Talent versus Practice

[cyc53870]

This forum generally gives good technical advice but very little is said about the natural athletic capabilities of each person. Is there a way to gauge this capability?

Sure, if you practice your swing diligently then your game will improve to a certain limited extent. But here we are in the 21st century with hi-tech equipment and there is certainly no lack of instructors, facilities, etc.. Yet the game still remains so very difficult and millions (yes, millions) join and quit the game each year.

One has to wonder why only a few people are able to crack that whip (swing) so naturally. Let's face it. Is it talent? (Just like music and/or art is talent). Did nature distribute a certain X factor to a minority of the population while the majority have to really work at it? How come some instructors boast that they can make scratch golfers out of anyone? Is it just a matter to finding out the secret to golf?

[GregJWillis]

Re: Talent versus Practice

Good eye-hand coordination is learned. Great eye-hand is genetic.

[Martin Levac]

Re: Talent versus Practice

I think there's a way to gauge this capability, I'd call it a test. Easy, send ball to target, measure how close and/or average and whatnot, determine capability. Easy.

Natural selection is another way of putting it. Potential is yet another way of putting it.

Practice makes perfect. I think "perfect" is the limit to which we can practice. I mean there's no better shot than right in the hole.

What you call high tech I call hype. I prefer good old low tech extra stiff steel shaft and blade.

Perhaps it's more appropriate to say they try and don't like it instead of they join and quit. Because if they try and don't like it, they probably will not join.

The game was, is and will remain difficult no matter the equipment. It's a little ball and a little target a long way away.

Yes, it's talent. But as the title of your thread indicates, talent is nothing without practice. Talent can be thought of as potential and practice makes perfect. Perhaps you think of innate ability? The only innate ability that I know I was born with is the ability to learn. Remember when you were young and an adult told you that you asked too many questions and being curious was a bad thing or something like that? Isn't that the perfect way to stiffle your ability to learn.

I kept on asking too many questions.

I found that we are all lazy. What was it? Lazyness is the mother of invention. One invention is efficiency. The cost of doing something. If it costs less, it's more efficient. So we learn how to do something with less effort. In golf, less effort means striking the ball fewer strokes to complete the course. Funny how that works out. You could then say that the best golfer is the one most lazy.

If you believe that any instructor can teach anybody to become a scratch golfer, deposit $500 in my account and I'll promptly deliver a bridge.

There is also the matter of free will. We do what we want. Some want to play golf, some don't.

There is no secret to golf. It's all here in plain sight and it's all clear as day: Send a ball to a target using a club.

And if that's all you practiced, then that's all you'd need to make perfect.

[LowPost42]

Re: Talent versus Practice

I don't think it's mutually exclusive. I've seen it too many times in various sports. There are those to which the mechanics of the sport come easy, and those to which they have to work and work and work.

For those in the former, a little practice is all that's needed to maintain form. In the latter, more work is required to maintain.

However, if you're willing to put in the requisite work, I think anyone can become a scratch player.

[SevenBall]

Re: Talent versus Practice

Yeah I agree, anyone who puts the work in can get down around scratch but if you want to be as good as Tiger, you want to hope you were born with something special. Hehe

[bill reed]

Re: Talent versus Practice

yes i think if given the right amont of teaching and practice you could be a very low handicap player but i think if you were golf talented you would get there quicker.
bill

[BrianW]

Re: Talent versus Practice

Some things come easier to some than others, it's not just laziness, it's natural ability in the chosen discipline. Some have a natural ability to paint pictures, some to work materials, some have good coordination for sports others do not, some can become great golfers, some will never be, no matter how hard they try.

Perfect practice can make near perfect. If you practice the wrong things then you will become better at the wrong things. No one is perfect, NO ONE!

[paterick]

Re: Talent versus Practice

to me Talent is the ability to solve problems given certain variables. the limit of ones ability is how far they can see when presented with these variables. one person may be able to see endlessly and another only to a finit boundery. kind of like the setting dominos up on end and kocking the first one ddown, which knocks down the second and so on and so on. this inroduces another factor, sports inteligence. depending on how intelegent one is, this will dictate how far the dominos will fall in a chain reaction. ten feet? or out the door and down the hall?

i liken this to a basket ball player who in practice can shoot from the free throw line and or the three point line or from under the basket all morning long with fairly high percentages. but in the final seconds of a game, falling down with six arms and hands presented to block your path to the rim one is faced with the problem of finding a way to be successful. this to me is when talent and maybe genuius presents its head. those like larry bird or Mr jordan will find a away to get past all those hurdles and make the shot. the only way to practice this is to be presented with the problem, i.e. game situations however i dont think it guarntees sucess for all.

tunfortunately i think most or all of us will be limited by given talents and i think we should enjoy what we have and the promise each challange brings.

in summary, practice and talent are two different entities that are necessary to be successful. one is inherant (talent) and the other is arranged (practice).

