Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
What is golf to you? Is it a difficult test to push yourself or is it a pure enjoyment, everything should be for fun?
Gary Belsky
Yes. My answer to your very smart question is yes. Golf is and can be many things. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons why I really, this book meant a lot to me was I say at the outset, I dedicate the book to all of the people that I love to play golf with, except when I love to play alone. And I start the book off by stressing literally on the first page, I’m a social golfer.
I love to go with my nephews or nieces, with my close friends. I don’t even mind being a single and playing with three strangers. I’m a hyper extrovert. So all of that is enjoyable for me. But there’s a way that the social game of golf, golf with other people, golf in groups keeps us from experiencing what I think are some of the best parts of golf.
And solo golf, the name of the book, but also kind of the practice, sort of allows my golf experiences to be completely well-rounded. So sometimes I’m just there to move the ball down the course as quickly as I can, in as least embarrassing a fashion as I can, as competitively as I can. But sometimes I want to go deeper inside my own game and my own head.
I don’t know, because in the end, as anybody who golfs knows, so much of the game is mental. I don’t know if you’ve reached the point in the book where I tell a story about a conversation that someone had with a professional golfer. That person was me back in my ESPN days. And I was golfing with somebody who wasn’t even a named professional golfer, but it was somebody who for a while made a living playing golf.
And I asked him in the middle of, it was the first time we had ever played with each other. And I asked him in the middle of the round, I looked at him and I was like, what’s the one thing, if you could only say one thing, what’s the difference between me and you? And he understood that I was basically saying, what’s the difference between amateurs and professionals? And he looked at me and he said, that’s easy. And I expected him to talk about hip turn or arm radius or striking position or aim, any number of the incredible assortment of physical aspects to the game. And he said the difference between me and you, meaning the difference between a professional golfer and an amateur is that when you’re over your ball, when I’m over my ball, I am thinking only about that shot. And when you’re over your ball, you’re thinking about every shot that’s happened today and maybe some from other rounds.
And he was right, of course. And what he was speaking to was the mental aspect of the game. So one of the things I like about solo golf, aside from the kind of sensory pleasures, is the aloneness and the isolation allows you to sort of understand your head when it comes to playing the game. So it’s not just that, I think I say at some point there’s no quieter place than an empty golf course, right? Cause you just, when you’re there, you’re just expecting noise and people and cars and trucks and golf carts and clubs rattling. And when you’re by yourself, if you can manage to make that happen, it’s so quiet that all of a sudden you relax and you’re able to sort of think not just about the sounds and the sights of your game or the course around you, but really what’s going on in your head. And so it’s a test for me when I can really say to myself that I’m testing my golf skill.
Oftentimes when I’m playing competitively with people, socially, I’m testing my ability to compete and my ability to be part of a team or a betting experience. But golfing by myself really puts me to the test in a different way. It’s me in the course, it’s me in that club, it’s me in the ball.
And in fact, one of the things, sorry if I’m speaking too long, you asked me a question that really got me going. One of the things I explain, as you know, 25% of the book is actually explaining to people how to make solo golf happen because it’s hard to do. Because the golf industrial complex wants us to golf with three other people every eight to 12 minutes. That’s how they make their money. But one of the ways I do it is that I’m often traveling and I will try to figure out what one of the worst courses is in that area. And if I can find out one of the worst courses, then I know that I’m gonna probably be able to say to the starter, hey, can you get me out by myself? And sometimes it just may not even be people there. But what I like about it the most is that the courses are often, they don’t have as much money to tend to the courses. The fairways have a lot of hard pan, there’s a lot of extra rough around the apron. The courses aren’t as good. It’s harder, but it also makes me feel a little bit like it’s a truer test of my game.
And it makes me feel a little bit closer to those shepherds in Scotland, or in China, or in Holland, in all the places, five and six and seven hundred years ago, where bored loners started to figure out ways to occupy their time. And they realized, hey, if I swing this stick at that petrified piece of sheep dung, I wonder how far it could go and I wonder how accurate I can be. And there’s something about the most beautiful courses like Augusta, like Shinnecock, like Pebble Beach. They’re wonderful to play at, but I wonder what those shepherds would think if they were there. They might go, wow, this is way easier than the game that I had to play. And so part of solo golf for me is the mental game of harder golf, and truer to the experience of me against the hole. Me trying to whack this ball four or five hundred yards in sometimes difficult conditions where the margin of error is centimeters. And that’s what I like about solo golf when I’m playing by myself. It’s harder but in a weird way more enjoyable.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, and it gets, of course it does, it gets back to the, even when you are playing in a group or you’re playing in a tournament and you’re trying, it’s not purely social, it’s not just let’s drink and have a good time, which can happen simultaneously, but when you’re trying to compete and play well, you’re going to play your best when you disregard everyone else as it is. If you can play as if you’re playing the golf course and you can accept the golf course as it is and have the mentality of, okay, there’s a leaderboard of 90 people here. Instead of me against 89 other people, it’s me against the golf course relative to everyone else against the golf course. You’re going to be more present.
