golf Psychology with author Raymond
Pryor. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great
golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's
your host, Fred Green. Welcome to Golf Smarter podcast. Raymond. Thank
you very much, Fred, good to be here. It's great to have
you on. I'm fascinated about this book. It's intense. I have to
tell you. This book is intense, but I learned so much. When
you say intense, what do you mean by that? Sometimes it felt clinical,
sometimes it felt academic, and then sometimes it was chatty. So I
really was enjoying it. I was enjoying it, but I find that I
would spend more time reading because I was reading slowly and reading things over like,
wait, let me absorb that a little bit more. But you got
me on the title alone Golf Beneath the Surface the New Science of Golf Psychology,
which I thought was a great title and also a practical guide to composure
under pressure, long term growth, and more fulfilling relationship with the game.
What brought you to write this book, Well, probably the exact reason that
your experience was in that A couple of people have told me like, Okay,
this is a little bit of a different read for the performance psychology part
of golf, and it's going to take and reading the book is a little
bit more comprehensive, no doubt, and there is some academic information in it.
There's also some I discussed pretty significantly the type of stuff that we as
humans take personally about golf that keeps us from being as infinite as we would
like to be, in keeping the game from being as enjoyable, and I
talk about them at a mechanistic level, meaning at the deepest level that we
understand thus far. The reason it's been a bit of a read for people
where they might have to go back and really soak things in is because most
golfers don't have a very good understanding about their psychology based on what's been currently
available in golf. And quite frankly, the book is a bit of a
challenge to the status quo of what's been available for a long time, which
has been helpful to a lot of people. I don't want to discount any
of that, but the psychology in golf has been due for an upgrade for
quite a while, and there's never been more science and never been a deeper
understanding of human psychology, particularly as it relates to performance. And my hope
is that this book provides an upgrade to golfers looking for it. Like every
area of golf is jumping by leaps and bounds because of the science behind it
and the research being done, whether that's club technology, golf ball technology,
course management. The psychology of the game has been lagging behind for a long
time. So the fact that this book is something that people have to absorb
a little bit more than previous resources, I think is a little bit more
of an understanding that people don't understand it very deeply. My hope is that
that book, this book will give them that information and so that they can
kind of be a bit of an expert on their own psychology rather than outsourcing
it to someone at like kind of more of a surface level. Well,
you know, here you are on Golf Smarter, and the premise of this
show has always been about you can basically, you can improve your game faster
by working on your mental game and your mental approach to the game. Then
you can if you just work on your swing mechanics and I've gotten lots of
confirmation about that over the years. But when when you say it's needed an
upgrade, when do you feel that golf, the mental game of golf,
or golf psychology got agnant? Difficult to say, probably before we realized it
does. And that is because it takes a little while, you know,
for really good research to be done in any field, but particularly psychology,
Like you're talking about a multi year, multi phase process of kind of exploratory
research moving into more experimental research, into longitude and all research. And so
the stagnation and kind of the lag behind has probably been happening for a couple
of decades. Best guests and much of the stuff that has been available for
a while, and this is certainly true even before I got to graduate school
and was studying it was stuff that was kind of commonly accepted as kind of
best practices at the times. But they we know now that we're working those
were working from some outdated models, and that there's more valuable stuff to us
if we understand them a little bit more comprehensively. In the same way,
you know, what is the like, how long has course strategy been lagging
behind for someone like as Scott Fosset comes around and starts doing some advanced math
on it and starts figuring out like, actually, this is the best way
to play golf courses. These are the types of things that really do matter,
you know. I had a conversation with lou Stagner last week and he
was talking about like, how on TV you often hear something like, well,
you need to be in this part of the fair way to have a
good angle to a flag or a good approach to the flag. Turns out,
statistically speaking, not true at all. Farther down the fairway the better.
Basically a period dowd of sentence and just being in the fairway is plenty
good enough. Now are you splitting hairs? Sure, depending on if you're
playing Augusta National and you're going to have to hit something into a tuck pin.
But for the most part, just being in the fairway is priority number
one. In what side of it on you're on, matters far less than
we thought it does. In the same way that a lot of the psychological
models we are working from, like just trust and just don't think and you
got to just relax are all outdated things that seemed really valuable at the time.
But if we take a deeper look at them in a more objective way,
we find out they actually do more harm good. You know, we're
talking primarily here this the audience, recreational golfers, amateur golfers. They're just
happy to be in the fairway. Sure, I forget about which side is,
you know. I play with guys who regularly, if the ball hits
the green, they're like, great shot, you know, but they're only
eighty yards out, you know. Where we're on the tour level, these
guys are throwing dimes at the pin and if they're outside of five feet they're
upset. Yeah. I will tell you this though, If you told a
PGA tour player you're just going to be in the fairway all the time,
and what side of the fairway could be either, why they'll take out every
time. I promise you that if they would. So what brought you to
to this point where you're able to write a book? Are you a PhD?
