Hi David,
Don't you think others can be as good or better? or that Tiger personally can get even better at this or at least more consistently good? Sure, Tiger has a good record in clutch putting, and so does Jack Nicklaus. That's great, but what we want to know is how and why.
Tour golf is fun to watch, but in my view the real value of watching pros play at a high level is what we can learn from them to apply in our own games -- stuff that even the pros may not be aware of (and usually aren't).
How about this -- most golfers don't really WANT to win. They say they do, but they actually get nervous when the chance comes up and start making "rookie mistakes". Tiger clearly loves to contend, whether he can pull off a win or not. By far, most golfers get pretty nervous when they get in contention: excited in a bad way. (Ask Stewart Cink about worrying about the future reaction of people in judging him as a person if he missed a short putt for the US Open instead of ignoring this and going for the win.) Tiger gets a taste of blood when he gets in contention: excited in a predatory way. He's sort of like a tiger living in a jungle well-stocked with prey -- lots of opportunities to notch a W, no big worries if he misses a peccary on the first lunge -- plenty of others and plenty of time to get them and a future assured to include many successful hunts.
Have you ever watched a cat locked in on a songbird-- stalking closer for the kill? You couldn't distract the cat with the blast of a sawed-off shotgun!
There is a sort of focus available to the predator that is not available to others. And it's sustained in large part by a transcendant joy in the killing and a somewhat "psychopathic" lack of concern for the prey or for the future or for how anyone else might judge your effort in attaining the kill.
That's all fine in a "poetic" sense of what's afoot in great clutch putting. Unfortunately, one person's poetic description serves just as well as another's (or about as well, depending upon whether the poet has a real felicity with metaphor and analogy for instructing or communicating what he really means). Real knowledge is much more literal-minded in embodiment, without the fudge factor that always comes with metaphors and analogies requiring one more level of articulation to get down to brass tacks of what is meant to be communicated. Love is like a red, red rose ... sure, but what the heck does that really mean?
So-called "zen" golf and most golf "psychology" ends up in one way or another mired in its own "jargon." "Jargon" is language whose actual, intended meaning is not derived from a commonly accepted usage of the words / terms, but is derived by "special definitions" accessible only to those familiar with the particular communicative group and its usages. "Feynnman diagram" means something ONLY to nuclear physicists or those specifically educated in the lingo of nuclear physicists, as this is definitely not part of the chit-chat down at the general feed store.
In so-called "zen" golf, and related varieties like "extraordinary golf" and "NLP golf" and the like, the explanations for what is afoot in a cause-and-effect sense always peter out into the sands of empty jargon. Well-meaning teachers communicating in this fashion to well-meaning students end up in some sort of hocus-pocus religion-like "faith" that what the teacher says is true, even though NO ONE (not the teacher and certainly not the students) can really explain to a six year old what is really the explanation for why or why not something works (or doesn't work).
Golf psychology has the same problem, because ALL psychology and psychiatric "science" is a humanities-style poetry of metaphors and analogies trying to "explain" the "mind." Freud's Ego, Id, SuperEgo, Subconscious, and all that is just so much "jargon" with specially-defined meaning, without which a student cannot follow the conversation, and the conversation depends for its soundness really upon the efficacy of metaphors and analogies, and not straight-up cause-and-effect explanations accessible to everyone.
The vast advances in brain science (real, hardcore brain research into cause-and-effect explanations for structures and processes) has left psychiatry and psychology gasping for breath, its carefully puffed-up jargon ballon punctured and hissing in a downward spiral not quite to the coast of Normandy! O MY! The same is true of "zen" and eastern-culture jargon.
Here's an interesting quote from a Harvard professor who spans the different camps of the Psychiatrists (the humanists and the transcendent "mind" camp) and the Neuroscientists (the physical "brain" camp) writing about the mind and the brain NOT being separate but being unified as "brain-mind" so that mind states are ALWAYS traceable and explanable in terms of the neurophysiology of brain states structurally and biochemically:
"Many scientist describe the brain as a central processor and deny the existence of mind. And many humanists describe the mind as some glorious entity -- a being unto itself, a self-aware spirit that transcends any physical embodiment. Thus we are portrayed as mindless brains or brainless minds, and never the twin shall meet. The brain runs the body -- it enables us to see, to walk, to digest our food. The mind runs our thoughts and personalites -- it enables us to think, to feel, to judge our surroundings and the people in them.
