Why Golf?

absolutely obsessed with it. Bob's book Why Golf came out in two thousand, so there was no particular occasion for us to talk about it other than the fact that we wanted to. So hope you enjoyed the conversation. But before we get there, I want to tell you about the Friday Eggs new membership. It's called Club TFE and it offers exclusive content like weekly course reviews and members

only videos and virtual hangouts with Frida Egg's staff. You also get early access to register for Frida Egg events and an annual gift. We're launching it on January tewond but you can sign up right now at the Friday egg dot com slash membership. All Right, onto the episode. All right, So, Bob, when we were talking about you coming on the podcast a while back, you responded, I'd

love to come on. I'd love to talk about my book Why Golf, But I do have one request, and that is that we discuss the concept of the groundy. And so I've been curious for months now. I have resisted the temptation of asking you straight up, but what is a groundie?

and then you make the putton. It's second in my esteem only to the Aqua Sandy, which I managed in Florida last winter, which is when you scull the ball off the tee through a water hazard and it skips off the hazard and then lands in a bunker, and you put the bunker shot on the green and make

the putt, and that is called the aqua Sandy. I can't, ever, I can't expect anymore to have a good round in the seventies, but I can occasionally pick up a groundie or an aqua Sandy or something like that and take some pleasure from those.

as well. Yes, yes, all right, Well, many people might recognize your name not only from the book Why Golf, but also from the covers of some best sellers by doctor Bob Rotella, the famous sports psychologist. You helped him write books like Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, How Champions Think, etc. I think people listening to this podcast will probably be familiar with this kind of series of books that doctor Rotella and you have done in

the past twenty five thirty years or so. So maybe we could start with you telling a story that you actually tell in your book Why Golf, about how you got linked up with doctor Rotella. How did that happen?

and so Rotella said to Raith. I'm looking to write a book about psychology for the average golfer, and I need a collaborator. And Rafe said, well, I have a client who's a very average golfer. And so I happened to live in the Washington area and Bob Rotello lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and so I drove down there and we chatted and decided it was worth trying to work together, and that collaboration produced eight or nine books and put

my kids through college. It was one of the nicest things that's ever happened to me.

to use it on the golf course. And his understanding of the game includes the fact that your body really works better when you allow your self conscious your subconscious i'm sorry, your subconscious brain to control your movements, and it does so much better than your conscious brain can do. For example, if you think about if you're probably too young for this, but if you ever learned to drive

a stick shift. When you first started to learn, you're using your conscious brain trying to think about when to put in the clutch, when to move the lever, et cetera, et cetera, and the car lurches and jerks and can barely move. And after a while, though, you start to learn it in your subconscious brain and you don't even think about shifting the car anymore, and you drive very smoothly from one point to the next. Well, the golf

swing is like shifting your car. You ingrain the correct movements by training it, and then your best chance to play well is by not thinking about it and letting

your subconscious brain control your swing. And the problem that a lot of golfers have and that Rotella helps them with, is that they get into a situation in a tournament if you're a pro golfer or with a three dollars Nassau on the line, if you're an amateur and you really want to win, you really want to play well, and so you turn on your conscious brain and you

screw it up. The best advice that Rotella ever gave anybody, or me in particular, was, you know, just think about where you want the ball to go and swing and don't think about how to swing. And if you've done your practicing a little. Even if you haven't practiced, you're still going to produce a better swing relative to your skill level if you just let it go. And that's one of the skills that Rotella teaches, and it helped my game tremendously, although I have to say I'm like

the preacher's kid. Rotelo also says, don't get upset about a bad shot, just let it go and accept it. And I'm not the kind of person that can do that very easily. My friends tell me that they call something the colin I have anguish and they count how many ccas they hear during the course of a Saturday round and then tease me about it at lunch. But it's some parts of the Rotella teachings come easier to me than others.

it happen. You're trusting your training, you're not being self conscious about it. I'd love to get to that state. I'm not sure how to get there, because I don't know that I I'm really in control of what my

brain does. And so I wonder, I mean, this would obviously be a good question for doctor Rotella himself, but I wonder if you, as somebody who kind of learned as this stuff as well as rote about it, had ever, you know, explored that notion that the brain is really hard to control, and some people are better at it than others. But I find myself, in particular, very poor at that.

If you need to make a swing change, or if you need to work on your mechanics, then the time to do that is well before competition. Work on the mechanics in a kind of controlled way, and then as your competition date approaches or your round approaches, more and more you have to practice in the trusting mode. And that's one thing that kind of helps, But obviously it presupposes that you're doing a lot of practicing, which is not something everybody gets a chance to do.

