Entry 25.30

You will never guess where I am right now? Ok, yeah. I’m in an airport again. This time dropping my daughter back off and waiting for my flight back to North Carolina. At least I will be home tonight. We got back to our house last night and this morning Lexi and I headed to the Raleigh Durham Airport and Shelby headed to the Fayetteville airport. Shelby will be out of town all week for work so even though I’m in another airport, I’m thankful that tonight I will be back in my own bed. There’s just something about being back in your own bed. It’s somewhere comfortable (If you need some sleep hygiene help, just let me know. I’ve basically got the class memorized.) where there’s no fear of weird noises and you have control over the thermostat. Wait. Fear and control. I feel like those two words were important this week for some reason. I’m kidding. Not a bad segway. Not stellar by any stretch, but I never claimed to be good at this writing thing. Actually, it’s only the first word this week which is neither fear nor control. It’s process.

So, what did you come up with? If you need a reminder, in my last entry I told a story about my experience in Airborne School and left you with three words. Process, fear and control. I didn’t give you the point to the story. Just those three words. Then I asked you to try and connect the dots for yourself. Did you figure out where I was going with that particular story and those three words? Better yet, did you even try? I’m trying something new I know, but the idea was two fold. One, create a mental exercise for you. Exercise involves work. Work is beneficial to learning. When we have to work something out for ourselves, we tend to understand it better and remember it longer. This is the kind of work where the one who does the work, is the one who benefits. It’s not like working at a job where you benefit by making money, your employer benefits because they make money and the consumer benefits by obtaining goods, services, intellectual property, etc. If I gave you the answer you might benefit, but it’s like money I give you. Research has shown that you would value that money less than money that you earned. Money you make you will choose how to spend it wisely. Money I give you gets spent frivously. Not for everyone. Some people see every cent they own as equal which is the rational thing. But like I’ve said before, people are messy. The second reason is simpler to understand. I don’t like writing these entries too long because I’m not all that interesting and I don’t want to lose people. I probably already do, but I’ve decided three pages at type 11 font is an appropriate length, mostly because three pages fit on my bulletin board. I do take liberties during the summer to write an extra half page if needed because I only print these out when the kids are in school. If I had written both this week’s and last week's entries together, I would’ve blown through my three-page limit.

Process. Definition: “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end” (New Oxford American Dictionary). That sounds like a routine to me and for those of you who have discussed with me, you should know that I don’t like routines. Routines are defined as “a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program” (New Oxford American Dictionary). WOW those two really sound almost identical. Almost being the key word. The two are commonly interchanged in golf as many people don’t see a difference in the two. But I see a big difference. Routines are done. That’s it. There is no purpose or result in the definition. Some coaches or teachers might actually prefer to use routine because it removes the result from the definition. Focusing on only the result is typically not the best for performance. Again, only being the key word. Words have meanings for a reason. When I was a State Trooper, I took a class on deciphering whether someone was telling the truth based solely on their writing. I learned how to tell when and if someone was telling the truth, if they were lying or if they had omitted details. And from one sentence to another those three can all happen. If it’s a long enough sentence, all three can happen in the same sentence. So, blame that class on my obsession. Back to routine versus process. I simply chose to use process because there is a result included. A result that must be defined. If you don’t know what the result is, then what is the point? You must know what the desired end state is so you can choose the correct steps or actions to take. Which one comes first? The list of steps or the end state? The end state of course. It’s like a road map. You have to know where you are going in order to use the right directions to get there. Sure, you could eventually stumble upon the destination, but you are going take a lot longer and probably have mishaps along the way. That is the key difference for me. For every shot you must define your intended end state and then start the actions or steps. That is why I use a process. I also like processes better because in my mind they are more flowing and flexible.

When the Army teaches Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen to jump out of planes, they teach us a process. End state? On the ground safely ready to continue to the next phase of the mission. If everything goes perfectly, you can follow Routine A. As soon as there is one pebble in the road that causes the tiniest bump you can hardly feel, then the need for a process kicks in. You have to be able to shift to another course of action with the goal of achieving the same end state. A process is nothing more than a conglomerate of routines, you just now have choices on which routine you are going to use. Once you get to the point in the process where the bumps have been accounted for, then you can run the appropriate routine. No parachute deployment when you jump out? Do this routine. You come down on top of someone else’s parachute? Then do this routine. Headed towards water? Stuck in a tree? Stuck in power lines? They all have their own individual routines. You definitely would not want to do the routine for a water landing when you are a hung jumper (where you jump but stay attached to the airplane by your static line. I’d rather deal with having no primary parachute deployment and have to pull my reserve than be a hung jumper bouncing repeatedly off the side of the aircraft at 135 knots per hour until they either just cut me loose or pull me in). The process is getting to the point where you can run a routine. So while I may not like using routines when I coach, we will still use them.

