Entry 25.33

I’ve been thinking about what to write about this week and still really haven’t make a decision. My initial plan was to finish up the theme from the last month or so about process, fear, control and the Inner Game. But this is also the first week of a new school year and we have thirty-nine first years or transfers in the Professional Golf Management program so that’s hopefully a bunch of new readers. I’ve been on the edge of “Do I just keep pushing on with my theme or do I recycle my very first Pondering so they understand why I write?” I’m not going to lie, I’m also worn out from this week which makes option 2 tempting. Getting the facilities ready for the return of the students takes a lot of time and effort. Monday, Brock and I built a platform for the PuttLab so the surface is flat and level. Tuesday, in an absolute downpour, three of our PGA HOPE grads, Chris, Chris and Rob, and myself cut the edges of the sand circles and bunkers on the range and weeded them. It may have been pouring, but we had a great time. Well I did. Guys, if you are reading this, I can’t thank you enough. Wednesday, I spent cleaning the main area of the Teaching Center, vacuuming and dusting, fighting the never-ending battle of keeping a loosely sealed building dust, bug and grass clippings free. There are times I enjoy that there are small gaps here and there. My teaching bay is currently home to a pine-barrens tree frog and a five-lined skink. While the tree frog tends to hide when I’m around, the skink is super friendly and I find myself talking to it all the time. He almost made the trip home with me one day. I had just finished teaching one Saturday, picked up my duffel bag and was walking out when I heard a slight rustle. Upon closer inspection the small black striped lizard was hanging out on my duffel. I’m telling you, it has no fear of me. I held my bag next to my golf bag and nudged him off. I’ve got a really cool picture of him just hanging out on it. Obviously, I’m ready for the students to be back if I’m talking to a lizard when I’m out in my bay.

Wednesday afternoon I had to jet a little early to pick up my kitten T’Challa from the clinic so when I got home I made the schedule for my student employees. Thursday, I put sixty new penalty markers out on the golf course. This involved driving each hole finding all the current penalty markers and adjusting the spacing. Now some of you may be dismayed to hear there are that many more red stakes on the golf course. Don’t worry. The purpose was to make current penalty areas defined better. Actually, you should be happy to hear there are more penalty stakes on the golf course. Penalty areas are a good thing. Yes, you read that correctly. Penalty areas are not there to make the golf course harder. They are actually there to make it easier. Why you ask? Because it gives you options. Instead of costing you twelve strokes hacking it out of thick brush or having to climb into a ravine and play with the snakes, frogs and other wildlife, you can choose not to. And all of the penalty areas on our golf course are the most generous kind. All of ours are marked in red, no yellow. Yellow penalty areas only offer two relief options, stroke and distance or back-on-the-line relief. Red also offers you the option of lateral relief. Why did I go off on this tangent? I could’ve just said I put more red penalty markers on the golf course and moved on. I wanted to give you some perspective. I know a lot of people are worried about penalty areas when they play. But what if we took all the red stakes off the course? No relief anywhere. Does that change the way you play? I think it definitely does. For some of you, not seeing red stakes might free you up by taking a worry away. Swinging free is so important and you know when you are because it feels like you can do no wrong. For others of you, it changes nothing.

Until you hit into an area that is normally marked. Instead of being able to take a drop, you either have to hack it out or take stroke and distance relief (this is always an option no matter where you are on the golf course) which means you are hitting that shot again (with a one stroke penalty). Now you know where not to go, you start to attempt to steer the ball and your brain starts to take over your athleticism. Never a good thing. So next time you see red or yellow stakes, be thankful for them, not afraid of them. In the afternoon, I repaired the bridge on #17 and then finished up my day by cleaning my teaching bay. The tree frog was not a fan of the vacuum. Friday morning I attached my current putting surface to the putting platform. I am currently sifting through all the options to replace it. The Birdie Ball foam putting surface was never intended for heavy use and was never a long term solution. That afternoon was New Student Orientation and our cookout. It was good to meet the first years, transfers and their families. Definitely ready to get the semester started. Now just need all our returning students to arrive safely from all their internship sites.

For any new readers, welcome to the madness that is my writing. I will meander from thought to thought, change topics in the blink of an eye and go down the rabbit hole at will. Think of it like Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ““Into the looking glass” can describe entering a situation that is strange, confusing or profoundly differing from what is expected. It can also represent a shift in perspective or a journey into the unknown” (Google AI Overview). I started writing these as a way to get thoughts out of my head and that is still what happens. Sometimes those thoughts can span multiple weeks and other times the thought is nothing more than a few sentences. Initially, it was just my thoughts, but as I continue to write these, I find myself diving more deeply into them, doing quick research about a thought to explore it more out of my own curiosity and then citing sources. Either way, I hope you enjoy reading them and learn something along the way.

