FAQ

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For quite some time, KeyGolf has been receiving questions, "frequently asked," from players and coaches. We have routinely tried to respond to them as they came in. Truth is, however, they come often enough that it should be helpful to address some of the more common ones in our newsletter. This will not be a complete list, just a representative selection. They are not listed in any particular order. The priority is about equal.

In pre-amble, we note, one more time, a principle that seems to require reminder, reiteration and ramroding. Either its meaning seems remote or it appears so foreign to everyday experience that most just slough it off as unimportant. It could even be that it is so commonplace that it may as well be invisible. We just flat don't see or notice it. Truth is that anyone seriously wishing to grasp, as thoroughly as possible, the "why and how" of the mental game, needs this substantial morsel.

The non-discriminatory element of the human system must be recognized and honored, especially by golfers. Everybody needs that knowledge, but golfers, especially. The solitary nature of the game pleads for it. You'll find the full story in the works of Hans Selye. You may not understand all of what he says, but you better hope your doctor does.

What non-discriminatory means is that there are certain things our systems are naturally engaged in doing all the time that are not subject to what we may "think is best." It may seem "best" in our minds, for instance, for us to do something that goes beyond the capacity of our heart and lungs, but the non-discriminatory nature of our being won't allow that - at least not without severe damage. You may think that you can withstand any amount of pain without consequence because you have learned to be physically strong, or because you have "mental toughness," but your immune system won't let either of those pass, unchallenged. In the human system, pain invariably signals the immune system. In turn, that system produces a blocking action (defense) accompanied by anger (attack mode) and some form of physiological action (added adrenaline). No amount of preparation will prevent that. Learning to manage it can help deal with it, however. You cannot "beat" Mother Nature at her "game." You can try, but you'll pay, sooner or later. And the tolls are not cheap. Since you cannot stop the immune system, short of dying, from doing its pre-determined job, your alternatives cannot include ignoring it, changing it, or preventing it. The only remaining alternative is "signal sidetracking." That's our term for managing this non-discriminatory process by using clear keys. Sidetracking the signal , or refraining from giving a signal is the means to avoid having the immune system receive a green light, and then jump into the fray. That signal blocking by your clear key only needs to last long enough to prepare (pre-shot) and make a golf shot. Understand this, once the immune system goes to work, it's too late to change the running of its course, which requires the same sequence every time it is called upon.

It may seem misplaced, but here is a quote from a 1999 copy of "Senior Golfer," giving an everyday kind of illustration that highlights the clear key way, even though neither the author nor the subject of the article were aware of it.

"[Bishop] Swing has played in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am 14 times and in 1994 made the championship cut, crediting, of all things, a loose tooth. As he tells it, 'On the second day, I hooked a ball into the woods on the seventh hole at Poppy Hills and found myself behind a tree. Waiting for the group ahead on the green, I took a quick bite of a Power Bar and felt my tooth come out just as they yelled for me to go ahead and hit. For the rest of the round, all I thought about was my tooth, but I beat my pro straight up and we were in first place. I think I've figured out the secret of golf: Either take out this particular tooth or get completely distracted by something for four hours. Then you can play very good golf.' "

(Bill Swing is a Bishop in the Episcopal Church in California , a nine handicapper and son of a golf professional from West VA.)

The Bishop's tooth and our clear key perform one and the same function. Perhaps you have also heard what must have seemed trite to many: "Don't mess with a guy who is playing hurt." It is no secret that many a superb sports performance has come from athletes who were playing "hurt." The distraction is enough to put them on auto for awhile.... But, on to the questions.

Here we refer specifically to the use of clear keys, but it's the same for any other process. The short answer is "It takes as long as it takes." If that sounds flippant, like a cliche, then think about it for a minute. Everyone is different. At KeyGolf, that has been demonstrated through 25 years of profiling. The clear indication is that there are no two people who are exactly alike - not even identical twins. The time-frame for learning is as variable as all those different people. There are parameters, but they stand like shadows in the background. Should you want to see them clearly, you can do so by reading any of the books written by Erik Erikson. He spent a lifetime in research and writing about such matters. We suggest that if this holds enough of your interest, you may want to ask for one of his books as a Christmas gift. It will serve you for a lifetime. His studies are timeless.

Every golfer should understand the following illustration. The golf swing is a processive, synchronic motion, not a series of events. However, a lot of golfers and instructors appear to try to turn it into a series of events. A very common (and innocent) practice for teachers and learners is choosing and placing the club in a variety of positions (and holding them) based on a notion that this will somehow build "muscle memory." (Hopefully, you know by now that there is no such thing as "muscle memory," since muscles contain no gray matter whatsoever). The belief is that the body will learn to go back to those positions in actual practice. It is not likely that this notion will harm anyone, but it is also unlikely that it will really help with learning the process known as the swing. If anything, such posturing is more apt to produce a stuttering swing than anything with constant rhythm in it. The one exception to this may be in the experience of a person whose profile shows "pure" Analyzer traits. That means a profile that shows the Driver, Persuader, and Craftsman traits all below the mid-line, with only those of the Analyzer above. And even for that set of traits, such method would be a bit suspect. Of course, since teaching and learning "by positions" doesn't really appear to injure anyone, there is little point in trying to demonstrate that it probably won't help. Fact is, most people have no way of evaluating whether it does or does not help. The only "appraisals" that do show up will invariably fall under the heading of "take my word for it." And since no one has undertaken a true research project with all variables accounted for, anybody's claim can sound authentic, whether it is or not. Now you know why there are so many journal articles that present different viewpoints and yet seem to carry an authentic sound. (Very few in golf have presented a documented way of certifying or decertifying the accuracy of different points of view, so everything falls into the same in-basket - "It sounds reasonable, so it must be OK.")

