Serendipity

Serendipity is defined by the all-seeing oracle at Google as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way."

So the question this Sunday, as you prepare your avocado on toast with poached egg and hollandaise sauce, is golf a game of chance? Why is there so much variation from round to round even for the pros? To answer this, we must delve deeper and compare golf to another billion dollar behemoth, the diet and weight loss industry. The trick with both is to muddy the waters to such an extent that even the experts in the field are somewhat at a loss to explain reality. There are so many versions of this reality and those clever people at marketing firms can and do bend the truth subtly (or sometimes not so subtle) to suit the  purchase of goods by said consumer. Take the case of two new drivers on the market as we speak, one has a head that was designed on the moon by artificial intelligence; the other has magic fairy dust injected in the face. Both are promised to come with launch codes in 2020 such will be the velocity available to you the handicap golfer. In the McDonalds generation that we live in, where we want everything served yesterday, this is the perfect solution to the pesky problem of golf. I want to play well, but I just don't have the time.

Skip across to the weight loss industry and truly this is a unicorn in a sea of donkeys. These boys need marketing firms to watch the marketing firms as there is so much information and so many so-called experts that it is doubtful that anyone knows the truth and are in no hurry to ascertain that truth as they can't stock enough weight loss products to meet the demand of a hungry (terrible pun) consumer. Many years ago when I was studying for my sports science degree, I distinctly remember to this day sitting in a class in the States where the lecturer was arguing the toss on whether broccoli was good for you! It is this very deliberate muddying of the waters that have us where we are today. Lost in both industries! The latest craze in the weight loss world (for the next few weeks anyway!) is mixing chia seeds in water with a drop of lemon juice and hey presto, it melts the fat away. This is nearly as crazy as believing that magic fairy dust or an alien on the moon whispering sweet nothings to your driver will make it go further. They conveniently forget to tell you that you need to hit the ball in the center of the club with a certain swing speed to get it to work. Joe who sits at a desk all week and has bad knees and a stiff hip forks out 600 bucks to buy a dream that doesn't exist, (unless your name happens to start with DJ.) Joe will hit the odd good shot, and this will keep him coming back for more. The constant reinventing of the wheel is paramount to keeping the wheels of commerce greased and moving smoothly. 

Bobby Jones said it best with “One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.” This is so true in relation to golf, learning motor patterns takes time and persistence. You are trying to replace a line of code with a new line, and if not repeated frequently, you will revert to the old habit. This is not to be unexpected, you have been practicing the old move (or pattern) for a longer period or as Tiger likes to say, you have performed more reps with the old pattern. Golf has also become an ever-changing field of study, with new technology and a host of biomechanists now debating whether what we think we know about the golf swing is correct! Different body types produce different results and thus explains why YouTube is such a disaster for trying to teach yourself golf. The advice given might be 100% correct and factual, just not suited to you. I am always trying to determine when a new client starts with me where they power their swing from. There are three main types, thrusters, spinners and lateral motion. There are some crossovers, as in the LPGA Tour player, Lexi Thompson, who is both a thruster and spinner, she powers her swing through good rotation and upward lift (she is on her toes at impact with a driver,) just not to be recommended to an average handicap player. Further confusion arises when we see Patrick Reed and Justin Thomas airborne on the lead foot at impact hitting drivers. They are creating so much downward force in the lead foot at impact, that they are being thrown back onto their trail foot, (Newton's third law of motion.) Handicap golfers are looking for about 80% of the center of pressure to be in the trail foot at the top of the swing and the same amount in the lead foot at impact. Confused? This is the pandora's box that is golf; one mans meat is another mans poison.

Bobby Jones again with another gem, “Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots–but you have you have to play the ball where it lies.”  I would suggest that golf does indeed embrace serendipity. How else do we explain the twice a year win by the club hacker? They just happened to time their swing well that day, a couple of chip-ins (one was flying when it hit the flag and dropped,) a couple of holed putts from downtown Manhatten and there you have it. Winner winner chicken dinner! Until the next time, when they are awful (expectation is a killer!) As regular readers will attest, golf and life are about doing the right things, day in and day out. Finding a teacher that understands that they are teaching what is in front of them, and how you are physically capable of swinging a club is paramount to success. Thereafter, it's all about consistency in doing, each and every day. You attract what you become, hang around with negative people, and you will become negative. The same thing with golf, practice the correct patterns regularly, and just like those magic chia seeds that will magically melt away the fat, serendipity will come calling on your door more frequently. The real truth is, there is no such thing as luck, good things happen to people who make them happen with consistent action each and every day. Correct constant repetition creates the magic, the only magic in the McDonalds drive-thru of life is a quick high followed by getting fitted for that magic fairy dust in the face of a driver.