And that's one of his gifts. And it's not something that's easy to reproduce in a book, because when you read the book, it's his words. But it's not the same as being next to him on the practice range.

of the teaching there. But certainly, I mean the books have have helped many golfers kind of conceptualize how they might be able to improve their mental games. I mean, at least it gives a path.

it further. And under his guidance, I started to practice my short game, and sure enough, I dropped eight strokes off my handicapped during the year we worked in the book, and you know that trend didn't continue, but I got better every year we worked together because he was constantly reminding me to practice my chipping and putting.

golfers become obsessed with. Some of the explanations that you give toward the beginning of the book have a lot to do with what I think of as evolutionary psychology, right where part of the explanation for why we like what we like and why we do what we do is deep in our genetic coding, right these things that are still there inside us, because humans existed for a long long time before we all moved into cities and got, you know, bureaucratic jobs and did all the modern things

that we do now. Humans existed for many many more centuries before that and developed kind of modes of being and desires that had a lot to do with hunter gatherer society and what life was like in that kind

of environment and that kind of social structure. And evolutionary psychology gets at some of those tendencies and humans that were developed way way back and tries to explain some of our behavior in the present day by referring back to those early instances of genetic coding and motivation and humans. I'm not sure if I've explained that very well. That's

kind of what evolutionary psychology does. But you drew on this a lot in explaining why golf was so appealing, and maybe you could take me through that a little bit. What are some of the things that you found.

I think within most golfers. And I had some conversations with a friend named Bob Wright, who's a writer of some very serious and important books who loves to play golf, and he introduced me to a book called the biophilia Hypothesis I believe, which suggests that there are deep within our hunter gatherer reptilian brains associations with places of prospect

versus places of refuge. Places of prospect are like the fairways and the greens on a golf course, and places of refuge are like the woods and that water hazards and the desire to be in a place of prospect is something that's existed within human beings for thousands and thousands of years, and there are some fundamental instinctive pleasures

or desires. There's a chapter in Why Golf called the Blind Baby Smile or Why the Blame Blind Baby Smiled, And one of the psychologists that I cited was in trusted in why it was that a blind baby who could never see a smile could learn to smile. And it turns out that if the baby can be set up in a situation whereby kicking at things or striking things, it can move something in the environment, it smiles. The

baby smiles even if it's never seen a smile. And that's an indication that the basic act of playing golf, the movement of the ball by striking it with a club, strike some cord within us that probably had to do with the genetic advantage of being able to manipulate your environment. So and that's probably also the case with so many other sports. I mean, golf is not the only sport that you move a ball around in a playing area. Almost all sports have that involved with them, so but

that's one of the reasons why. Whether it be hitting a drive down the middle of the fairway or sinking a three point shot, or you know, hitting a hitting a baseball really solidly and seeing it go into the outfield, those are instinctively satisfying feelings for a lot of people. And it's it's wired into our wired into us. Whether it's in the genes or in some other fashion. I

don't know. I'm not a scientist, so it's hard for me to make a definitive statement, but it's clear that there are some elements of golf, both in terms of the setting and in terms of the movement of the ball that are ringing a bell deep within our being.

You know, some of the things that this really great high quality trimmer feature six thousand rpm motor that's very fast, flexible ceramic blade, anti nick shaven.

of land. You know, think of the savannah that it's kind of a prospect environment, whereas refuge environments are more like a jungle or a forest where you can be sort of hidden away. And you know, both of those environments can be appealing to humans for different reasons, right, So, what are the reasons that a refuge environment might be appealing and what are the reasons that a prospect environment might be appealing the sort.

So you're the obvious over simplistic explanation is that golfers are descended from hunters and gatherers, and non golfers are descended from gatherers, and that the reason the golf course is so appealing to some people but not all, is that some people have more of that hunter gene and some people have more of that gatherer gene.

courses have a lot more prospect environments than others. But the golf course that are at least most appealing to me are ones where there are both kind of prospect and refuge environments where there's an alternation between places where you can see an expanse and places where you're more enclosed, and the golf course kind of moves in and out between those, and so it's a kind of combination or the best of both worlds, you could even say, where you get these moments where you feel kind of tucked

away and protected or hidden, and you get moments where you're more behaving in a hunter manner and looking over a broad environment and seeing what's next. Those are the kind of more expansive moments of the golf round and then the kind of release moments. And then when you're in those, you know, kind of more sheltered environments, you get a different feeling. And so I think a lot of golf courses sort of deliver both.

Although obviously you don't want to spend a lot of time in your place of refuge if you're playing around the golf.

in command of your environment. But then there are also moments where there are some trees, there are enough trees left so that you can get the other feeling or the other side of it, and so on many golf courses. I like that tree removal has created the opportunity for both of those to be experienced. Now, you may say, Okay, Oakmont, pretty much all of the trees are gone on most parts of the golf course, and there's a particular argument

for that. But I guess I'm glad that certain golf courses have moved back to a place where there are more kind of kind of prospects on the scene. I suppose. Now, another element of this that was interesting in your book is the idea of clipped grasslands right where you know, part of the reason that golf courses are appealing is that the grasses is kind of short, and so you know, what about that, what's the what's what's the feeling that we get from that.