....
[Psychiatric] problems are all caused by subtle phsyiological changes in the state of the brain-mind. The idea works in revese, too. There is no mystery about people who can hypnotize themselves, enter a trance, or meditate. While they may ascribe their ability to Buddhism, to mind control, or to concentration on the the energy of the spirits around them, none of these practices actually causes them to shift gears unless they effect a change in brain-mind state. You can do all these things, too, without ever reading a word of Eastern philosophy or believing in magic or witchcraft."
J. Allan Hobson, M.D., The Chemistry of Conscious States: How the Brain Chnages Its Mind (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1994), pp. 67- 10. Hobson was writing in the first wave of new brain research that was so dramatic that Congress designated the decade 1990-2000 as the "Decade of the Brain." Neuroscience expanded exponentially during these years.
The other scientist who spans the Eastern-Western divide is James Austin, M.D., neuroscientists and zen meditator. Austin wrote
Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998), surveying how western neuroscience explains zen experiences. This is an 800+ treatise on all the current applicable neuroscience research relating to trance states, breathing practices, chanting, and the like. The pace of neuroscience research was so torrid when this book was published that a scant eight years later Austin was compelled to rewrite his book to take stock of all the NEW research, and the new book,
Zen-Brain Reflections (MIT Press, 2006), required an additional 614 pages to survey the science.
What does all this have to do with Tiger and clutch putting? The main idea is that what he does is not, ultimately, mysterious and inaccessible to the average adult golfer -- it's just a matter of getting a handle on how the relevant brain states are engendered and supported and articulating this with functionally meaningful and commonly used language. This also means that it is highly unlikely that Tiger uses the relevant brain processes in an optimal manner, even if he appears to many to be the "best in golf" at this. And this means that ultimately the approaches of books like Zen Putting are ill-advised because too jargon-bound and mysterious, lacking true cause-and-effect articulations, and golfers who seek to benefit from these teachings may get a tasty meal, but one lacking sufficient nutritional value for the health of the golfer over the long haul.
If you want to know "what works and why," you quickly become dissatisfied with empty jargon of whatever stripe, and it doesn't matter one whit how loudly large masses of people shout out their respect and adulation of a given golfer or golf teacher. If the Emperor is wearing no clothes, he's wearing no clothes, whether you bend the knee to him as he passes or not. A golf teacher or a golfer offering an explantion of how golf works should be regarded as a ball dispenser at a driving range: ask for a non-jargon, understandable explanation and then hang a wire bucket beneath the spout and insert the token -- most of the time, if you accept only plain, satisfying cause-and-effect explanations that a six year old could understand, you get butkiss for your token -- nada, zippo! There IS no "knowledge" without an ability to articulate the understanding of the knowledge to oneself and others in simple, commonly accessible language. A golfer who "thinks he knows" something about putting but who cannot explain what he thinks really does NOT HAVE ANY USEFUL KNOWLEDGE AT ALL. He's just a mute specimen for other, more articulate investigators to examine with the hope of understanding and communicating how he gets it done.
Tiger's very good at clutch putting, but not because he's unique in ways that others can't learn about and profit from. He's good at clutch putting because his approach to golf engenders the right sort of brain states for really effective targeting and movement processes, and not only can other folk learn how this happens so they too can do it, but Tiger personally can benefit and get better than he currently is by knowing more about it in non-jargon language. Some aspects of this Tiger "gets" and can explain (such as the desireability of using "soft focus" or jargony stuff like that, of staying "in the moment," of keeping to the time pattern of his routine, and so forth), but a great deal of it he does not understand and doesn't really have the time to try to figure out. Real knowledge is never a threat to your current "highly satisfying level of competence", but is rather an enhacement and a complement to what works that makes technique even better and more consistently excellent. Everyone needs to get better, even Tiger, and he's well aware of this and says so all the time.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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