If you thought that was going to be the end of my train of thought, you were wrong. I have space on my bulletin board for three pages, so I’m going to keep on rolling. I thought I was going to be too tired to write from my week so far (I didn’t include that I ran a 10K Saturday morning and then played 9 holes Downback) but I have been energized by writing. It’s like one of my favorite fitness follows on Instagram said “Here’s the crazy thing about exercise: Being sedentary makes you more tired. While exercising gives you more energy. Sounds counterintuitive. But it’s true” (Instagram - @dr.caleb.burgess). His insight is just so valuable. If you look at my stories, you will see me reposting his stuff there often. Writing may not seem like exercise, but your brain needs to be worked out too. Thankfully, instead of my mind racing and more and more thoughts invading, working my brain through writing increases my focus and relaxes me. I haven’t had issues with writing as long as I can remember. It just seems to flow out of me. I’m not saying I write well, just that I can ramble on and on without difficulty. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like I’m the one writing. I just turn off my brain and let go. Something I just realized. I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective before. I am playing the Inner Game when I write. Huh… Sounds like an oxymoron as I sit here and reread the last few sentences. I mean I am writing to get thoughts out of my head, but I turn off my brain and just write. It’s not like my fingers just have a mind of their own and just do all the work. But it feels like that. I just look at the screen and say “Go”. And thoughts flow out of my head through my fingers onto the keyboard and appear on the screen. I mean a few weeks ago, I didn’t have the structure of the Inner Game in my head. If you had asked me before I read The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, I would have told that you that I write because my brain is in control and my body is doing what it is told. But that’s really not the case.

I am in a state Gallwey calls “relaxed concentration”. Other people call it “the Zone”. I am so focused on what I am doing, that I am completely relaxed. I’m not trying to write, I’m just letting it happen. And exactly like Gallwey warns, at soon as you bring attention to it and try to stay in it, you lose it. I mean, I think I’ve written four or five different sentences, held backspace, and started over since I called attention to it. In real time, I am living the strife between the brain and the body. Now I keep saying that you have to turn your brain off, but we all know that your brain is never truly off. It just needs to give up control and just let things happen. That’s why it is so hard on the golf course. It’s not like tennis, or basketball or volleyball or a host of other sports. It’s played slowly. You don’t square off against your opponent. You may never even see your opponent on the golf course. Even in match play, the action is minimal. It happens for a second or so, and then you may have three or four minutes before you act again. But your brain is constantly going. It still has to assess the lie, determine the direction you are going to start your ball, predict how it will react after it leaves the club face, etc. It’s not that you flip the switch to your brain off and after eighteen holes you flip it back to on. The conscious control part of your brain though? That is the real problem.

Why don’t you want forty swing thoughts going on in your head? Because your brain isn’t fast enough to run through them all in the course of making a swing with any hope of your body getting all the commands correct. This is something I am constantly working on when I teach. Part of it is that I break things down that small. I am looking at every little detail. Every joint matters and must be accounted for. Constantly evaluating and adjusting. Seeking the exact instruction to help the player improve. But that’s not what the player needs to be doing. They need a clear head so they can just execute. So I have been working on communicating the complexity swirling in my head in the simplest way possible. My current method to accomplish my task is to use as few words as possible. If I can clearly communicate without saying a word and the player clearly understands and executes what I see they need to do, that’s the Holy Grail. So far, still on my crusade but right now I feel like Henry Jones, not Henry Jones Jr. I may never get there, but I’m going to keep looking for clues and trying to get there. I hope you all got that reference. One of my favorite movies as a kid.

The reason I have no problems sitting down and writing three or more pages every week is because I’m just living in the moment. That’s why my writing goes hither and thither. I’m not looking ahead and about what I will write, nor am I really every looking back to see what I’ve written. I’ve never gone back and read an entry. And I’m under no obligation to write them in the future. I’m not worried about how well I write or even if anyone reads my Ponderings. The last three pages should be evidence enough of those points. Hakuna matata. “No worries” (or “No problems”) doesn’t always mean no stress, but it definitely helps. Gallwey says “The cause of most stress can be summed up by the word attachment. Self 1 [your brain or conscious control] gets so dependent upon things, situations, people, and concepts within its experience that when change occurs or seems about to occur, it feels threatened.” I’m going to end with his next two sentences “Freedom from stress does not necessarily involve giving up anything, but rather being able to let go of anything, when necessary, and know that one will still be alright. It comes from being more independent – not necessarily more solitary, but more reliant on one’s own inner resources.”