Are you m D? Tell me your history? Yeah? So?
My by training and trade, I'm a performance consultant. Areas of expertise our
performance psychology, performance neuroscience, and sleep science. I have a doctorate in
performance psychology, a bunch of different master's degrees in related fields like sports sciences
and counseling, a couple of undergrad degrees, so I am abundantly educated,
and then spend a lot of my time researching and trying to understand most fields,
particularly brain related to performance. And I got to it being curious about
what it is that keeps people from really getting better and performing under pressure.
And as we find out, the first domino in the order of operations to
allow us to physically perform is always our psychology. You know, you had
mentioned, you know, people telling you what I get better focusing on my
psychology of how I'm playing more than just beating balls and physic trying to physically
practice. The gateway to getting better physically begins psychologically. So for me,
I just wanted to go to the front of the line so that all the
things people do to try to perform better, whether that's their rest and recovery,
their nutrition, the physical training they're doing for their bodies, strength and
conditioning, all the way to actually learning the skills and strategies. Of of
course, they have more access to those because their psychology is not the main
barrier to it. So in a nutshell, that's kind of my job is
to help people understand their psychology so that it opens the doors to all those
other things. And people have asked me, like, what percent of golf
is mental? Is at ninety nine percent mental one percent? Like, I
don't know what the percent is. I think it would be kind of impossible
to tell. All I can tell is whatever percent it is, it's what
is influencing every single other facet of the game more than any others. And
so if you take care of whether it's one percent or ninety nine percent,
if you're training that one percent, you're getting more out of every other area.
And I wouldn't pretend that psychology is everything in our performance, because it's
not. But like I said, it's the first domino in the order of
operations, and if we take care of that one, the rest of them
tend to get better. And how do we take care of it well,
first is to understand it, which again is part of why I wrote the
book. You know, even talking with tour professionals, just because they are
the ones performing under pressure like it's a it would be a misconception to think
that they know deeply about their own psychology or how their psychology works, or
even how their brain is designed to operate. Many of them don't, and
why would they. They've been playing golf their whole life and training their golf
swings and their putting strokes the whole time, right, So the bottom line,
do you even understand how your brain is operate, operates, and how
it's designed to learn, how it's designed to respond to stress, to uncertainty,
those types of triggers and all of our performance environments. And then can
you also understand how do I train and articulate the types of things that allow
me to be present more often, build more stable confidence, and be aware
of my own responses to things. It's there are systematic approaches to all of
them, but it's certainly begins with just understanding your brain and your mind on
a more mechanistic level on how it's designed to operate. In the same way
that the tour pros are really good at hitting golf balls because they're hitting golf
balls based on how the club is designed. So imagine if you don't understand
how a golf club is designed, it would be a lot more difficult to
hit a golf ball. Well, same thing with our brain. If you
don't know how it's designed to operate, it's very difficult to deliver it to
the things. In the same way, it be much more difficult to deliver
the golf face to the golf ball if you don't understand how a golf club
is designed to get the golf ball in the air. I find it fascinating
that you are a PhD and yet you don't put doctor or PhD on the
cover of your book. That's usually a selling point, isn't it. I
think sometimes I don't feel the need to flaunt credentials in people's faces, or
to try to loom it and use it as a marketing campaign. My name's
on the book because I wrote it. I want it to be something that
when someone walks by it, they might go, that's interesting. I'll pick
it up because I'm interested in golf. I'm interested in understanding myself better and
perhaps playing better. Not because they're some letters after some guy's name. Now,
if that's a selling point for some people, because it adds credibility to
me, open the first page. You'll see PhD after my name. Fine,
but I don't. My ego is strong enough that I don't need it
to be on the first page as a means to try to rope people in
awesome. Listen, we're gonna be right back, but we have some sponsors
who want to talk about why they're part of the Golf Smarter podcast. We'll
be right back. Raymond. I'm curious to talk about the myths of golf
psychology and golf's mental game that have kind of permeated the conversation and you're finding
to not be not only not true, but maybe not even helpful. Correct.
Yeah, so you're kind of alluding to what we had discussed before,
which is perhaps in the past we've been working on a couple of outdated models
that we're actually finding are more harmful than helpful, and not just neutral,
but perhaps harmful. In the book, I dispel probably five or six different
myths that are pretty common practices, not just in golf, but in performance
psychology in general, that we're finding out that don't really work very well and
tend to proliferate the types of struggles that we create for ourselves. You're in
the first section of the book, I address the myth that a little bit
of anxiety is a good thing. This is something you hear in golf all
the time, and the bottom line, our research tells us the exact opposite.
Now, it is perfectly normal for us as human beings to feel anxiety
at times. Anxiety, by definition, is worry about the future. It's
not the same as feeling nervous. Nervous is our physiological response to when things
are important to us and they're actually happening in real time and results count.
