Visualization and Golf Performance

Visualize! I hear professional golfers say that all the time. They seem to be very convinced about this subject. I also notice that they say ‘visualize’ like they think we know what it means. When pros imagine some shot, I guess it’s a pretty picture of a machined-tooled swing. But non-pros often have confused swings, so does visualizing work for them? Also, how are you actually supposed to do it?

There seems to be lots of different ideas about this when I ask golf professionals. Well, it turns out that sports scientists have actually studied this complex subject.

TARGET OR TECHNIQUE

McMaster University in Ontario, Canada - long known for its research in sports science – is under snow and ice for much of the year. I suppose that gives the post-doctoral students lots of time to sit around, dream of sunny weather and imagine fun stuff to do, like golf. In any event, they recently decided to find out about ‘visualization’. They got two groups of golfers – one with handicaps about 4, the other with handicaps about 26 – and examined pitch shots of 10 to 25 yards under two different sets of instructions. In the actual testing, the instructions and the grouping of golfers were random to avoid biases.

The instructions were: 1. ‘Focus on the orange pin and try to get your ball as close as possible to it’, or 2. A technical tip about swing mechanics, grip, weight shift, etc. What they found was that good golfers [4 handicaps] did better when their focus was only the target, but the less skilled golfers [26 handicaps] did better when they received some technical tip. This seems to indicate that visualizing – ‘Focus on the target’ – actually works, but perhaps only after you get to a certain skill level.

TO THINK – OR NOT TO THINK

Suppose we could ‘see’ what’s going on in the brain when someone imagines hitting a specific shot. Maybe that would help us understand ‘visualization’. The Cleveland Clinic is another place where they do lots of research in sports medicine. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it’s just across one of the Great Lakes from McMaster University, so they also get lots of time indoors to dream about what they’d rather be doing outdoors.

One of the tools at the Cleveland Clinic is a functional MRI, an imaging technique that allows you to see in real-time what parts of the brain [or other body parts] are being activated. In the study reported from the Clinic, golfers ranging from really low handicaps [1] to mid range [13] were examined as they made golf swings with a long iron club. The instructions were to imagine that they were at a practice range, making a swing roughly every two seconds. As the golfers went through their swings, the areas of activation and the amount of activation of the brain were recorded. There weren’t a lot of people in this study, so the results are a little tentative. Anyway, they found that more areas of brain activation and the amount of that activation were correlated with higher handicaps. That is, the best players seemed to be ‘thinking less’ when compared to the average handicap golfers. Did you ever miss a shot and then immediately drop another ball, hit it, and it goes perfectly? Less thinking appears to be more performance.

WHAT ABOUT PUTTING?

Since putting is about 40% of the golf strokes we make [well, at least for some of us] surely visualization would be helpful with that frustrating skill. To find out about this, we turn to the University of Lancashire in England, still another place not noted for its sunny clime. This no longer seems like coincidence. The researchers there got players of both high and low ability to perform a series of putts under three imagery conditions. In the first, a positive outcome condition, the players were told to imagine the ball rolling into the hole. In the second and negative outcome condition, the players were told that they would probably not be able to make the putt.

Finally, they had a third condition where nothing was said to the players; they just putted however they would normally. To make this study more realistic, it was conducted in an actual competitive setting.

Interestingly, the most consistent finding in the study was that negative outcome imagery was detrimental to putting performance. If you’re worried about the outcome, that’s negative – and so is the likely result. What about positive visualization? Surprisingly perhaps, performance in the positive outcome condition was no better than performance in the control condition. Of course, it could be that in the ‘control’ condition, the golfers were using positive imagery even though they weren’t told to.

WHAT TO DO

Overall, it seems that ‘visualization’ is ‘focus on target’ not mechanics, and it may work better the better golfer you become. Visualization also seems to be a kind of clearing of the mind, since the best golfers are not operating with too much data running through their heads. Finally, negative sorts of thoughts – like worry about outcome – predictably produces negative results.

OK, so how do we practically use any of this? Well, the studies seem to say: 1. Get your grip and swing mechanics worked out before you actually stand over the ball, 2. Focus only on the target you want to get to, and 3. If you feel some urge to think of outcome, step away and re-group. Now the next time you hear ‘visualize the shot’, you’ll know more or less but not quite exactly what they mean, I hope.