You know, wherever you want to take that argument, whatever specifics of golf courses you want to point out, that does seem right to me that golf courses just give you this feeling of, ah, this is a good place to be. And do you still have that feeling today when you walk on a golf course.

I ever got. And now that my handicap is going in the opposite direction because of a variety of things, mostly age. I really find that I miss the notion of improvement and the striving to get that handicap a stroke lower and regularly work on your game. As David Oakley observed, you can't when you get to the point in life where you have all the time you need to work on your game. Your body won't let you there are and your body won't let you hit the

ball that far anymore. I remember once about I don't know twenty years ago, being at a clinic with Jack Nicholas, and he was demonstrating how he hits the ball. He says, well, that's the way I do it, but well didn't go anywhere anymore. Of course, he was only hitting it two sixty. Wow. I'd love to be able to make the ball not go anywhere the way Jack does. But you know, age robs us all of the ability to hit the ball as far as we once could, hit it as high

as we once could, and so forth. And it's tough to want to practice enough on the things that you can still do as you get older, Like you're chipping and you're pitching, and you're putting to compensate for the loss of distance and clubhead speed. So anyway, so if you don't and I don't, I'm afraid want to spend a lot of time practicing your short game to compensate for your reduced clubhead speed and so on, you find your handicap going in the wrong direction, and that takes

a lot of pleasure away from the game. I have to say, in retrospect, I would have said, you know that the notion of improving, of reaching a goal and then climbing to another goal is one of the most appealing aspects of golf. It's not I don't think a coincidence that golf, probably of all sports that I can imagine, has the best handicap system and the most scientific way of determining you know exactly where your game is in

terms of your scoring and that handicap number. You know, I just got my handicap the other day from the Maryland State Golf Association, So every two weeks I get an update, and it's it can be both a great thing or a saddening thing. If you see it going down, that really is encouraging, and if you see it going up, that kind of takes a little of the spice out of the game.

There are a number of great passages to refer to here. One quote that jumped out to me this time reading your book is that golf is a great sport for the striver, right, And if I could just read a quick passage to maybe get your your thoughts going about this, you say that that people are happiest when they are working toward a goal. In our distant ancestors, this trait helped assure survival in our time, serve Bible is rarely an issue, and this is at least for people who

have the opportunity to play golf. Yet the striving trait lives on within us seeking an outlet. This is why people try to circumnavigate the globe in hot air balloons. This is why we have tourists trekking to the top of Mount Everest. It is why each autumn the marathons in New York and Washington are oversubscribed. People want to strive.

Striving makes them happy. Therefore golf makes them happy. And in fact, this is also one big reason why this was your story as well, why people may let golf go in their twenties and pick it back up in their thirties or forties. Because in our twenties, a lot of us are striving in many realms of our professional and personal lives. Many of us are building our careers, looking for promotions. In our twenties, we're looking often many of us are looking for a mate. In our twenties,

we're looking to start families. And those are both arenas in which people really have to strive in order to succeed. But by the time many people are in their thirties, forties, fifties, they've kind of settled into a life, right, They've maybe settled into a family life, They've maybe settled into a professional life, and the striving is not as much part of what they're doing. And so that's why people sometimes take up golf because it offers a place to strive.

And so you still think that's true, But for you, that part of the game has become less, right.

And just the sheer pleasure of hitting the ball well occasional or even making a groundie or an aqua sandy is important to me. But I can't invest myself as much as I did in seeing you know, can I get to be a single digit? Can I get to be less enough six? And you know, one of the things you find out, unfortunately, is that it takes twice as much work to get from six to five as

it did to get from twenty to ten. And you know, the practicing that I had to do, I did it in part because when I was writing about golf, I felt like it was an occupational necessity.

book that Rotella liked that and I liked it. But I got down to five and I realized that, you know, to get anywhere from below five, I would have to start spending hours a day at the golf course trying to improve marginally on my putting or marginally. And I don't like practicing putting. I'll be perfec be honest with you. In one of the Rotel books we had that we wrote about putting, I had some great putting drills from Dottie Pepper. I interviewed her and she gave me a

few drills that we incorporated into that book. And those drills are great. You have to, for example, draw a straight line on the putting green, I find a straight putt, in other words, and then put three balls down a three feet, hit them in three in a row, and then move it back to five feet, hit them in three in a row, move it back to seven feet, hit them in three in a row. And if you can do that, your practice is done. It adds pressure

to your practice, it grooves your stroke. It's a tremendous drill, but it's boy, it's tough on your back.

