Another question on the presentation of information, specifically scientific information to the general golf population and golf instructors. Do you find that most do not absorb or even want to understand the scientific underpinnings to your message, and when you do attempt to offer a scientific proof it is met with confusion and even resistance?

Golf is steeped in traditions that keep the game mired in the past misconceptions, and those who play it maintain a faith-based trust in the words of those played the game many decades ago ... even though they cannot definitively follow the instructions written in hallowed books.

Sports scientists who train athletes for olympic sports seem to view golf as an activity that is devoid of scientific rationale .... because those who play the game are far behind in adopting methods to improve ... preferring to delude and only play for 'fun'.

As a golf 'logician', you must encounter a neanderthal attitude that resists change ... which must be a challenge to your resolve. I believe you have proven yourself and now you are working the conversion phase of your knowledge base. Your openness and generosity on this forum is appreciated by those who seek knowledge. Keep it up ... thanks ...

Dear Herbert,

You are quite right that golf "science" is far, far behind the sports science in Olympic sports and major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, soccer, etc.). This is mostly attributable to five factors:

1. Golf is an individual sport, and despite pros with endorsement deals from corporations, the endorsers are interested only in marketing, and not in improving the performance profile of the sports "celebrity." The endorsers only pay for performers, and don't really care that much about whether player A is "better" than player B. As a marketing expenditure, the corporation only wants eyeballs and brand association. This means there is no corporate ownership vested in R&D for performance improvement.

2. Equipment manufacturers obviously need R&D, but the R&D is inevitably driven by the demands of the consumer market, and market departments routinely veto R&D initiatives sponsored by engineers / scientists in favor of a standard approach: a new gimmick every year, but maintain the brand identity, and never risk market share. Besides, manufacturer R&D is private, proprietary. And there is always the "not invented here" syndrome that spurns outside creativity. This generally means equipment scientists are not allowed to participate in a community of scientists seeking innovation for the general player. What passes for science at manufacturer-sponsored operations is pretty weak beer, extensively "precleared" with marketing. Just compare the science of the Gator Ade company for strength and endurance sports with the pale pronouncements of the Scotty Cameron Studio.

3. Golf magazines purport to encourage golf science, but they really don't in any significant way. Golf Magazine sponsors a $10,000 prize annually for golf science, and the first one was given to a business associate of one of the staff writers. Golf Magazine partners with a prominent golf resort and a Top 100 teacher to conduct "research", but what actually happens is the magazine tasks the school to "test" some of the magazine's stock tips -- which is merely a comparison of the tips, as in "tell us, o scientist, which of our three cure-your-slice tips is the most effective?" They do the same thing in "rating" the clubs of their top advertisers.

4. Academic researchers are uniformly theoretically anemic and uninformed about real putting technique. This appears to be because academic "sports science" tends to be an exercise in tenured teachers explaining to graduate students how to conduct cookie-cutter research protocols, and because only a narrow range of sports activiities are convenient to study, given equipment, available subjects, and the manageability of the activity. Hence, "putting" is a favorite because the researchers are content to use college students as subjects, don't think the activity is too hard to do, have an activity that is reasonably easy to measure, and easily come up with comparisons of "Condition A (eyes closed putting)" versus "Condition B (eyes open putting)" to slot into the protocol. The researchers know practically nothing about putting history or technique, and the research is always loaded with bogus implict assumptions. Academics also tend to conduct research based on whatever equipment the researcher learns to use, such as EEG or EMG. And then there is the "not real world" aspect to academia.

5. The "big boys" are missing in action: The USGA, the PGA of America, the PGA Tour, and the Golf Industry (vide: real estate). No science at all. The USGA has good science for golf course agronomy, and keeps manufacturing science at bay, but does not really contribute knowledge to technique at all. The PGA of America focuses 90% or more on business skills of golf professionals and contents itself with maintaining the jobs monopoly by stressing the bottom line to course owners a lot more than teaching or growing the game. The obvious career path for advancement and financial success explained to a PGA member is to become a GM at a resort course, and not to work hours on the range teaching high-handicappers. One wopuld have to step out and take a real risk, with financial backers, to start and operate your own successful teaching facility. There is pretty good stuff in the PGA of America about teaching and learning in general, but it is derivative of more meaty stuff in any university sports science or educational psychology curriculum. But the substance of technique -- not much new under the sun, especially for putting. The PGA Tour ought to sponsor reasearch, but prefers to plow its cash into player retirement funds in a way that rewards hangers-on at the expense of young guns.

Basically, there is no credible leadership for sports science. The Brits do some interesting work, but in the US there is a great blight on the scientific landscape. In the US especially, there is NO COMMUNICATION among people claiming to work in scientific studies of golf. At "science" conferences, a presenter gets a spotlight for a few minutes but no one really challenges the claims. In fact, the "science" organizations discourage critical appraisal of the work of others, and this is backward]s and anti-scientific. The heart and soul of science is communal critiquing of the work of any and all members of the scientific community. But in the culture of golf "science," no one dares tell the many emperors that they are naked as jaybirds. The result is that politics and marketing alone determine who are the gatekeepers of golf science, and these folk have no discernable interest in allowing anyone at all inside their gates.

