John entered a two-day stroke play tournament and I caddied for him. This is my feedback!
15th August 2012
Dear John,
So, what to say?
Well, for me it was fascinating and for you it must have been grim. What did I learn?
Well, the two days brought home to me what I have always thought, that the strokeplay format is an abomination. I don’t like any format of a sport that doesn’t pitch protagonists directly against each other. I have written extensively about how sports test qualities like nerve and courage, and how these tests are intensified when the game is between two people or two teams. Strokeplay is golf’s version of time-trialling, and I hate it.
In the Tour de France the time trial is called the “Race of Truth”, I think because it is a test of the individual cyclist’s ability without the support of a team (and without, crucially, the teeming complexities of a proper race!). But if it reveals a truth about a cyclist, I think it is a truth that is barely worth knowing. Mark Cavendish is a run of the mill time-triallist but a truly great cyclist because he win’s races. Over and over again he has performed with great courage, cunning and athletic ability; and has shown a phenomenal ability to win under all sorts of conditions.
However, railing against the strokeplay format is useless because I can’t see the golfing world dumping it in favour of matchplay, given its usefulness in getting 80 or so players around a course in one (or two) days and coming up with a result.
The orthodox approach is to “play the course”, which I assume means to test yourself against par on each hole. The problem with this approach is that par is a moveable feast depending on conditions, and it would be quite possible (especially at RPGC) to lose a match against “par” and win a strokeplay event because everyone else has lost more badly against “par”.
I think that you are naturally a match player and that you find strokeplay a necessary evil that is tolerable until slow play makes the experience unbearable. On Sunday, the experience of playing a strokeplay tournament slowly was on the point of becoming unbearable when that “gong” caught you on the downswing, and that was enough to quell your competitive fire and along with it the route to perfect “timing”. Your pride in your performance kept you going, but that’s not sport.
However, given that to play golf at all involves you making significant sacrifices, then it is imperative that you find a way of making strokeplay something more than merely tolerable, something that really works for you. And, guess what, I think I know how!!!
I think that when you are playing strokeplay tournaments you need to view yourself as your competitor. To do this you need to accept that there is just one way to maximize your chances of locating your “timing”. Then you need to accept that you, in the guise of your conscious brain (the bit of you that says to yourself just before you play your shot “I mustn’t hit it left”!), is the thing that is most likely to prevent you from locating your “timing”. So, the competition on each shot is between the “you” who wants to use the method to locate “timing”, and the “you” who (like the rest of humanity) can’t help but relapse occasionally and rely on previous methods and techniques.
In this way, you will be able to re-create the conditions of a match with all the usual ebbing and flowing between the opponents. If “you” win most of the battles, you play well, because you will have located your “timing” more often.
For instance, when that “gong” caught you on the downswing, your match with yourself ebbed in favour of the “you” that wanted to dwell on the misfortune of the event, and flowed away from the “you” that wanted to have all the brain space and energy to locate “timing” on the next shot. Once viewed in these terms then the next shot becomes fascinating because as you walk towards the ball you will get a sense of a real battle between the “yous”, a real six-pointer; and you will get a definite sense of which “you” you want to win that battle.
I appreciate that it is a feat of imagination to view yourself as your own competitor, but I can’t think of any other way of making psychological sense of the strokeplay format.
Regards,
Colin
