Choking, Swing Analysis and Swing Thoughts

Jonah Lehrer in a fascinating book titled How We Decide (recommended to me by one of my South African readers) asks us, on page 136 to "Consider one of the most famous chokes in sports history: the collapse of Jean Van de Velde on the last hole of the 1999 British Open". Lehrer argues that choking is the result of the rational brain taking over and creating doubt just at the point we should be relying on trained muscle memory.

If choking is the inevitable result of rational swing analysis, how do we go from analyzing our swings (rational mind) to actually playing golf (automatic muscle memory)? I suspect this isn't as easy as forgetting about our swing analysis when we're under pressure. Choking is an issue at the end of almost every professional golf tournament and today was no exception watching Jim Furyk win both the Tour Championship and the Fed-Ex Cup, the later for a $10 million bonus!

Furyk didn't play that well in the last few holes but got the win with a great bunker shot and solid short put. His thought process on the 17th hole was interesting. He didn't hit a great drive although it was in the middle of the fairway. He had over 200 yards left to the green and was afraid of hitting a jumper (it was raining) with his utility club. He explained in an interview that if he hit over the green he could loose the tournament. The shot he did hit was fat but ended up in the fairway short of the green (a safe miss) from where he bogeyed to be leading the tournament by only one stroke. He had to par the 18th and he did.

Whether or not Furyk choked a little or not, his "rational" play was very different from Van de Velde's play on the 18th hole at Carnoustie. Van de Velde made some miserable decisions after a poor drive that only put him in more trouble and saw his three shot lead evaporate while playing down the 18th hole. All he had to do was play safe, get a bogey or even double bogey to win.

Jonah Lehrer thinks that Van de Velde was "...suddenly focusing on the mechanics of his stroke, making sure that he didn't torque his wrist or open his hips." I'm not sure what he was thinking about but, at the time, it seemed to me that he just wasn't thinking.

Maybe it's fair to say that Van de Velde's swing wasn't solid enough to go on auto pilot when he needed it. It's probably also fair to say that swing analysis is not enough to produce a solid swing that won't crack under pressure. I recall Curtis Strange commenting that when under pressure he had only one swing thought: "Complete the backswing." After all the analysis and experience playing under pressure, it probably boils down to finding that one swing thought!