In terms of other golf teachers, there is no culture that encourages a lot of science, so there is not an established appreciation for what science is and how it is supposed to operate. There is a very low level of understanding of the importance of critical thinking about the methods of science and hence an inability to assess the import and worth of the claims of science. This situation allows bad science to have the run of the field, essentially because "cheap" science is more prevalent by far, is easier to do, appears to support more magnificent claims, and appears easier to understand and hence sell.

One attitude in particular that I encounter repeatedly is this: "I don't have to understand it, so long as it works." It is perhaps defensible for a player with limited intelligence to protect himself from confusion by this particular delusion (he would be a BETTER player if he could understand the matter), but it is entirely another for a teacher to spout the same notion. And yet again, it is even WORSE for the progenitor of a golf technique to adopt this "luddite" attitude and erect it into a matter of high principle. I've met putting teachers who don't have any idea why a particular gimmick works for them and maybe even for many of their students (e.g., "when you make a stroke, just point at the hole"), and it is simply ludicrous for that teacher to say he does NOT need or want to know how the technique works. But they are out there!

The whole idea of science is misperceived by the golf community. The technocrats think they have a good bead on things by clinging to such limited notions as "To measure is to know." It's not: it's just a step in the process of seeking understanding, and all measurement has to be interpreted in the context of what else is reasonably understood and in light of sound theories that might reconcile conflicts.

All measuring technologies in golf have the same major problems:

1. the decision of what to measure is not too well informed or wisely identified, even if the measuring technology is gee-whiz;

2. there is a difficulty interpreting measured data in sorting good data from bad, and this always leads the technocrat to vest in the idea that the elite model is "where it's at" for "good", so he simply compiles elite data and squirts it all into an injection mold and calls it "the good swing"; and

3. even if the technocrat could really tell good data from bad, and was looking at the right data to start with, he would be puzzled when he tried to "teach" a bad golfer how to get better, and this causes the technocrat to default to the notion that "consistency" with reasonable technique is preferable to "improvement" and the technocrat's teaching method amounts to little more than encouraging the student to "make the data prettier (somehow)."

The fake aura that attends technological science emboldens mere measurers to think they are understanding something, when all they've done is laid a hand on something that feels like a rough, hairy tree trunk to a blind person. When they start describing their "discoveries," the average golfer needs to be taught to think critically about what the "scientist" is saying. At the very least, the "scientist" needs to welcome the critique of peers.

But maybe things will change one day.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Dear Geoff:

I have read, reread and dwelled on what you have so eloquently stated on this topic. I don't think I can do you justice to respond to every point you make, but perhaps I can offer my own observations on a lesser scale.

Science is a hard sell to the average golfer in the golf market. To them science only means the latest and fanciest driver head and the most touted shaft, together with the golf ball their favourite pro plays. For irons they want to advance to 'forged' blades .. and for putters they want the most lethal looking mallet or inefficiently machined 'studio' putter to make them feel invincible on the putting greens. Happiness is a new set of clubs ...!!!

The golf 'industry' has molded, adapted itself to the neurotic needs of the marketplace ... and the market is not too sophisticated in it's understanding or it's ability/desire to learn reasonably and efficiently. Given the nature of the marketplace, it becomes a matter of converting the masses to a better way, and that is nigh impossible ... because golfers are only a 'fun' crowd of guys who just want to get out there and try hard ... like children having fun.

So this is the golf market filled with adults who want the 'whole gestalt' without learning and practicing ... and if they are told to be patient, they will eventually get suckered into instant gratification by shysters which abound in the sport of golf. "Golfers are gullible." ... wrote H. Penick in his Little Red Book and then he refers to the golfer's 'brain' and it's psychological vulnerability.

Sell the 'sizzle' and then offer a new 'steak' every 6 - 12 months to the gullible golf market ... because they view their equipment as 'toys' ... and you know how proud children are of their toys..!!!

As for science .. well that's too complicated to think about when playing golf. Golfer's objective is to become a 'feel' golfer just like the pros proclaim .. and then happiness will follow.

I fear that the game of golf will be inhospitable to science, because golfers essentially have the mentality of children, and to upset their feelings with scientific complication will only confuse and anger them. I have encountered that neanderthal mentality on other popular golf forums and broached it ... and it's like the game is in a vice grip of regressive forces.

Strangely those that reject science do so on the grounds that they would not be able to use it while playing golf .. not realizing that is not the way science works in golf .... but it's almost futile to convince them otherwise ... so it's their protection mechanism kicking in saying indirectly that they are too ignorant to use or even believe the scientific solution to their golf swing and putting.

Painless science disguised as the latest 'golfing secret' may be the only way to inject science into golf ...!!!