Tip #19

Understanding "Trial and Error"

by Dr. Richard C. Myers

There are certain broad principles of golf which are useful in the rapid development of a sound swing. Such principles have been ably expounded by many of the professional players. Mark Anthony has many stories and testimonials for people that have used his video's to produce a very good looking golf swing resulting in many good shots, in just a manner of minutes. Mark himself took almost 40 strokes off his game in one summer. 

However, the fine tuning of golf can take a lifetime and is mostly trial and error, if the proper instruction is not used.

Thorndike and others discovered that cats, dogs, chicks, monkeys, and other animals, when attacking a new problem first tried a number of hit and miss solutions. Those things which failed they gradually abandoned . Those which lead to success were stamped in and retained. What this emphasized was that a successful performance is not necessarily the result of conscious thought, but is rather caused by associations produced by subconscious mechanisms of the body. It is significant that when many of the old players like Snead was asked how he did it, he said that he really did not know. Some of the others like Hogan, has been credited with being able to take his swing apart and put it back together again. This is to some extent true on a broad scale, but how each muscle learns its duties no one knows specifically.

We must assume that his trial and error process is gone through by an infinite number of our bodily mechanisms and hence can only come about by much previous trial and error. Gross skills come first, then skills within the correct gross skills, and then skills within these skills, until we come to the fine tuning required for a long side hill putt, breaking to the right on a fast green.

Trial and error learning is most important in learning the short game, So much attention has been focused on proper form in full shots that we tend to forget the extreme importance of being able to hit the ball varying distances in approaches, trap shots, chips and putts. The inability to gauge these distances accounts for the loss of most of our strokes. In this department of golf, form seems relatively unimportant, and trial and error learning all-important. Tigers recent difficulties have hardly come about because of any deterioration in gross form. There has simply been some muscular forgetting where distance is concerned, and considerable trial and error relearning is the remedy.

The three necessary elements, then for efficient learning in golf are the mechanical fundamentals, the application of psychology, and considerable trial and error learning. The latter requires time.