Why is it that I get a few holes in OK and then it all starts to fall apart?

There are several reasons this might happen. First, there is the chain reaction of frustration and/or anxiety that may occur after a player makes what he/she perceives as a "mistake." If you hit a "bad" shot and have not pre-determined how you will manage emotional moments on the course, it may catch you "flat-footed." Don't forget that the non-discriminatory nature of the human system WILL react to anything producing pain (any size or shape), and a missed shot is generally painful. It's a one-two punch. If you have pre-determined that you will give those situations "30 seconds" (or some limited time) and then blow them off, you will likely get rid of the repeated twisting of your wheels mid round. At least you will manage that portion coming from the "bad" shot. The natural, normal anger of missing must run a course. You can't change the course, but you can limit the time-frame. "Missing shots" falls under the broad range of "loss" in human experience. It doesn't make any difference to the non-discriminatory system whether the "loss" is a tie clasp, earring, your self-image, or your entire bank account. Your system will react the same way. Oh, of course, your conscious mind will make a distinction, but that won't change the process. Time-frame, yes. Process, no. The immune system does not care how you may value your priorities. It only knows to do what it was put there to do.

A second reason may show up if you happen to have a day when the clear key seems to bump into mechanical thinking frequently, or when you, your swing and your key get "out of sync." Such may be particularly noticeable to those who a.) are new to clear key, or b.) those who go along with partial use, thinking that clear keys aren't necessary all the time. Using clear keys "all the time" is like carrying an insurance policy. If you know the day and hour when you will be involved in a wreck, you can go get your insurance just before you have it. If not, better carry it all the time.

Becoming comfortable with clear key has no "standard" time frame. This is one of the areas to which must be given a defintion that says "it takes as long as it takes."

A third possibility is that you may have just "run out of gas." The immune system uses a lot of energy. If you look closely, you'll see that anyone who may be struggling, for any reason, is burning excessive fuel. We only have so much to use in between our rest periods. If we burn that up too fast, it's like a cell phone that's been on too long without a charge. There is little doubt that this occurs regularly with players in the later holes, which could start as early as the ninth or tenth. It is more common, however, from fifteen through eighteen.

Again, there are multiple possibilities. It may depend on how you went about "learning how to learn" earlier in life. It can depend on whether you are a rational, cerebral thinker or a guttural, emotional thinker. It has a relationship to your basic style. It is also connected to your personal experience with commitment, frustration, authority, trust, self-confidence, autonomy, creativity, and sense of responsibility. What we see in players more often is a rush to try something new, experimentation with the swing, new equipment, changed swing keys, vague or absent pre-shot planning, fiddling over the ball (which takes even the most dedicated out of the automatic mode), and swings that are incomplete and don't make it to the finish. If you watch enough tour players under pressure, you will notice that they shorten their swings and simply punch the ball to keep it in play. Of course, that's not bad, but it does betray a lack of trust in the "whole" swing.

And those actions are probably only the tip of the ice-berg. Granted, we'd all prefer the "drive-thru" mode. One lesson, and it's there - in stone. But that just is not going to happen. You can chase instructors for the rest of your life trying to find the "five minute cure" and you will just keep on looking. It isn't there in that way.

Learning is processive, until you've reached the fourth level and developed the habits you need for whatever you are doing. Once at the habit level, the task becomes maintenance, taking care of one's habits (game,etc) with regular check-ups and the kind of off-course practice that only deals with those things that are bent or dented. If need be, of course, the construction of new habits may be on the agenda, as well. Meanwhile, those who get swept up in the experimental game will be just that - swept up - at the end of the day.

More than one possibility here, too. Most prominent is the nature of the system. We have already pointed out that most people do not really hear this message: "The human system, except for the activity of the conscious mind, is basically non-discriminatory." That means that there are lots of areas of human movement that have been provided to us by our maker that we don't see, in general, because we don't need to. (That's part of the system. Mother Nature apparently didn't want us to have to work too hard). The given provisions just work in our behalf and we may not even be aware enough to be grateful. If we had to deal with, "control," or even manage, every little thing that goes on in the human body and mind on an item by item basis, we would not ever get anything else done, other than, perhaps, engagement of the necessary items to stay alive.

One of the principal functions of that non-discriminatory system is to maintain homeostasis, or in the vernacular, "to keep our balance." Any time there is a change or threat of change in the way we go about anything, that balance faces a threat. In turn that triggers the immune system to resist whatever it deems a cause of imbalance (in this case, a change). If you have never used clear keys, your system will initially buck you for changing from your "old ways." To whatever extent you have trouble with your own commitment to the "new," your system will seize upon that as an opportunity for further resistance. Hence, you may feel like you are "fighting" your clear key. The remedy lies in making a decision to persist in the "new" process until it is strong enough to displace the "old." And "displace" is the crucial theme. You never lose a habit once you have it. You can displace it by building another one stronger, and you can cause it to atrophy by not using it, but you cannot "get rid" of it.

In addition, we have to deal with the current "quick fix," fast food, drive-in bank, instamatic, "take a pill and call me in the morning" cultural mind-set. There is no denying that if you happen to be less then 60 years old, you are distinctly part of that ethos. Without being too philosophical, we can make a concerted case for the way in which the "fast everything" mode is fragile, if not self-defeating in its entirety. One of the things we respect about golf is that it has the capacity, by its nature, to help us maintain perspective in a world that desperately needs it. It's hard to rush golf or make it into an instamatic activity. It's hard to play it with belligerent moves and bigoted attitudes. If you constantly frown while at play, you'll get a headache and your score will show it.

In the final analysis, it is impossible, at least over time, to play with muscle-boundness or with mental midgetry.

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