Anxiety is different. Anxiety is worrying about a future that doesn't necessarily exist yet,
and that worry creates multitasking between the present moment and the future, which
disrupts physical skills. And not only that, it makes the experience less enjoyable.
When we are off time, off time meaning dwelling on the past or
projecting the future, it's a low dopaminergic experience to that, and by the
mean it means low dopamine. Low dopamine is another way of saying doesn't feel
very good for us. It's not very motivating, and it makes the experience
feel longer. So dopamine plays a massive role in how enjoyable things feel to
us, even when they're difficult and uncertain and really challenging, and perhaps includes
some adversity, and dopamine also plays a significant role in how we experience the
passage of time. Low dopamine experiences feel like they take forever, which is
why if you play golf through anxiety or frustration where you're just multitasking with timeframes
that don't exist, the round of golf feels a whole lot longer and is
far less enjoyable than it is if you're present more often. The bottom line
is, we have decades of research that show us that the more present we
are and the things that are important to us, the more enjoyable they become,
the better we are at dealing with the challenges within them, and ultimately
we're higher functioning human beings and them as well. So, if we're really
talking about what our psychology is gearing as tortoise, does it allow you access
to being present at the times of our lives when it's most beneficial for us?
Indeed, So what separates I don't want to say tour players, let's
say elite players from the recreational player as far as anxiety, our nerves,
yet nothing really really The primary differentiators between professional golfers and recreational golfers is indeed
physical skill. Now, the difference between really good pro players and just okay
professional players is psychological, not always, but primarily, right, So the
difference in skill between a professional golfer and your average recreational golfer is leaps and
balance. You could be the most confident and the most present recreational golfer and
add a ten handicap, you're going to get killed by a professional player,
even if that professional player is playing through anxiety. Like the skill differences to
I, So again, I don't want to present to our psychology is the
only thing that's important in our performance. It is not skill matters, but
what access we have to that skill depends on how stable our confidence is.
And so if you think about anxiety, it's a reflection of really unstable confidence,
which basically means you're more preoccupied with trying to avoid a future you don't
want than you are pursuing the task at hand in the present moment. Do
not make the misconception that all professional golfers are super confident all the time and
their confidence is stable. Most of them don't. Most of them, in
fact, I would say, have really unstable confidence where they are because they
were so good so early they could rely on the fact that they were just
getting results really fast and in the ways that they wanted to for so long
that their confidence has been built on that for so long that once that doesn't
become that the skill doesn't become the differentiator. Now you have to generate stable
confidence in a self driven way, not an outcome driven way. And so
if you move up the learning curve in any craft, the more you move
to the top of the learning curve where it takes longer and more effort to
make smaller and smaller increments of progress, and the skill differentiator and the strategic
differentiators between people get smaller and smaller and smaller. Psychology plays a much more
influential role. And if you cannot generate stable confidence on your own, you're
not going to get the results fast enough to be able to maintain that confidence,
which is why they get in these kind of trap loops. I'm amateurs
as well, but pros to the same degree. I have to hit a
good shot to be confident enough to hit a good shot. Is a super
unstable formula for creating confidence because past events do not actually predict future events,
and your brain knows that, so what it does is it creates a ton
of self induced pressure to produce an outcome right now, which makes you less
likely to be able to perform it efficiently. And then when you don't get
it, you put even more pressure on yourself to do it again, and
this loop goes around and around and around and gets tighter and tighter and tighter.
On the other hand, stable confidence is I'm going to execute this shot.
I'm going to see where it goes, without needing it to determine my
emotional or psychological state in any way. And then you've essentially stopped outsourcing your
confidence to outcomes. And the players that figure that out sooner play more consistently,
They play more, they play better under pressure, and oftentimes separate themselves.
Like seeing the best players in the world and the highest rankings, competing
in the top twenty and competing in majors every week is not just because they're
more skilled than golfers around them. In fact, some of them aren't,
but their psychology allows them to perform freely when it matters most to them,
which is why they're in the in contention weekend in week out. I don't
know if you're familiar with the program that was on Netflix. I'm pretty sure
that went inside the PGA tour and just selected different players and talk about a
guy with all the skills in the world who was attacked by clearly it was
like the first time he had ever I'm talking about brooks Kepka. It seemed
like it was the first time he'd ever been presented with worrying about his psychology,
and yeah, it really debilitated him. It can be a real blow.
