Times: Mindful Golf Works

The New York Times in Keeping Your Eye on the Ball reports on studies that prove what we already knew for years, to wit, if you watch the ball at impact as you drive or swing or putt, you will hit a good shot:

Training yourself to keep your eye on the ball -- which most of us don't actually do, it turns out -- can significantly improve golf putting, a new study shows, as well as basketball shooting, soccer penalty kicks and other ball-related activities.

Check out my swing from GE's healthymagination Pavilion at the 2012 The Barclays. http://bit.ly/O9Hws6. That's me compared with golf pro Jim Furyk, I actually keep my eye on the ball too long...

Just about now, by the way, we need some mindful meditative golf.

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At the Barclay's Golf Tournament at the Bethpage Black Course

We especially liked watching Tiger and Rory and Zach come around the course together.

The GE booth made us a neat video of our swing, which you can compare side-by-side to the swing of Jim Furyk or Webb Simpson. Neat.

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Augusta National Golf Club Admits its First Two Women Members: Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore

ABC reports that Augusta National golf course, home of the Masters, has admitted its first two women members, Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore.

Sigh. 2012 and yet this is news. We are not impressed.

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WSJ: Golf Practice, Daily Talmud Study, and "the illusion of competence"

We liked this WSJ article for two reasons. First, we agree that spending lots of time at the driving range does not translate directly into better golf shots on the course.

Second, we agree that practice sessions can lull one into the "illusion of competence" in golf and in many other activities in life.

We like the concept and now we are thinking about how it may help us characterize relgious activities (such as the daily Talmud study called Daf Yomi). Here is the article about golf drills.

Not at Home on the Range:

Why Much of the Work Golfers Do to Improve Their Games Isn't Helping Them Get Better

By JOHN PAUL NEWPORT

You're on the range, pounding balls, and suddenly golf seems easy. All the parts of your swing sync and you start striping one career-best drive after another. "By golly, I've got it," you say to yourself. You can't wait to get to the course.

Science has a name for this exalted state, but unfortunately it's not "flow" or "in the zone." It's "the illusion of competence," and the odds are it's doing your golf game more harm than good.

You may think you've got it, but you haven't. More than most people realize, the range has little to do with actual golf. "After most sessions on the range or even lessons, golfers haven't really learned anything, if by learning you mean making a skill usable, durable and automatic in other contexts," said Fran Pirozzolo, a Ph.D. in neuropsychology who has worked on performance training with PGA Tour pros, elite athletes from football and baseball, Navy SEALs and NASA astronauts. By "other contexts" he means playing in the pressure of competition, but also driving off the first tee in front of friends and hitting off a downhill lie.

We golfers, it turns out, are bad at assessing the state of our skills. We are even worse at understanding how our brains work when we try to make changes, and most instructors aren't much help, either. "Our golf culture is set up to pass along knowledge in half-hour or one-hour lessons. In that time, a teacher can fix a shank or get somebody to slice the ball less, and everyone leaves the lesson happy. But there's not much of a system in place to transfer that knowledge onto the course," Pirozzolo said.

Elite athletes know themselves better. "That's why Tour pros talk about needing months or even a year to integrate a swing change. Eighteen-handicappers almost never understand that," he said.

Drawing heavily on the latest research in neuroscience, Pirozzolo is working with Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the co-author of "Freakonomics," on a golf research project to determine which transfer techniques work and which don't.

One technique that clearly doesn't work is "massing"—that irresistible urge most golfers have to hit interminable balls at the range until, maybe, they get it right for a short spell. "Massing can be useful for introducing new skills because you have to create a basis. But fairly quickly, if you want to progress and retain what you've learned, you need more advanced techniques," Pirozzolo said.

A lot of these can be uncomfortable, since they involve frequent failure. The good news is they can take less time than the random ball-whacking many golfers are already doing. Some can be adapted into games against other players, especially short-game drills.

"Interleaving" is one example. That's neuroscience-speak for constantly alternating clubs, drills and targets. In one experiment that Levitt and Pirozzolo conducted, the goal was to increase proficiency on 110-yard wedge shots. One group of participants hit 90 shots to targets exactly that far away. A second group hit 30 shots to 70-yard targets, 30 shots to 110-yard targets and 30 shots to 120-yard targets. In the end, the second group substantially outperformed the first group in hitting to 110-yard targets, even though they had hit only a third as many shots to that distance.

Generally speaking, the best practice techniques are those that lay down multiple, vivid memory patterns in the brain. Sometimes that entails introducing "desirable difficulties" such as simulated pressure, hitting in strong winds and from bad lies. Practicing in short sessions across many days is more effective than "cramming" the same work into a single session, opening more avenues for recall.

Not all golfers are willing to put themselves through such grief, of course, even though they'd ultimately enjoy the game more if they did. (A recent study by the golf research firm Pellucid determined that for each stroke lower a midhandicap golfer scores, he or she will play, on average, 10% more rounds because of increased enthusiasm.)

