“The hole, the hole, look at the hole, not the ball, the hole, keep looking at the hole” There's a reason why Jordan Spieth is one of the best golfers in the world. He does things differently. While 99% of golfers lining up a crucial putt look at the ball and picture the hole, Spieth looked at the hole. The hidden difference this makes, explains why he hardly ever misses.
We weren’t surprised to see Jordon doing what he was doing. While the golfing world was perplexed to see someone looking at the hole when making a putt, it made complete sense to us. We had discovered and resolved the putting error that looking at the hole fixes, five years before the appearance of Jordan.
The error is in the mental simulation(imagination) of where the hole is. Let’s illustrate with an example you can try for yourself at your desk. First, take two coins, or post-it notes with small circles drawn on them, and space them out on your desk, within easy each. Take a good look at them and then close your eyes and turn your head away. Stay in that position with your eyes still closed and try placing your index finger on each coin or circle in turn. Leave your finger in position after each try and open your eyes and see how close you are.
If you’re like most people you may have missed by some distance. This is like turning the lights out in room and losing the precise position of the furniture, and either bumping into it, or reaching into thin air. Essentially, things often aren’t where we imagine them to be internally in our mind’s eye, and this is a problem when you are putting, taking a penalty in football or hockey, or converting a try in rugby. It also makes a difference in any sport where you are focused on the ball, e.g. tennis, or squash.
Let’s look at what we discovered in putting.
A top golf coach had some very sophisticated technology for measuring all aspects of putting and found an annoying phenomenon that was hard to overcome. He called it a ‘yip’, and it occurred just as the putter is about to strike the ball. It is a micro adjustment at the end of a perfect swing that takes the ball offline. An adjustment the golfer was not aware of and only showed up in the data from the tech. It wasn’t present when practicing just the swing, only when a hole was introduced. Having tried numerous ways to align the golfer to the hole and adjust technique the ‘yip’ was nearly always there.
If you have tried the experiment above you might have a sense of what is happening. The picture below illustrates the cause of the ‘yip’.
While the coach may have the golfer perfectly lined up with the actual hole, when they are looking down at the ball, the golfer has a mental simulation (imagined position) of the hole being in a different place. Normally some distance from the actual hole. As the golfer is about to hit the ball, they make an unconscious adjustment to hit the ball towards where they mentally simulate the hole to be, causing them to miss, and leaving the coach more than a little frustrated.
Looking attentively at the hole when taking the putt solves this problem; there is now only one hole, not one in your head and one on the green. So, what difference does this make in terms of results? Experiments conducted with experienced golfers ranging in handicap show a consistent improvement of about 24% with just 45 minutes practice, on long putts, and more short putts being made. Dana Radar, one of Golf Digest’s top 50 instructors, stated “about 99 percent of my students putt better looking at the hole, I make all my students try it, and they are amazed.”
Whilst these results are impressive, the golfing world (and associated academia) have largely misunderstood why looking at the hole works. The only solution offered to the problem of the ‘yip’ is to look at the hole, which limits its full potential in golf, and also misses the opportunity to transfer the insight to other more dynamic sports where you also have to look at the ball. So, what to do instead?
The answer is simple but takes a little more practice. The secret is to get good at making sure both holes are in the same place (see the picture below), i.e. the one out there and the one in your mind. This means that, when you’re looking at the ball, if you turn your head to look at the hole, it is exactly where you imagined it to be. When both holes are in the same place you can then take the putt, without the experience of the ‘yip’.
It’s not just in golf where this makes a difference. Here’s another example of where a technique is working but without an understanding of why it works, and therefore missing the opportunity to pass on and develop an important perceptual/cognitive skill.
Take a look at the video below in which Owen Farrell talks about repeatedly tracing a line between the point he is kicking towards and the ball. This is essentially solving the same problem as the yip in golf, but he and his coach do not know why it works, and therefore can’t refine the method or pass it accurately onto others. Instead, they pass on the external behaviours, and not the important deeper aspects of perception and cognition. Owen says I keep drawing the line “for some reason”!!!
So, while other people may copy him and draw a line, they have no effective quality check, e.g. is the line stable in my mind’s eye, and does it trace to exactly the same point every time with no adjustment? Essentially, answering the same question as in golf; is the spot in the distance in the same place in their imagination as it is in the stand.
Even when the spot and the goal is always in the same location, we still sometimes find errors in perception. You can try the following for yourself next time you’re in a park with some goal posts. Look down at the penalty spot, close your eyes and point to where you think the top corner of the goal is. Leave your arm where it is, then open your eyes, then look at where it actually is. Most people miss the corner 5 times out of 6. The same happens on a tennis or squash court.
The great news is that, once learned, aligning internal perception with the physical world is a capability that generalises. Getting good at doing this on your desk with coins actually makes it easier to develop the capability in putting, and getting good in one sport also makes it easier to develop in others. Perhaps this deeper skill is a part of the reason why some people seem to have a natural gift across sports. Practicing this capability can take you towards a similar experience.
So, how do you develop the capability?
There are many ways of doing this, but the most important aspect of any method is the being clear about the outcome you are going for, and knowing when you have achieved this. In this case, the outcome is that the imagined and the physical location need to be in synch, i.e. in exactly the same place. To achieve this, Owen Farrell draws a line between the ball and the stand; we know of a snooker player does something similar, shifting around the table until the imagined line between the object ball and the pocket is stable as they move.
Below is one way to begin to develop this skill using coins or post-it notes on your desk or table.
This time, look at the coins or the post-it notes. Now imagine the process of reaching out to touch them in your mind, attending to the feelings in your arm and body - you may even notice little micro-movements starting to happen as you do so. Now, close your eyes, trust your arm to repeat the imagined action and go for it.
Keep practicing.
If it is difficult at first, you can rehearse actually touching the coins a few times, then close your eyes and repeat the action. Puttting the coins close together will also make it easier at the beginning. Start with your finger on one coin, eyes closed, then touch the other, keep touching each coin in turn with eyes closed. Then, when you are reliably moving between them you can increase the distance between them, between turns. Over time you will be able to keep moving the coins around and hitting them every time.
The next stage is to move both of them with your eyes open, then close your eyes and touch each in turn. With practice it will look like the video below.
Transferring this to a bigger scale, e.g. a putting green or a tennis court, is matter of pointing to a position on the tennis court, or the hole on the green, with eyes closed then checking your accuracy when you open your eyes. It’s also a case of trying various ideas for creating the coherence between your perceptual and physical sense of the hole or corner of the court. Owen Farrell uses a line, but even with this method there are many options, e.g. a thick line or a thin line, do you imagine doing the kick and seeing the ball travel along the line first, or not? So, experiment away, and remember it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you get the imaged location and the physical location to reliably align.
PS. When you get good at blind sight with the coins, you can have fun challenging your friends to match your new superpower.