Now, I'm not going to guess at psychology specifically, because I think
that's just reckless and unethical and rude. But if you're talking about any athlete
who has just been sure, if you're talking about somebody who has just been
riding immense and very quick and early success to confidence and then you remove that,
which part of it is he's injured and his body not doing what he
wants to yet after having a pretty significant knee surgery and then having to work
back from that, it is a tremendous blow. And you'll see this in
sports or performance anywhere. Would you go, here's the thing that your confidence
is built on. But because it's external and not internally driven, when you
remove it, now you're in trouble. And you've either got to learn to
build it internally, which is difficult to do when you've never had to do
that your whole life, but the far more sustainable method, or you do
what many of them do, which is you start chasing outcomes again, and
then that becomes a really slippery slope because you start cutting corners, you start
looking for quick and easy fixes and hacks, and you become highly impatient,
and it's super frustrating, and ultimately it can be that trap loop all over
again. It's just for the first time for many people. That's where the
trap loop starts to get exposed for them. And so at that point points
where the outcomes are not creating confidence for us, our psychological framework gets exposed
a little bit. And you know, for Brooks it was in a more
public way because he's on a Netflix show, but that is an incredibly common
experience. I imagine there were many people watching that being able to relate to
it, relate to it. I was cheering it. It was like,
oh my god, it's not just us. Yeah, Like I said,
I wouldn't fall for the misconception that tour players have stable confidence all the time.
They are incredibly skilled, but they have the same struggles in terms of
their psychology that we do. Win. Again, we don't understand it very
well. We don't understand what we've built our confidence on before and why that's
not work anymore, or what to move toward that is a more sustainable model
for us. It happens to performers at the top levels in every performance room.
Yeah, I guess it. Does you watch that show? I've seen
a couple episodes, Yeah, yeah, And did you feel that they were
misrepresenting him or maybe in fact going someplace they shouldn't with him? You know,
I've professionally speaking, Yeah, I've only met Brooks in passing. I
wouldn't even say we really know each other at all, so I can't say
how accurate that is for him. I think there's some of that show that
is extra because it's a show and they want to make it really exciting,
to make it really make it really dramatic. I do think it's a good
window into the tour lifestyle for some people. I would be hesitant to make
sweeping conclusions about anything I see in a sixth episode or seven episode Netflix series.
For sure, it's somewhat representative, but I wouldn't say it's the whole
picture by any means, of course, not, of course not. But
we want to believe it is all right. Another spotsor wants to talk to
us, we'll bring back For those who are not watching the video. But
I can listen to this, they can't tell that above your right shoulder on
the wall in the office that you're in, there's a flag from Augusta National
from the Masters. So I'm assuming you've been there before, do you have?
Did you go there as a for work or did you go there to
enjoy golf or both? Of course, well both, but for work,
I mean I've been there the last couple about the last decade or so for
work, working with players who have been competing. I've also been as a
fan. Thankfully, one year I did get to go with my father and
we just enjoyed the experience kind of as father and son, which is which
is for anybody who's done that with their dad or their son knows it's a
it's a pretty special experience, especially if you both really like golf. So
yeah, I've been been in and around Augusta quite a bit. Actually,
my wife and I used to live in Augusta for Your Soul while she was
finishing up her post doc for her work. So it's an area that we
are acquainted with a couple of restaurants that I'm still very fond of. So
I always enjoy the experience going back every year. That's awesome. Well,
I'm not going to ask you who your clients have been, But when you're
out there and you're watching at the highest level, it really is the highest
level of the game. And you're watching one of your clients, can you
tell what's going on in their head and know when they're they're in a downward
spiral or even if they've they're totally locked in. Sure, it depends.
So I think a really common misconception is that because you have some knowledge of
psychology, it makes you a mind reader. It doesn't. My clients know
that I'm going to ask them a lot of questions to them, some of
those questions might seem obvious, but I'm not very good at my job when
I'm guessing. Now, Having said, if I know a client well enough
and the types of things that are within their psychological framework and their habitual response
pattern, when you know that about somebody, things can be somewhat more predictable
because you understand the mechanisms and that person underneath. So if, for example,
someone was getting off the rails a little bit, not only would their
performance probably tell me, but I would probably have an idea of that was
something that was on their radar, or perhaps wasn't and we didn't address well
enough. And when somebody's locked in, I mean, it doesn't take a
psychologist to figure out when somebody's locked in, right and now, locked in
just means you're present and you're single tasking on the only thing that is required
of you, which is whatever's right in front of you, shot, in
front of you, walking into your next ball, whatever it might be.