A major reason for players' reluctance to make the effort is their frustration with previous lessons, when what they learned on the practice tee (or thought they learned) didn't stick. "Golfers are being sold a lie when they're told they'll get better with 30 minutes of swing analysis," said Rick Jensen, a sports psychologist who argued in his book "Easier Said Than Done" that simple lessons aren't enough. "Golfers need coaches like in other sports, someone to give them drills, monitor their progress, send them out to scrimmage and give them feedback," he said.

The intensive coaching model that works for Tour pros is too expensive for most amateurs, but Jensen said that if players are better educated about what it really takes to improve, they and their teachers can better decide how to use the time and money that is available. There are signs that this philosophy is gaining steam. Top-50 instructor Michael Hebron now teaches almost entirely in light of the latest brain-science research. "You never hit the same shot twice on a golf course, so why should you on the range?" he said. Golftec, a national chain of teaching centers, sells most of its lessons in multimonth or yearlong packages that include gym-membership-type access to video-enhanced practice facilities.

Even for local teaching pros, there's a better way, said John Kennedy, the director of golf at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y. The starting point is establishing realistic long-term goals that are within the student's budget and physical limitations. "A 45-year-old 20 handicapper in OK shape, with a lesson every other week or so, should probably be able to get down to a 12 handicap in one season. But he'd have to really commit to his teacher and follow through on drills and proper practice and the short game," Kennedy said. "It's doable and enjoyable. But people have to be told the truth. And they have to really want to get better in their heart."

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USATODAY: It is still men only at Augusta National the Master's Golf Course?

The Masters is the annual reminder to us all of how the old boys love their men only country clubs as USA Today asks, "Will Augusta National have its first female member?"

The story speculates on whether the club already has its first female member.

Three of the members of this most exclusive club in U.S. sports, if not in all of American culture, have traditionally been the CEOs of Exxon, AT&T and IBM. They have been invited to be members of Augusta National because they run the three corporations that sponsor the Masters. They've also been invited because they are men.

Last fall, however, IBM made a historic decision. It announced that as of Jan. 1, Virginia "Ginni" Rometty would become its first female CEO. Then, this week, on the eve of Masters week, Bloomberg News Service became the first to ask the logical question: Will Rometty become the first woman to wear a green jacket?

It's possible that the question actually might be moot. It is within the realm of possibility, remote as it might seem, that she's already a member and we simply don't know it yet.

As a famous Orthodox rabbi once told me, "When the women write the checks, then they will get called to the Torah." IBM writes a big check to Augusta National.

Yet let us not rejoice that egalitarianism has dawned at Augusta. As they say in French, "Un oiseau ne fait pas le printemps."

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Times Travels to Uman and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's Grave

Our son Yitz told us he did not like one of the pictures in this story about Uman in T the Times' Travel magazine. We said, what is Uman?

In "One Schlep Forward" Gideon Lewis-Kraus explains in a funny story from his forthcoming book - A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful - that it is a gathering in the Ukraine of 50,000 Jews:

The big event, we’d heard, was at the Tzion, Rabbi Nachman’s grave, at noon before the start of Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. The three generations following the death of the Baal Shem Tov saw the Hasidic movement — populist, ebullient, mystical, messianic — splinter into all of the sects that jostle up against each other in Brooklyn today, each of which has had its own rabbinic lineage; Nachman’s adherents, called Breslovers, however, have promoted no leading rabbi since Nachman himself, and have thus been called the “dead Hasids.”

Before his death in 1810, Nachman told his followers that if they came to visit his tomb on the holiday and repeated 10 particular psalms, he would grant them redemption in the world to come...

We'll go one day, if they have good golf courses nearby.

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The Honda Classic at the PGA National Champion Course Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

At the infamous "Bear Trap," three tough holes on the back nine of the

PGA National Champion Course · Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

 

The Honda Classic will be played there.

Thursday Mar 1 – Sunday Mar 4, 2012

 

We played the course last month. Watch closely on TV to see our divots.

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Is Golfer Corey Pavin Jewish?

It's complicated. Yes, professional golfer Corey Pavin was born a Jew. But no, he does not practice Judaism. In religious practice he is a Born Again Christian. We don't understand how he can be a "Born Again" Christian since he was born a Jew. He is fervent in his Christianity, one of the few golfers who in interviews used to openly thank Jesus for his success on the tour.

Whatever his beliefs are now, in the Champions Tour's Allianz Championship last weekend, he made one of the most remarkable short iron shots we ever saw, a talented chip from an impossible lie up against a tree root.



Pavin is right handed but he reversed his eight iron and chipped left handed to within 5 feet of the pin. He then went on to win the tournament in a playoff. Blogger Jonathan Wall said of the stroke, "it probably ranks right up there with some of the best, and most clutch, recovery shots in the history of the game."

Here is the video clip - see at around 2:00 into the clip.



If we ever hit a shot like that one we might say a blessing like, “Blessed [art thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe,] who is good and does good.”

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