Entry 25.48

How many of you remember the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro? It came out in 2011 so almost fifteen years ago. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched it but if I remember correctly the premise of the movie some guy comes up with a drug that unlocks the potential of the brain. If you were like me growing up you probably heard that idea that we don’t use all of our brain and so we are “limited”. I’ve seen infomercials (I just realized some of you may not even know what those are. Think Instagram ads but on TV. Not the ones that are like legitimate commercials. The ones that are trying to sell you some gimmick) on different ways you can learn to unlock the power of your brain for only three easy payments of $29.99. I can’t say for sure, but I can be pretty certain, that at one point in time I believed that we don’t use all of our brain in daily life. As I’ve gotten older and more experienced (I’m not sure I’ve actually gotten wiser), like most adults probably thought about me, I watch kids and think that kid needs to use more of his or her brain. But in reality, you use your entire brain every day. No matter what some scientific study says, I believe that. Why would you have so much brain if you weren’t going to use it every day? You use every other part of you every day, so why should the brain be any different? It shouldn’t and isn’t. A quick google search proves my point. The first line in the AI overview: “We use all of our brain, not just 10%.” Doesn’t mean I’m right, but it helps my case. And blows up the entire premise of that movie. What does that mean? It means we are all “limitless”.

I’m sure by now you are all thinking. Here we go again. Another Pondering full of the ramblings of a crazy man. But bear with me. It was one of you who brought this idea to light and then yesterday while looking into ways to expand my mental game coaching abilities, I ran across the same exact phrase that set me down this path. “I just want to be more consistent.” I think every golf coach in the world has heard that at some point and every golfer has said it. It might be the number one reason that I’m given why players are in my bay taking a lesson. But for some reason, yesterday, when I heard and then saw that phrase again, I realized that phrase is limiting. You are putting a cap on yourself. A friend of mine pushed this phrase into my life earlier this year and I know without going back and reading other Ponderings (because that is against the rules. Well, my rule) that I have talked about this phrase quite a few times since then. “Be curious, not judgmental.” When you say “I just want to be more consistent” you have judged yourself. You aren’t curious about what your potential is. You see what you are as negative and then limit how far you want to go in your golfing journey. It’s my job (I use that term loosely. I’m definitely one of those people who loves what I do and never work a day in my life. Rather than “job”, I should probably use “passion”) to get you where you want to go. So, if you just want to be “more consistent”, I’ll get you there. But it’s also my passion to get you places in your game that you never thought were possible. I’m definitely in a place in my game that I never thought I would go. When I started playing golf ten and a half years ago, the thought that I would become a Performance Golf Coach (like a dictator I have given myself a fancy new title. Director of Instruction was too limiting) never crossed my mind. But here I am. Doing my best to help golfers play better golf than they ever thought possible for themselves.

I am always trying to come up with new ways to help players play better golf. So, about a month ago I set out to build a platform that would take some simple stats from a round of golf and build a practice plan. And one month ago I did exactly what I’m telling you not to do. I set a relatively simple goal and set out to accomplish it. Using Google Sheets and some formulas I build a rudimentary framework that did exactly what I set out to do. It really didn’t take me that long. That Excel class that I took in college the first time really paid off. One of my PGM Students the other day was talking about the Computer Competency class that is required at Methodist. I didn’t take it (because I transferred in my credits from my first degree) so I asked him what they did in it. He told me they mostly did a whole bunch of complicated things in Excel that he didn’t think they would really ever use. I had already started my project, so it was easy to tell him I thought the same thing and yet here I was using those very skills. Thankfully, I am the kind of person who is never quite happy with the result. So I started my foray into AppScript. It’s computer programming that’s hidden behind the spreadsheet that starts to turn your spreadsheet into less of a spreadsheet and more into an actual program. I’ve done some programming before and I use that phrase lightly. When I was in high school, I could write simple programs in MS DOS like a calculator and started learning C+ and C++ but quickly realized that while I enjoyed messing around with computers, I didn’t want to be a programmer. It didn’t take me long before I was a thousand lines of code in and my spreadsheet had become more of a program than just a simple spreadsheet.

I mean for my skill level, I thought it was pretty cool. You go to a Google Form, answer some questions and those answers would populate automatically on my Google Sheet. That’s easy to do by linking the form and the spreadsheet. Then it would take your answers, calculate what your two biggest deficiencies were and then pick drills from another sheet for you to do. I would then go in manually and drop those drills into your CoachNow every week. Except for, like the rest of you, I only have 168 hours a week. 56 of those hours are dedicated to sleep, 6 to working out, 3 to making breakfast and you can quickly see that I really don’t have 168 hours a week left in my bank. So, I needed to figure out how to automate you getting your drills. Along the way I learned a lot about the way that I thought about golf and teaching. For instance, I used the drill inclusively. A drill could be technical work on your swing, or a drill could be tactical work on your game. One of the first realizations I came to in this process and quickly changed. Now I have Drills and Skill Builders. Yes, the golf swing is a skill, a very complex skill, but I wanted to ensure that my players knew what they were getting wasn’t to work on their swing. The whole reason I started this venture was because I don’t want player falling into the same trap I did. I set out to work on my game and soon find myself working on my swing. If you hear nothing else from this, your swing does not equal your game. I’ll say it again. Your swing does not equal your game. The swing is a small part of your game. This is another way that players limit themselves. They think their swing is crap and so they work really hard on making it pretty or powerful or controlled. And completely ignore the rest of the game. You aren’t going to play better golf that way. Even if you have no reason to, trust me on this.