[Neil18]

Re: Talent versus Practice

To a certain extent, what we are given determines what we can achieve in any given field. A man with one leg or a size 60 waistline will have a harder time swinging a golf club than a flat-belly with two supporting limbs. But I believe, in general, people have more ability than they think.

It's the chicken and egg. What came first? Who just stood up and swung a golf club for the first time when they were 4 years old without anybody saying "do this, don't do that" etc etc. Place this person against one who was immediately saturated with techinique "well meaning advice", competitive parents etc. My guess is that the player that learned to swing the club as he saw fit and learned to play with that has more potential scoring/ball striking-wise than the head full of technique. He just plays. I was fortunate enough to find a video of Tiger swinging a club at age 3 and compared it to his current swing. In all honesty, not that different at all. And funnily enough, the more I practice this game, the more I find I'm regressing to how I played/swung as a child. Bruce Lee said it best. Something to do with man's worst enemy at performing physical tasks is thinking about it.

Following on from that, it is easy to go from not thinking about swing mechanics to thinking about it, and have it slowly destroy your game. It is distinctly harder to go from a head full of cr*p, to a free mind and a feel for the club. But it can be done. It's about breaking a habit.

The word "talent" or any reference to god given skills, for the majority, is a validation for not being able to succeed with current modern methods of breaking the swing down and looking at every minor movement in an effort to find out "why my ball does that". This game is a game of opposites. To hit it long and straight we're looking for an effortless swing. This transfers to the mind also. Less effort with the mind allows the body to perform. Paul Azingers thoughts on bunker play? Quote: "I dunno. I just splash the sand and it goes there". If a top level player thinks this way about it, why should anyone else think any different to be successful?

For those of us that have fallen into the modern trap of magazines, swing gurus and golf channels, it's a hard life and won't get any better until we ignore what's happening on telly (apart from just watching good players hit the ball - I turn commentary off in my head. Not worth the paper it's written on) and start allowing our bodies to perform the task at hand. It's a long journey back to nothing between the ears when you've had a head full for years. But percivere. That nirvana is there and it works. Anybody who plays golf has had at some point in there lives (maybe even just once) where for 5, 10, 15 minutes or even several holes or half a round where they didn't feel like they were trying, they knocked it stiff, the club felt light, they holed a couple of putts. The challenge is to be clued-up enough to let that behaviour seep into your whole game, and not let they whole thing disappear on one bad drive/approach/putt.

As for the coaches that produce good player after good player, I think the good coach is the shrewd coach. The good coach will happily teach 100 players with a handicap of 20+. But they will also spot the player that plays with the effortless, worry free approach analagous to good golf, keep it and hone it without affecting that which the player already has. Why? Because it's a rare commodity that should never be tampered with and the good coach knows that. The coach that spots these things turns into your David Leadbetter/Butch Harmon etc etc.

[ogallalabob]

Re: Talent versus Practice

I think it is very hard to seperate the two. You look at the two top golfers in the world Tiger and Phil they are very talented but how much was genetic and how much developed is impossible to seperate. Both picked up the game of golf at 3 yrs of age and have not stopped. Sure they have great eye hand cordination but a lot of that is developed at a very early age. (also I think this is true of most of the top golfers)

But I think eye hand cordination and hand speed in general are things that are needed and it is something that also must be picked up at an early age and worked on (wether golfing or playing other sports) and it is not easily picked up later in life.

[GregJWillis]

Re: Talent versus Practice

I can guarentee you that Tiger and Phil were not the only ones to be taught at an early age. They are where they are because they had the gift, and that is what separated them...

[Martin Levac]

Re: Talent versus Practice

And I promise you that what truly separates Phil and Tiger from the rest of us is the amount of practice.

Easy to find out, ask yourselves this question:

How much time do you devote to practicing golf every single day of your life?

This guy has talent. Oh yeah? Would that talent have anything to do with the 6 hours per day every day since he was (enter age here) he spent practicing (enter activity such as golf for example)?

You're not strong enough? No problem, lift weights. You're not agile enough? No problem, stretch and juggle and walk the rope and etc. You're not intelligent enough? No problem, stay in school.

