Why the harder you try, the worse golf you play

In most sports, trying hard is easy to see and its benefits obvious; consider a midfielder working to close down his opponent, a bowler steaming in to gain speed or rugby backs getting off the line fast to counter an attack. It is culturally wired into us that if we put the effort in, we’ll be rewarded. But in golf, trying hard is not so easy to quantify – nor its benefits so clear.

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How would you picture a golfer who was ‘trying hard’? Perhaps shut off, focused, insular, in a cocoon of concentration? For golf, that’s probably about as close as it gets. Yes, there are some golfers out there for whom this approach might work; but for most of us, this won’t necessarily translate into better scores – and we see it every week.

For the vast majority of club players, golf is a social game. When we play in this way we are wide-focused, talking to others and taking in the scene. This also tends to be when we have played our best. Then a competition rolls around; we become quieter and sterner, get our game face on… and typically play worse.

Just 10% of a round of golf is spent executing shots – 90% is something else. Becoming quieter and more withdrawn in an effort to focus harder is merely creating intensity in the wrong places.

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Focusing is hard work – that’s why air traffic controllers must take a 30-minute break every one-and-a-half hours. Ultimately, by ‘trying harder’, you are sapping your energy for that vital 10% of the time when you really need it. On the world’s professional tours, the best caddies are great distractors. They stop that intensity between shots by talking about anything other than golf. This helps their player tune out, and tune back in again before the next shot. This, typically, is a much more effective approach than ‘trying hard’.