It doesn't take someone to figure out that too soon. Now, having said
that, I don't guess with my clients. So if I go, oh,
wow, it looks like they're dialed in and I ask about it,
sometimes answers no, I wasn't really dialed in. I was just trying to
figure out how to keep things on the else. And other times when players
go when I go, hey, man, it looked like things were starting
to get off the rails, and they go, no, I had it
under control, just had a terrible eye here, I was in a dibbott
here, or we had the wrong club here, or the wind kicked up
here, like there are a variety of different factors. So again, like
I said, our psychology is one of the most important, if not the
most important, but it's not the only one. And so I try not
to guess even when I'm watching clients directly. I just I don't think that
ever really gives us the full picture for human being and takes in enough considers
enough variables to have a full picture about what's going on. Like some of
the strongest mental performances many of my clients had, Like they're scrapping around trying
to figure out how to shoot a seventy five and made the cut and they
couldn't be happier with their psychology, but the way things were going for them
that day, they had to figure it out. Had other players win a
golf tournament and go I left five strokes out there, not necessarily in one
round, but over a couple of rounds because I either just wasn't on time
and on target. On time and on target as a phrase I use with
my clients meaning presence and I'm on target, me on the task involved,
which is to get this faull to my target. You know, I hit
four or five shots today, not on time and on target, and I
just kind of got away with them or didn't, and so it would again,
I wouldn't make a conclusion about a short long term conclusion from a short
term event during anyone's round up golf. Are you a good reader of body
language or do you not let that dictate it? Yeah, the body language
is more of a symptom than a cause. So as much as people,
certainly body language does matter and it does give us some indication. Oftentimes,
it's easy to fake body language. You could be an absolute mess internally and
still walking around, you know, with quote unquote good body language. I'm
not much concerned with people's body language. It's much more of a symptom than
a cause, and it's easy to fake. And I'm not interested in fake
anything in terms of our performance because that is a super unstable foundation to build
anything on. So I might say, hey, I noticed your body language,
like was this at this point? Tell me about it, whether it
was quote unquote good body language or bad body language. But I'm much more
interested in what's going on underneath rather than what's on the surface. Interesting.
When you watch golf on TV and you hear these pop psychology, you're rolling
your eyes. I just bring it up and you're already rolling your eyes.
Wait, wait, you know you hear these I don't even want to call
him pop psychologists, but you know they've got to make it TV. So
they're saying, oh, well, his mind is not in it today?
Or do you just start yelling at the television. No. I've long since
let go of the need for commentators to be experts in psychology. That's not
their job. You're you're They're doing the best they can with what they know.
Yeah, some of them think they know more than they do and they
don't. And of course they need to fill airtime, so they're they're saying
a lot of things to try to fill airspace. I would say there are
a couple of people on TV who are pretty good and have a pretty your
idea, like they've obviously done some inner work at some point or been around
somebody who has. There are some that are just wildly incorrect with everything,
and there are a couple of people who I actually really like the way they
they tea things up psychologically, which they go. You know, in this
situation, it's really easy to fall into this type of thinking, or it's
easy to respond to this without suggesting that a player is or isn't doing that,
which again I think guessing at somebody's psychology, particularly in real time,
is pretty reckless and kind of disrespectful. If you're filling airtime, sometimes you
got to do that. But guessing at what somebody's thinking and feeling when using
body language or outcomes of our performance is a wildly unpredictive method for doing so.
And do you find that the comments that you are impressed with usually come
from former players? Not necessarily? Not necessarily, I think some former players
had a psychological approach that they went from, and the way they talk about
it, they're assuming that it applies to everyone, which isn't necessarily true.
And it also for people who are psychologically trained, would indicate. I don't
you when you hear people talking to everybody, you understand like this person doesn't
really know what they're talking about. They understand their own experience with this,
but the way they're talking about it is incorrect. So for people watching golf
on TV and when they talk about things psychologically by way swing coaches have told
me the same thing. When they hear commentators talking about, oh, he
did this with the ball and that's why I went that way, and they're
like, no, that's not what happened. Actually, same thing with the
psychology. I would just take everything with a grain of salt, you know,
not that they're incorrect all the time. Not that they're correct all the
time either, but I would take everything with a grain of salt. You
know, if you hear somebody saying you just got to get comfortable being uncomfortable,
like wildly incorrect. You got to relax in these situations and just banish
your thoughts and just don't think about anything, also wildly incorrect. But when
you hear someone saying, hey, this is a situation where it's really easy
to get ahead of yourself or to start focusing on where you don't want the
golf ball to go rather than where you do. Like, that's some really
valuable insight without actually guessing what people are saying, we're again working from stuff
that we know doesn't work anymore. Fascinating Fascinating is your book Golf Beneath the
Surface The New Science of Golf Psychology by Raymond Pryor available now wherever you buy
your favorite books. Is an audiobook available as well. An audiobook will be
available soon, So I'm happy to say that Tuesday was the release date,
so that would be have been May ninth for whenever this podcast hits. Golf
Beneath the Surface was the number. The audiobook and the e book were number
