One Under
Par CLEAR
TALK Taking
a look at Clear Keys from a perspective other than golf can help you build
comprehension, while confirming the reality of a process that is
lived out daily, not to mention in your golf game. Clear
Keys have been used successfully with a wide range of activities, both
knowingly and quite unwittingly. Pitching in baseball, throwing darts,
serving and receiving in tennis, foul-shooting in basketball, running (as
in track), billiards, and managing the anxiety of the dentist's chair are
on that list. Illustrations occasionally emerge from unsuspected sources,
as well. The
Movie IRON EAGLE, presents a young hero going about his business well
outside traditionally accepted limits. The "maverick" theme is at the
heart of the story and all of the actions in it. The story emphasizes,
among other things, that "doing the right things" is more effective than
"doing things right." As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that one
of Iron Eagle's more noticeable "quirks" is his obsession for playing his
own special music on strafing and bombing runs. When he is not allowed to
use his music, he can't hit the broad side of a barn. With the music,
however, he is deadly accurate. No matter what label you give to it, that
is how a Clear Key works. An archived chapter from The Simpsons on TV showed
Bart in competition with one of his peers in a putt-putt contest. At a
most critical point in the match, Bart stepped over a long putt he needed
to make and was heard to say "A tree grows in the woods...a tree grows in
the woods..." while he was in the act of stroking the putt. He holed it.
We are confident that the writers did not set out to illustrate Clear
Keys, even though they had Bart and his sister engage, at the show's
beginning, in the same kind of conversation that might take place between
a player and a sport psychologist. They were looking for a clever way to
produce a laugh, and they were successful. Even so, the point was
unmistakable. (I have had people write to me to find out if the Bart
Simpson writer(s) had attended a clinic on Clear Keys). Awhile
back, during an interview on the Golf Channel, Duffy Waldorf recounted a
victory story that also illustrates how clear keys work as we have
observed and understood it. He did not, however, use the expression "clear
keys," or its cousin "zone," and he didn't appear to realize he was
talking about such conditions. Duffy was only responding to a question
about the images and words his wife and family regularly paint on his golf
balls. Duffy
told the interviewer that by focusing on the images on the golf balls, it
took his mind away from the anxieties of hitting the shots. Even though he
didn't seem to notice it, he was referencing the singular way we all have
of managing anxiety (and being on automatic). That gift comes from
thinking about anything, except what we are doing, while we are doing it.
He acknowledged it helped, but if he knew why, he wasn't saying it, and we
don't blame him. It tends to sound peculiar because "the why's" of
automatic performance don't get through to media representatives. They
just don't get it. And they feed that back in such a way that what
everyone else derives is the "don't get it part." So few see it and almost
nobody "gets" it. When
Ben Crenshaw won his last Masters, he had just returned to Augusta from
the funeral of his very dear and loved mentor, Harvey Penick. By his own
acknowledgment, it was that which filled his mind during the tournament.
He was playing in the zone created by not thinking about what he was doing
while he was doing it. That may seem like an exceptional zone, but it
isn't. It is the zone created by a real, normal part of life, that acts as
a Clear Key for one's actions. The Clear Key is the tool that puts you in
a zone that you can manage - one that doesn't just fall into your
lap. In a
pitching appearance in a World Series game back in the '80's Orel
Herschiser had a similar experience with a version of "clear keys" which
he related to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. In response to Johnny's
question about the anxiety of pressure pitching, he said he handled it
simply by "singing the Doxology" in his head while he delivered the pitch.
He occupied his mind with things that had nothing to do with what he was
actually doing. The Doxology was his Clear Key at that time. One may be
tempted to label what Orel was doing as the BIG Zone, or some kind of
divine intervention. Close scrutiny will show, however, that it was a pure
function of the everyday zone - again, the one that is self-manageable. It
was subject to the same universal principles available to everyone, even
when they are doing something as simple and innocent as brushing their
teeth. If you
saw the movie "For Love of the Game," and you heard Billy Chapel say
"Clear the mechanism," you'll have yet another indicator of what clear
keys can do and how they do it - again from ordinary, everyday
experiences. We
don't imply that some point should have been made about Clear Keys in
these cases. We simply note for our readers the range of opportunity that
exists to confirm how thoroughly the automatic principle is entwined in
everything we do, even when people are not aware of it. We call attention
to it as a way of reinforcing the perception necessary to increase our
determination to appreciate and apply principles that are transferable in
their usefulness, even though not necessarily obvious to the casual
observer. By
allowing ourselves to think "differently," long enough to examine how we
do things, we can avoid being mired down in seeing things the way we
always saw them and using the way others see them as our standard for
measurement. In
golf, the basic issues relating to the automatic principle didn't get
"lost." We simply never quite got through the maze of conditioned
perception to find them in the first place - until now. We got close, but
never there. We have always been urged to play on automatic, wonder about
it, speculate on it, oversimplify it, and even immortalize it, but not
"How" to do it, so we didn't understand it well enough to build it in to
our shot-making and playing. Even
Robert T. Jones, Jr., with all his mental and physical genius, couldn't
quite finish the statement. We found a reprint of an article he wrote in
1929 called "Mental Hazards of Golf." It is eloquent. Jones says, "The
golf swing is a most complicated combination of muscular actions, too
complex to be controlled by objective, conscious mental effort." One could
hardly reject that idea. Then he
says, "Consequently we must rely a good deal upon the instinctive
reactions acquired by long practice." Now we have a problem. What does
"good deal" mean quantitatively? What percentage shall we pick from 1 -
100? Is it "long practice" or focused practice that builds our skill to
the effective habit level (the difference can be critical)? And which part
really is instinctive (reaction) and which part is learned
(action)? Then
Bobby goes on to say, "It has been my experience that the more completely
we can depend upon this instinct - the more thoroughly we can divest the
subjective mind of conscious control - the more perfectly we can execute
our shots." He could not have been more correct in that statement, though
we are still left with the question, "How do we do that?" If we accept his
former statement, unevaluated, this one falls easily into place. A second
look, however, reveals that he was reflecting on his own experience
accompanied by any presumptions he might have had about the meaning and
locus of "instinct." Bobby's
next words in the article are profound. "I have even had the experience
that when I played some of my best shots in trying situations I had not
the slightest recollection of hitting the ball." Unfortunately, we don't
know, and may never find out, what his thought process was during
execution. We also do not know how thoroughly he was versed in the
relationship between conscious and non-conscious thinking, or if, in
fact he made any distinction there at all. But since he is describing the
state of "defocus" that invariably accompanies true automatic, we know he
was there at least part of the time, by his own words, which does offer a
measure of verification. The
Clear Key process may be in its "youth" as a definable, currently
available entity, but it is safe to say that it's been around longer
than we were aware and that it is here to stay. Let us know if you have questions or
comments.
A
Newsletter from ClearKeyGolf...December, 2000
This Web Page Created with PageBreeze Free HTML Editor