seven to six. Well, that was great, And it's true that in any endeavor, people are who understand their own psychology will tell you that the journey is a much greater source of joy than the destination. And you know, so feeling like you're working and making progress is a great part of golf, but it's part of golf I've given.

going to want to play every day if possible. And so, you know, as golf is giving us something we both enjoy doing together in our golden years, and it's true that being with friends, you know, the golf trips you take with your buddies, those things, the camaraderie, the weather, that all those things are extremely important and golf is a way of giving them to yourself.

doesn't matter if we're not wonderful athletes. We can all hit great shots, and so that is the achievable. That's the allure of playing golf in part that you know, great golf is within our grasp right and occasionally we can play it, but it's extremely difficult to do that consistently, and so we kind of have to wait for those moments or work toward those moments. So you know, even as you say that, you know the act of playing golf and trying to get better at it has become

less important to you. Do you still feel like golf draws you because you feel like, you know, sometimes I can achieve a state of grace.

you get more consistent with it. But nowadays, you know the for me, a long drive is one that catches the other side of a hill and rolls out to two hundred yards. I'm never going to hit the ball to seventy again, not that I ever did very often anyway, But and so what really I think highlight my golf rounds are the recovery shots. You know, when you when you when you hit the ball in a bunker, but then you knock the bunker shot to two feet and

make the put. That that's one of the highlights. Or you know, the the occasional shot where the ball comes right off the club the way you want it to. And if it's if it's a well designed course, you know you've got some shots there where they look harder than they are. And so you you hit the ball over a bunker and onto the green and stop it and I don't stop it very sharply anymore, but I can still keep it from rolling out through the green

and if I hit it well. And those kinds of shots that look harder than they are are the kinds of shots that good golf course architects build into their courses and which can give me that same feeling of yeah, I can do this. But to be honest, it's mostly the occasional recovery shots. You know, if I have a good day in the bunkers, I'm having a good day.

seconds with a professional heavyweight. And so golf has that element that you mentioned that is very alluring, the notion that I've done it once. There's no reason except for for consistency, that I can't do it all the time. And of course consistency is the mystery of the game, one of the mysteries of the game. But anyway, yes, yeah.

you've ever been there. Yes, well, I would go to a probe before our vacation and I would ask for some drills, and he would give me drills to improve my contact with the ball or something of that nature. And when we got to South Carolina, because the kids were small, I couldn't take an hour. I couldn't take six hours to play around a golf but I could take an hour and a half and go to a

range somewhere and work on those drills. And when I came back from those vacations, I was always a stroker to better than I had been because the drills made me more consistent. And if I wanted to get better at golf, now, that's what I would start doing. I would get a pro and I would get some drills, and I would improve what I have, even though what I have now is not going to be what I

had twenty five years ago. And so yeah, I think that's one of the great allures of the game for people who are like you or me, the striver that you want to improve. You can see the possibility or the potential of playing well, and you're willing to work on drills or other kinds of practice that will slowly make your game more system You know, I would spend an hour on those South Carolina practice ranges, swinging on one leg because my pro told me that, you know,

you've got to work on something, and it worked. You know, when I came home, I was I was shooting a couple or three strokes better than I had been when I left on that vacation. And people said, you must have played a lot of golf, and I said, no, I just did a lot of practice.

I could couldn't instill it in them. In any case, Twilight golf was something that I did when they were young, and we had dinner at six o'clock because that's when they wanted to have dinner, and I didn't have the cocktail before dinner, and then it would be six thirty and there would be two perfectly good hours, and I'd say, let's go out and play golf, or I would go out and play golf. And when you're a working person, which I was, then those are your hours to play.

You got to use those twilight hours, especially if you can get your kids to go out and take the kids off out of the house for a couple of hours. So I really like that, and I still do it occasionally, but not as much as I did when the kids were small.

at any other time. Of the day, and you know, that just strikes me as something that's that can be really pleasurable, and I wish we're kind of more common. In golf. People are often sort of rushing through a golf round, making sure they're not holding anybody up, and they're keeping score, and there's a set of rules about how you go about it. And twilight golf, those rules kind of seem to be suspended and you're able to play a little more. It's a time to bring kids out on the course, you know.

hour at a four hour pace. And so yeah, maybe the maybe one of the one of the real attraction. It's one of the great things about twilight golf is that you know, if you don't play six holes, you play five, nobody cares, and it takes a time pressure element away from the game. And the time pressure element is necessary in golf the way it is in this country today. You can't have somebody playing five hours on a course that has other people on it, because it's

not fair to them. But there's something nice about being liberated from the time constraints which you are to some which you are basically one hundred percent liberated in twilight golf if you're playing it at a course that you belong to and that you know you can switch from one hole to the next, skip a few holes and or hit an extra shot, or all those other things that are part of the pleasure of the game that you can't have on a Saturday morning when everybody's trying

to get around the golf course. Before lunch.