one in two on new releases in sports Psychology, and the books actually cracked
into the top selling list, which has been great asked, Yeah, thank
you, And as of this morning, it is currently out of stock on
Amazon, but you can get it wherever bookstores are, wherever books are sold,
and Amazon Wilbury stock immediately, is what I've been told. So yeah,
it's been off the great. Yeah. Oh that's fabulous news. I'm
glad to hear it. All right, let's take a pause right here so
that people can make the order right now, and then we'll come back and
dig into the book. Excellent. This week on Golf Smarter, Mulligan's is
part of our continuing tribute to doctor Glenn Alba, who appeared on Golf Smarter
six times but unfortunately passed away at the age of ninety one this past February
In this third episode, originally published as Golf Smarter Number four hundred and twenty,
we hear part one of two from January twenty one, twenty fourteen,
called practice like you play for better results on the course. The next time
you go to the range, why don't you do first shot practice? It's
okay, what's first shot practice? Change targets on every shot. I could
use the same club. If you really have some skill, you can change
the shape of the shot. You can change clubs on each shot, but
you can't repeat anything. Well, you're going to find probably won't practice as
well when you hit fifty seven irons in a row, but it's going to
correlate more significantly to what you do when you play on the course. Maybe
the next time you practice, you tick a wedge out and get some targets
out there at ten yard intervals thirty forty, fifty sixty yards, and you'll
practice hitting your wedges the correct distances. That's Golf Smarter. Mulligan's episode two
hundred eleven, the third of six episodes in our series featuring another incredible mental
game coach whom we recently lost but allow his legacy to live on. Doctor
Glenn Alba, author, coach, and pioneering sports psychologists. Check the show
notes or our blog posts to learn more about Glenn, how to get either
of his books, Winning the Battle Within and The Clutch Golfer Formula, and
information about donations in his memory. Please subscribe for free to both of our
golf podcasts, Golf Smarter, published every Tuesday since two thousand and five,
and our sister podcast that revisits the best of Golf Smarter that is no longer
available, and it's called Golf Smarter Mulligans, being released every Friday from wherever
you're listening right now. What I found fascinating about the book is it seemed
to go in and out of you know, hard psychology to wellness to actually
mindfulness, which I thought was really an interesting It was interesting to be included
in that. Let's let's break down the book a little bit. You start
with the brain, and that's like, oh, this is getting clinical,
this is going to be I'm gonna be challenged. Then all of a sudden,
we're on awareness and mindfulness. That flowed seamlessly right into it, which
I thought was just really well done. Congratulations, let's talk about this.
Why we start with the brain, and then end with the mindfulness element.
You start with the brain, because if you don't understand how the brain as
an organ is designed to work, your psychology is not going to make sense,
and why you would train certain things also wouldn't make sense. You know,
for example, just telling someone to relax does not make sense when you
understand how your brain is designed, because it's not designed to relax when outcomes
matter to us. It's designed to elevate. Right, So understanding how your
brain works, you don't need to be a neuroscientist. But if you've got
a couple of mechanistic fundamentals, which I introduce in the first chapter, you're
going to start to understand why some of the things you're doing work or don't
work. Again, the analogy ill uses if you don't understand how a golf
club is designed to get a golf ball off the air, the physics of
your swaying are not going to make sense. So just a basic understanding of
the brain in the first chapter and addressing one of the more common myths and
understanding why it's a myth based on how our brain is designed to actually operate,
then we move into the next section, is awareness. Which I touch
largely on mindfulness, and the reason mindfulness is really mindfulness is just another way
of saying awareness, but it's a very specific type of awareness that is proactive.
It is more accepting and flexible with our own thoughts and feelings, and
it's more grounded, meaning that it focuses on what's going on right now.
This awareness is invaluable because for our brain, awareness is the first line of
information processing. Something could actually be happening, but if you are unaware of
it, your brain doesn't do anything with it. And so if we're not
training a proactive, grounded and accepting awareness, things are going to go buy
us faster and we're not going to be ready for them before we need to
be ready for them. And also what happens is we start fighting our own
thoughts and feelings. And again, if you understand how your brain is designed,
fighting thoughts and feelings creates more thoughts and feelings. And if we're trying
to streamline our thoughts, being aware of them in a more mindful way allows
us to interact with them with a little bit of space between us and them.
In psychology, we call this cognitive diffusion, meaning we are not fused
to our thoughts and feelings just because they exist. And in that space between
us and our thoughts and feelings, we can focus on anything that we want
to do for at least short periods of time. So if you're not training
awareness in a way that gives you that flexible and durable backbone, your brain
is going to work based on how its default settings are going. And then
you're at the whip's end of how your brain is designed to respond to stress
and a trigger rich environment, in which case then you can tell yourself relax,
just don't think, just be confident, just trust, just commit,
And you're literally working against how your brain is designed in the same way that
if I told you you need to hit this ball in the air and you
try to hit it, hit up on it when it's a wedge on a
tight life, good luck, you're probably gonna scull it or duff it.
Right from after the awareness section, we move into habits because the bottom us,
as human beings, we are habits. The way our brain is designed
is to take habits, both psychological and physical behaviors, and put them into
automatic mode so that we can go learn and understand and explore new things.