Another way that you limit yourself with you game is by not tracking how you play. It’s really easy to track score. That’s the one thing that truly counts. But as the saying goes “there’s no pictures on the scorecard.” You can make par in so many different ways. I’ve made par the “traditional” way: hit the fairway, hit the green, two putt and move on. That’s boring golf. And boring golf can be fun. But I’ve also made par in exciting ways. And I’ve found that’s always more fun in hindsight than boring golf even though in the moment it’s completely maddening. I’ve hit a ball OB off the tee, found the rough with my next tee shot and then dunked my approach shot. Still a four on the scorecard. One of my favorites of all time was on hole five Downback. I hit the ball so far left I was on number six. I had no chance to get to the green and had to punch out. The lie wasn’t great so I thought I had to give it a little extra oomph. It was a great punch shot. Contact was solid. So solid that it went across the hole I was actually playing and ended up in four fairway. From there I had two options, try to punch it back onto five fairway or go over the trees to the green. Like it seems to happen, I hit the very last twig but thankfully had enough juice left to clear the trees and end up twenty-five yards from the hole. A good pitch shot found the bottom of the hole. Not the ideal way to play the hole. But still a four on the scorecard. The moral of the story? Score doesn’t tell you enough. You need to know more. For our Player Development program at Methodist, students are required to keep two other statistics. Greens in regulation and putts. Those two statistics with a couple of questions can narrow down exactly what that student should be working on. And some analysis of several scorecards from the same student tells me whether that round was a one off or if it’s a trend. Several more scorecards after I give them some practice ideas I can tell if they need more work on it. I can’t confirm whether they are actually doing it or not. Again, I have 168 hours a week and watching each player practice individually would quickly deplete my bank.

I may never be able to watch every individual player’s practices, but I can do my best to set them up for success. Another idea for my practice plan programmer came from that fact. But it is going to take some work on their part. First, they have to track statistics. When I first started building this out, it was going to include practice metrics and on course metrics and then by comparing them, determine where you needed to adjust your focus. While you can still input some practice stats, it’s hard enough to get players to track stats at all, so I decided to start with where they really matter: on the golf course. You can still input practice stats, but for now, those will be read manually by me. Eventually I will get back to my original plan. That original plan was so limited though. If you could see all the work I have done, unless you are an accomplished programmer, you would probably be impressed. I’m on the version 7.3 and I’ve expanded even further beyond just using Google Sheets and Forms. I now have an online portal where you can see your current plan (I went from manually putting it in your CoachNow to having it automatically emailed to you to this) and your progress as well as input practice and on course statistics. And originally you could only input once you had finished your round. Now you can also do it live while you play. It doesn’t do anything super fancy like pull up the scorecard for the course that you are actually playing. In fact, I’ve considered removing the Course Name and tees you played at all. But again, it’s good information to know so for now I’ve kept it. A complaint that I have heard from multiple coaches is that it is so hard to get players to track their stats. So, I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible. And I keep trying to simplify it. I have plans to eventually turn this into an actual app but for now it’s a “mini-app”. You go to the website and then add it to your phone screen. After that, it acts exactly like an app. It’s just not on the App Store or Google Play yet. You have to have a developer's license and I’m trying to keep this as low cost as possible… for now.

Why the “…for now”? Because like you, I’m limitless. But like me, you just have to believe it. You don’t need some miracle drug like Bradley Cooper’s character did. You just have to “be curious, not judgmental.” Be curious about how far you can go. How well you can play the game. Don’t judge your swing as bad and limit your potential by focusing only on it. It takes more than that though. It takes some work. And not the grinding it out on the range. The attention to the nitty gritty details of keeping your stats. I’m not asking you to do the analysis and determine how those stats drive your practice. I’m not asking you to be like Matt Fitzpatrick and manually track every shot you take down to the club, target, wind and lie. I’m just asking you to keep the stats and enter them. Now if you want to keep track of all that data and drop a notebook on my desk, I’ll build out my program to handle them. That thousand lines of code in AppScript I mentioned earlier? It’s now well over a hundred thousand from AppScript, to Java, to HTML, to CSS. Software languages I’ve never used before a month ago. A skill I never even imagined that I would have. I’m not a Zig Ziglar rah rah rah reach your potential personality, but while my personality may not match his, my belief in you does. Two days ago on his X (formerly Twitter) account he posted a quote by Robert H. Schuller, “Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.” That’s exactly what I did with the DGS Skill Performance Engine. I let my imagination run wild and then I did something about it. That’s the second part of the equation. It doesn’t only work with your golf game. It works anywhere in life. Open yourself up to the possibilities. Dream big. Work hard. You are limitless.