The definition of practice is (from www.websters.com):

Repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency: Practice makes perfect.

Right. It's not exactly complete, it's missing a critical ingredient. Read carefully again: "...for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency" Acquiring proficiency in what? Simple, the purpose of practice is to do something to acquire skill in the doing of that deed.

The purpose of doing is different. All we want when we do something is the result it will produce. If that doesn't work, we do it again. And again. Until it does work as expected. Or, we quit. Wait a minute, that sounds exactly like practice. We do it until it works. Or we quit.

Or we quit.

Sound familiar? Do it once and it works, that's good. Do it once and it doesn't work, repeat the process until it works. Do it so many times (once or a thousand) and it still doesn't work, quit. Or, continue until my hands bleed, my wrists ache, my eyes dry up, my back hurts, my legs fail, I feel pain all over, but it finally works.

I saw a movie called Gattaca. It's about the human spirit. There's nothing that can stop a man when he's determined to do what he wants.

I saw a few clips of a man named Moe Norman. That man alone says a lot about the human spirit. He wasn't too bright or even athletic. The way he swung the club looked exactly like the way so many hackers swing the club today. But then again, it doesn't matter one bit how he swung the club. What truly matters is how he struck the ball. He learned how to do just that, the rest was easy.

Moe Norman said that he hit over 5 million balls not counting chips and putts in his life, that was at age 65 or something. If we start counting at age 30, that's 390 balls per day every day. Age 20, 300 balls per day. Age 10, 250 balls per day. How many balls did you hit in your life? Last week? Today? How old are you? Don't answer these questions here, just think of the difference in practice between you and Moe.

Here, let's put all of this into perspective:

The purpose of practicing sending a ball to a target using a club is to acquire skill and proficiency in sending a ball to a target using a club.

The point is that we are not born with the ability to send a ball to a target using a club, instead we are born with the ability to learn and practice will take care of the rest.

Would you become as good as Moe if you hit 5 million balls in your life?

[shootin4par]

Re: Talent versus Practice

Practice is not what seperates tiger from everyone else in golf. VJ practices more then Tiger, by far. Tiger has gotten to a point where he puts the clubs down completely for weeks on end, VJ does not do that. What seperates tiger from everyone else is his mind. Read into tiger, there are books out there on it, and you will see his mental techniques are that of very few golfers. It is no coincidence that his dogs name is Yogi. It is no coincedence that he meditates and can self hypnotize. He got that from his MOM, not his dad, but that is the part that is talked about the least. Butch harmon even said what makes tiger so great is that he believes he will win and you could teach him to swing any kind of way and he will win with it because he believes he can.

[GoNavy]

Re: Talent versus Practice

Gonna have to fall on the genetic side of this debate, but that is not the whole story. If genetics plays no part then why do we breed horses to run faster, and have handicapping, adding weight to the fastest horse each time out. If it was just training couldn't we just get any old horse and train them.

To become a Tiger it takes every thing falling into place, genetics, a family to recognize his talent, the right instructor that won't ruin him, and has in horse racing, a little bit of luck.

The luck part comes in that the some other kid out there around his age, with even more talent, maybe missed the other ingrediants, he sits queitly living out his life, having never picked up a golf club, had he had the other ingrediant that tiger had, maybe we would have never heard of tiger, because that guy would be winning everything, and we would have this debate about him.

[Martin Levac]

Re: Talent versus Practice

"Other golfers may outplay me from time to time, but they'll never outwork me."

Tiger Woods in his book How I Play Golf, page 106.

Everything Tiger can do, he had to learn. Then he had to practice and practice some more. He wasn't born with any other ability than his ability to learn. Apparently, he used it to great effect.

I am thinking of the saying "put your mind to it". Another "I put my heart and soul into it". And "I can do anything". Two more "If I can do it, anybody can", "If he can do it, I can do it". "What a waste of talent". We never hear "what a waste of practice", instead we hear "what a waste of time".

If you look at Tiger and you don't look like Tiger, you won't believe you can do what Tiger can do. On the other hand, if you look at Moe, anything is possible.

Do you believe that you don't have the genetic makeup to do like Tiger does? If that's what you believe, you will never be able to do it. There is no magic to what Tiger does, we know everything there is to know about sending a ball to a target 300 yards away. Ask Tom Wishon and he'll tell you how to do just that. It's all about launch angle and spin and ball speed. Not about athletic ability or even special technique of this pro or that pro. Don't believe me? Look at Moe norman one more time.

Google Moe Norman CBC archive

Talent is nothing without practice.