But our habits will run based on their default setting unless we intervene with them
in a very systematic way. And so if you have built the habit of
building confidence off of outcomes, that some point that habit is going to become
unproductive, even though it was really productive before. Take anxiety for example,
If you are on the low end of the learning curve, which basically means
you kind of suck at something, and anxiety is motivating you, you're gonna
get better because you're going to go study more, you're going to go practice
more, you're gonna go work out harder, etc. And you're gonna see
some improvement at the top end of the learning curve, where the margins between
success and failure arealler. Not only is anxiety you're going to make it more
difficult for you to perform freely, particularly under pressure. It's also going to
make the experience not enjoyable and you're not going to have the outcomes coming at
a way that can counterbalance that. And ultimately, what it's going to do
is it's going to lead to a level of burnout to some degree or another.
So if you do not address that habit at its source, it's going
to keep running, because the way our brains is designed is to keep it
running unless you show it one it ain't working and two here's a better option
for you. And then from habits we then move into our psychological framework,
which psychological framework is a fancy way of saying how you see yourself, how
you see the world around you and yourself interacting with it, including our golf
game. And this is important because our psychological framework is for running the show.
Our core beliefs and assumptions. The thoughts we have about things determine what
value and meaning they have to us. And so if you have the thought,
I must be perfect, otherwise this whole thing is a waste of time.
It's going to trigger a series of avoidance based habits, frustration, anxiety,
avoidance, etc. And based on how your brain is designed, it's
going to perceive any situation where imperfection is part of the formula as something that
is threatening and worth avoiding. And as you get into situations where perfection doesn't
exist nor is it required, it's going to make performing in that way very
difficult. It's also going to make getting better over a long period of time
much more difficult because you're going to start usually start coupling things like your identity
and your self worth and your level of motivation, and how you're going to
create a very transactional relationship with your craft, which is not super fulfilling.
And so the book is ordered in a way that they build upon each other
sequentially, so you understand, like, Okay, here's all my brain works.
Here's the awareness to develop that allows me to then address my behaviors and
address the core beliefs and assumptions and perceptions I have that are keeping me from
being present when I really want to be present, and all those I mean,
when I was looking through the book, I'm like, Okay, habits,
that's gonna have a profound impact on your golf game. But they all
do, especially if you follow the order that you've you've laid out here to
improve your game. There's a term that I came across multiple times in the
book that I really love a further explanation about because I wasn't quite because I
wasn't familiar with the term in all my reading. And that's mode of mind.
Talk about that. Sure, if we're talking about mindfulness, we can
think about how we interact with our own thoughts and feelings through two different modes
of minds. You might just think of as two different modalities, two different
options, two different types of relationship. Is really what you're talking about.
So one is a doing mode of mind. Doing is like a problem solving
approach, you know. For example, let's say I have the thought,
oh, don't hit it left. The doing mode of mind approach would be
just stuff that thought away, don't think about it, banish it, or
pretend it doesn't exist, Sweep it under the rubs. So I'm trying to
problem solve this thought. Conversely, a being mode of mind would be one
where we can have that thought and it just be a thought. It's not
a fact, it's not a precursor of future outcome or anything of that nature.
Essentially, like it's just a thought, period, end of sentence,
nothing more. And what happens is we stop wrestling with our thoughts, and
a being mode of mind we start wrestling with our feelings. So mode of
mind might just be another way of saying, like how we interact or we
relate to our own thoughts and feelings. And to be clear, one is
not good and one is not bad. A doing mode of mind is super
helpful. For us with external problem solving. You know, if you're going
to do math homework, trying to solve a math problem through a doing mode
of mind would be super helpful. Our inner experience, meaning our thoughts and
feeling is it's not a formula that needs to be solved. Our body and
brain is designed to create sensations, feelings, and thoughts. They're not a
vending machine that needs to be serviced just because they feel scratchy or their quote
unquote negative or disruptive. If we learn to interact with our thoughts and feelings
in a way where we can have them and they can just be a thing
without having to be anything more, then you don't have to worry about having
quote unquote negative thoughts because if you do, it's just like any other passing
sensation, a site, a sound, a smell. They can come and
go, and things that come and go for us become less disruptive to our
performance, less disruptive to our lives. And the bottom line is, if
you're fighting your own thoughts and feelings, you're never gonna win that fight.
It's kind of like the hydro, like you chop off one and two heads
just keep coming up and many people can relate to this because they're trying to
meet their thoughts and feelings with resistance rather than allowing them to coexist. Yeah.
We frequently, my wife over frequently talk about, especially when it comes
to mindfulness, how we've always been human doing as opposed to a human being.