I still like to call routines “battle drills”. In the Army, a battle drill is defined as “a collective action rapidly executed without a deliberate decision making process”. Battle drills are like plays in football. Everyone knows their individual job in order to come to the desired end state. The thinking part is already done. The preparation part is already done. Now you just run the play. Now the analogy between golf and war only goes so far. I know some of you feel like you are battling every time you go out on the golf course, but trust me, they are very different. The point here is that you think of routines as battle drills or a particular play in the playbook for a football team. The actions and steps are known and you don’t have to think about them. Ideally, we get to the point where our swing, chips, pitches, putts etc become battle drills. We aren’t trying to think about the individual steps to make the swing successful. We decide on an end state and then press play. The cool thing is that because we know the play so well, when a variable pops up, we don’t even think about, we just adjust and keep the play running. In fact, we should be expecting those variables. The full swing out of a fairway lie is different that the full swing out of a fairway bunker or knee high fescue. They make look the same, but I promise there are differences. So every swing is just a play in your playbook. For it to become a play, you have to know what is supposed to happen and how to do it. We’ve all seen a quarterback throw a pass that lands on the grass harmlessly with no one around or into the waiting arms of a defensive back when the wide receiver goes the wrong way. The play breaks down and there is a penalty for that. It could be benign like an incomplete pass on first down or it could end up being a pick six when you are down seven points during a two minute drill during the fourth quarter and hoping to tie the game up and send it to overtime. Either way, both hurt.

Some penalties are worse than others. In golf, penalties come in two main forms in my opinion. The easy one to understand is in the form of strokes (or loss of hole in match play). I see lies as penalties as well. Hit the ball off line and end up in the rough? Or a bunker? Or on the wrong side of the fairway? I could keep going. I call these penalties because you aren’t running Routine A. Routine A would be making your “stock” swing off of a perfectly fairway lie when its seventy degrees out with zero wind. Almost like you are on the range. All other conditions and lies are penalties that could result in strokes (or partial strokes. Think strokes gained). You can’t build different routines without practicing hitting off different lies (rough, deep fescue, leaves, pine needles, etc) or different slopes. For most people that’s just not possible on the range (sorry can’t control the weather but you can control when you practice). You have to get out on the golf course and put yourself in those situations so you can to learn how to play out of them the best you can. Then you have to do it again. And again. And again. The more variables you learn to work through, the more situations you can adapt to. We are amazing in that way. Doesn’t have to match it perfectly, just has to be close. No two shots will ever be the same. The more variations of leaves you hit out of, the better you will be able to adapt to a new type of leaf. Never hit out of leaves before? Good luck! Just kidding. But maybe you’ve hit out of pine straw before. That’s as close as you know so you have to use that information as the starting point for your adaption. The further away your adaption is from what you know, the more penalizing that shot is. The less often you practice it, the more penalizing that shot is as well.

That’s why we have Pre-Jump before every jump. To remind you of the steps for each of the situations you may encounter in the aircraft, in the air, or on the ground. We practice these routines best we can but just like the range, we were missing something. Penalties for getting it wrong. You get it wrong in pre-jump, a jumpmaster is going to set you straight. Get it wrong in the air, and that’s on you. And you have to know what to do without thinking. You have to react. That’s why a battle drill doesn’t have a deliberate decision making process. You just have to do your best to follow the play and react to the ongoing changes. The same thing happens on the golf course, just slower, with less penalty for getting it wrong. It’s how slow the game is played that causes the problems. Here’s a challenge. Play eighteen holes in two hours. Score is not the end state. Ball in the bottom of the hole on eighteen in two hours is the end state. I bet you think way less. I also bet you score the same as normal or better. Why? Because you just react to what is in front of you and do your best to make the shot happen. Then you find the ball and hit it again. You don’t have time to beat yourself down for the chunk. You don’t have time to brood over that tee shot. No time to second, triple, quadruple guess your read on the greens. You look, you see, you react, you move on. Humans perform so much better when we are in reaction mode and not in action mode. You just got way better practice in over those two hours than those same two hours on the range. Because there was a ton of variables that you had to compete with and no time to overthink it AND you gained a ton of feedback from hitting all those shots. That’s what the range is missing. All those variables in condition. No penalties for getting it wrong. All action, no reaction.

Here’s where I start my bonus writing (I’m definitely going three and a half pages this week). I have said nothing about a specific process. No do this, then this, then this. Which is exactly what so many people want these days. Just tell me what to do and how to do it and then I’ll play better golf. No you won’t. Sorry. I probably lose players because I make people work. Not just work but work hard. I’m demanding. I know I am. I expect excellence. I’m like that for a reason. Because I believe in you. I will never demand more than your current skill level can provide. But I will stretch you and cause you to fail because that’s how you will improve. I can’t fix you in three swings like so many teachers or gadgets promise. There is no magic dust. I can help guide you as you work on your swing or build your process, but I can’t, well won’t, do the work for you. That’s why I have spent time explaining what a process is and its purpose as well as some factors to take into account as you build yours but I gave you zero steps. Why? It’s back to that mental exercise. You are the one who will benefit from the work that you do. If I build the process, then I’m doing the work and it won’t be as helpful to you as it could be. Or because it’s not yours then you don’t use it. Guess who usually gets blamed when the process I built for you doesn’t work? Hint: the options are you and me and you are rarely the answer. I’ll get blamed. I left something out or made it too complicated or you don’t think like that part, blah, blah, blah. I am happy to take the blame don’t get me wrong. That’s part of my job as a coach. “If the player isn’t prepared that’s on me” is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. I can coach until I’m blue in the face but if you don’t listen or decide not to work like we decide on, then that’s on you. If you did the work and you still fail, then it’s on me. If you succeed, that’s all you. Why? Because you did the work, not me. I just helped guide you on your journey. So here’s the next thing you need to do. Come up with your process if you don’t have one. Refine your process if you do. How fear and control fit into and interact with your process will have to wait so stay tuned…