Mystery solved: why you’re better out of the trees than from the fairway

Like politics and religion, golf is a mystery for most people. One of the greatest mysteries of the game is:

• When golfers focus on their swing mechanics, they usually play their worst
• When they try to hit a certain shot, they often play their best

It’s completely counter-intuitive to a golf culture that tells us: to play well, you must swing correctly. Therefore, most golfers try to direct their body parts to move in prescribed ways. On every swing, they have a “swing thought.”

This is a recipe for paralysis by analysis, tightness, riding an emotional roller coaster, and bad golf.

To help you unravel the mystery, here’s a scenario that you’ve likely experienced:

Let’s say you’ve hit your ball into the trees, but you’ve got a reasonable opening and a route to the hole.

You determine that you need to hit the ball between two tree trunks and underneath a tree branch. The thought pops into your head that if you hit a low five iron to about 50 feet in front the green, it could roll up on the green.

You play the ball a little back in your stance to keep it down and swing.

Pow! The ball comes out low with some zip, lands close to your spot, and rolls up on the green about 10 feet from the flag. (OK, we’re fantasizing here; let’s just go with it and enjoy it.)

I’ve spoken to many golfers who’ve had this experience: they hit their most solid shot of the day when they weren’t thinking about their swings: they just were focused on sending the ball to the target.

One of the greatest examples of this phenomenon is Phil Mickelson, a wizard from tough situations. In winning the 2010 Masters, he famously hit a 6-iron 197 yards off pine straw between two trees over Rae’s Creek to about eight feet for eagle. It was joked that if Phil was in the fairway, he would have missed the green.

It seems illogical: from trees—or most kinds of trouble—we often hit the ball nicely, but from the fairway, we don’t.

Here’s what’s happens: When you’re assessing your shot from the trees, you are focused on the environment and what the ball needs to do. Your brain absorbs all kinds of information: about the lie, the window the ball must pass through, the trajectory, maybe the shape of the shot, the landing spot and the target.

This speaks to the brain’s amazing ability to take in millions of bits of data from the environment, adapt, self-organize and hit the shot. All unconsciously. Your brain and body are doing their thing without you self-interfering with some kind of conscious swing thought.

From the fairway, however, most golfers pull a club based on the yardage and then think their swing thought—such as “turn the left hip” or “transfer your weight.”

Here’s how you can explore hitting shots rather than focusing on swing thoughts: The next few times you go to the range, rather than “working” on your swing, try hitting all kinds of shots, including big hooks and slices—the bigger, the better. Try to hit shots with different trajectories, shapes, distances and to various targets. Ensure you have a target for every shot.

Try curving them both ways. Hit some very high and others very low. Try hitting longer clubs much shorter distances; see how low you can hit a wedge, how high you can hit a mid-to-long iron, how short you can hit your driver with a full swing.

If you initially struggle, start with chips and pitch shots and progress to longer shots.

This allows you to begin learning from your own physical experience rather than trying to think your way through each shot. You will notice things that you were unaware of.

When golfers do this, they begin to solve the mystery of why they struggle when they try to swing the right way, and why they play much better when they swing their way.

My summer schedule is filling up with workshops and talks based on my latest book, Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, and my book The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story. If you’re interested in having a workshop or a speaker at your club or event, send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.