Yeah. Yeah, the human doing is kind of this idea that like,
I need to do extraordinary things to be an extraordinary person. And again
it's not right or wrong, good or bad. But what often happens with
that is we create a transactional relationship with the world around us where we have
to meet some certain threshold of success or rate of success in order to feel
that we are doing enough to be enough. And oftentimes I think we get
that order of operations backwards sometimes where it's actually better to be a human being
and allow for the doing and the performing to flow from there, because not
only does it create more space for us to be able to do that,
but the bottom line is that transactional relationship, I have to do this in
order to be this. It doesn't work, it runs out. We build
a tolerance to success and it doesn't matter how much money, how many trophies
were wrapp there's a certain point it can not keep pace. And again that
is based on how our brain is designed to interact with extrinsic motivators. In
our current world, it's trophies and money and status. In our previous iterations
of our brains it was food, resources, etc. And our brain is
specifically designed to say enough is enough so that we don't overconsume. But we
live in a world of abundance now, not a world of scarcity. So
I want to make a recommendation to the audience. If you love this kind
of content, then you definitely need to pick up this book. If you
think that this is all fooy, if this is the stuff that you don't
necessarily put into your game, then you have to read this book. You
don't miss out on this opportunity. Again, it's called Golf Beneath the Surface,
The New Science of Golf Psychology by Raymond Prior. Yeah, Raymond.
This has been fascinating. I appreciate it and finished with one thought. The
book might be a little bit more different, The book might be a little
bit more difficult to read than what's currently available. That's a good thing.
Like we don't get better and we don't understand things more deeply without challenging the
stuff that we already know and trying to build more knowledge and more understanding and
a more comprehensive knowledge of something. So what I'll say is if the book's
a little bit more then previous, that's a good thing, because that's actually
the same thing is going to a golf lesson. You go the same golf
lesson over and over and over again, You're not going to get better.
You need someone who's going to challenge what you're doing, perhaps provide use of
different options that might be a little bit more comprehensive, and stretch your limits
a little bit. That's what this book is going to do. And I
would challenge anyone to read it and not find something of value that can help
them be a better velfer and also enjoy golf a little bit. Our d
argue with the doctor on that one, isn't it? You know? I
just realize the other day that this part of the podcast after we finished the
interview, is really our nineteenth hole, where I share some stories from latest
rounds, have a refreshing beverage, and recruit more ambassadors like Tony Redden of
Cincinnati, Ohio, who opened today's episode. This Golf Smarter Ambassador program has
been far more successful than I ever imagined, so I just really want to
thank you all for participating and sharing with our global community where you're from and
where you play. As you heard at the opening of today's episode, Tony
Redden of Cincinnati, Ohio plays at Newman Golf Course and for his effort of
leaving a voicemail, he's going to receive Tony Manzoni's video of the lost fundamental.
You know you two are eligible to win one of three great prizes just
for leaving a voicemail. You can select Tony's video a glove and glove storage
compartment from Red Rooster golf dot com, which is a unique glove subscription service
that offers many styles of gloves and twenty six sizes for men and women.
Or you can get a box of X one balls with a golf Smarter logo
from Odin Golf, the golf brand that sponsors and pays everyday golfers. These
tour quality balls are a fraction of the price of what you'll usually pay,
and when you use the code golf Smarter at check out, you'll receive an
additional twenty percent off the order. Their link is in today's show notes.
Just send an email and I'll get back to you with some instructions of what
to do and what to say. And you're a golf Smarter ambassador. Right
to golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com or visit golf Smarter dot com and
click on the Hey Fred button. Now. I played with my friend Neil,
whom I'm going to Abandon Dunes with next month, and we played at
his club, the Richmond Country Club, and I've played there multiple times with
him, and he and I are always so close when we played at each
other, even if I have to give them strokes. I only beat him
by one or two. This time I beat him by one, but did
match play. He crushed me, so it's his course. Got to give
him that anyway. The greens were so fast. I've never played on greens
that were this fast or this subtle before. I was very happy with how
I was making contact all day, but wow, the greens killed me.
I had forty one, yes, forty one putts in my round. I
generally strive to be in the thirty to thirty two put range, but realistically
I'm generally closer to thirty four to thirty six. Still gotta work, but
forty one ouch. I'm gonna go out there and try again this weekend and
maybe I'll do a little bit better. I gotta focus on that. Tomorrow,
I'm getting together with three college buddies to play a fun track designed by
Rhys Jones and Alameda, California called Coraca Park. You may have heard of
it before if you've been listening a while, because we feature that course and
Golf smarterback in twenty nineteen on episode seven hundred and five. I'm actually going
out there. It's an Australian link style course, and that's again, this
is all in my preparation to play better when I get out to Bandon Dunes,
play windy, play links, you know, everything I can do.
I've been were walking a lot, playing a lot, and I'm starting to
get nervous of how I'm going to do when I get out to Bandon.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for upcoming episodes, I'd
love to hear from you. Just click on the Hey Fred button when you
visit golfsmarter dot com.