Golf Flow Read Free

just as with medication, there is a tipping point in golf—a recommended dosage of information and instruction that, when exceeded, pushes golfers over the edge.
    Assume that the average issue of a golf publication contains thirty individual tips or bits of information about driving the golf ball, long iron play, short iron play, wedge play, chipping, putting, fitness, equipment, what-the-pros-do, fashion, or the mental game (if you read golf publications, you realize that thirty is a conservative number). Over the course of a 12-month subscription, then that’s three hundred and sixty pieces of information you’ve gotten from this publication alone.
    In addition, let’s say that you regularly tune into The Golf Channel, and you watch any one of their instructional shows. Let’s say you do this, on average, two days per week and you take in another ten tips or bits of information (full swing, tempo, products, tips from PGA Tour golfers or the hottest swing instructors). Over the course of a year, that’s another five hundred and twenty tips or bits of information you’ve managed to take in. So far between your golf publication and television, you’re taking in 880 tips.
    If you’re a regular golfer, then you probably take the occasional golf lesson, and also get tips from friends, playing partners, and competitors. I’ll bunch those three and we’ll call those ten bits of information per month. Congratulations, you’re up to 1,000 things to think about this year.
    Finally, if you’ve bought this book, then I’ll bet it isn’t the first book on golf you’ve ever purchased. If you manage to read a single golf book in a given year, that’s going to add at least another twenty tips, keys, or lessons. And now you are up to 1,020 things you’ve “learned” about golf in a given year. And that number increases every year: if you’ve been a golfer for ten years, then the number of things you’re supposed to keep track of is a mind cluttering 10,200 bits of information!
    How does this influence a brain that is designed, at any given moment, to effectively process seven bits of information (this fact, discovered by scientist in the early part of the twentieth century, is the reason phone numbers have seven-digits)? When you stand over a golf ball, what should you be thinking? What does the brain actually
do
with all the information it has accumulated? The answer depends on the individual, but for a large portion of the population, all that information essentially becomes cognitive gridlock, clogging your brain the way that cholesterol clogs an artery, or too many sheets of paper jam a paper shredder. Too much thinking makes your brain more inefficient, makes you less decisive, and generally distracts you from the simple task of hitting a ball at a target.
    Consider this: I have never had a golfer come to me looking for help because he or she was thinking too little, and no one has ever contacted me with the complaint of “there are not enough thoughts running through my mind.” Nearly all the golfers who have ever sought my advice have done so because, in one aspect of the game or another, they were having too many thoughts. In an atmosphere of contradicting swing theories, magazines offering hundreds of conflicting tips, and even varieties of grass ranging from Bent, to Bermuda, Kentucky Bluegrass, and Zoysia, golfers are bombarded with sensory and intellectual information. All of this affects interpretations, stress levels, and mood, and the emotional toll is enough to overwhelm even the sharpest of minds and to destabilize the purest of talents.
    Playing golf in flow is all about doing the simple things required for a golfer to stay out of his own mind, stay out of his own way, and simply hit shots to targets. Consequently, in this book I share with you what cutting-edge research tells us about the flow state and its impact on golfers of all levels, from the high handicapper to the PGA Tour golfer.