Gary Belsky
Oh my God, Josh, you’re so spot on. I always say that the best golf I’ve ever played is when I’m playing solo golf. But the best golf I’ve ever played with other people is when I can channel myself playing solo golf. Oftentimes I tell people before they’re competing, if they’re playing in a tournament or whatever, try to play a round by yourself. Because when you’re playing with other people, you will be able to call up those feelings, that focus, that concentration, that aloneness in a very useful way. So yeah, I completely agree with you on that. It’s a smart observation.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, and you know, the main idea of this podcast is helping golfers perform better through the lens of performance psychology and that kind of thing. So it’s inherently about improving your game. And you talk a lot in this book about the value of playing solo golf on being able to help you improve. A question that came to mind was when you play solo, you’re obviously removing the distractions of other people. You are hyper highlighting. The only thing that you really need to be focusing on is the golf course and all of this other people’s opinions, judgments, whatever, criticism of other people trying to swing well, trying to play up to other people’s skill or whatever. Yeah, self-criticism too. So what, if you’re removing all of those obstacles, how does that help you improve when those obstacles are present? I don’t know if that question doesn’t make sense, tell me.
Gary Belsky
Yeah, I get it. I mean, it’s a perfectly fair question. It’s basically saying like, if you’re, how do you, it’s fine to play golf without some of the obstacles. What do you think? How do the obstacles affect you when you can’t remove them? And what I would say when I tell people what I think is true is that it crystallizes the feeling that you’re trying to get.
So that you can use that when you’re playing with other people. Ultimately, if you’re thinking too much when you’re playing golf, and I don’t mean core strategy. I mean, when you’re over the ball, when you’re over the ball at some point, you want to aim yourself. You want to have chosen the right club. And then you want it to be about nothing thoughtful at all. You want it to be about muscle memory and feeling. And what I believe is that a solo golf practice turns into muscle memory, the feeling that you want to get when you’re playing golf the way you want to play it for yourself.
So that’s how I believe that the distractions become less distracting. The noise becomes less noisy. The pressure becomes less onerous in competition or just with other people when you’ve had solo golf experiences because you basically can teleport yourself mentally back to those sensations, those feelings, that position. You know, in general, I think the struggle that people have with golf socially, whether or not the social is just playing with friends, playing with strangers in a casual round or playing competitively, what people have a hard time doing is emptying their head, which you have to do.
And the thing about golf that’s strange is you have to have a lot of things going on in your head between shots and ideally nothing going on in your head with every shot. And somehow the solo golf practice allows for that. It allows you to sort of tap back into that it’s just me over a ball, not even looking at the hole necessarily once I get my head down. And I think you can have the best practice you’re ever going to have is on a course playing by yourself, better than at a range. The real thing that I find interesting is how different solo golf is from going to a driving range, even a driving range that doesn’t have mats or astroturf, you know, there are ranges where you’re playing off grass or off hard pan. It’s not the same as when you’re out on a course playing by yourself. And there’s something about that experience that allows you to channel it when you are facing those obstacles that you’ve eliminated in a solo round. That’s what I would say.
Josh Nichols
Yes, it kind of gives you a north star to know, okay, when I am not going north during a round, when I am being distracted, when I am falling prey to all these obstacles, I know which way is north because of the solo rounds that I’ve played, because of the feelings.
Gary Belsky
Exactly. Before I started, sorry to interrupt, but before I started playing solo golf and I would try to calm myself on a course before a shot, for a putt, whatever the case might be, you know, I take a breath, breathe in, the stuff that I’m sure you talk about all the time. You know, how to gather yourself. When I started, I would do that and it would be somewhat effective. When I started playing solo golf I would do the same thing but it would bring me back to moments that were real of me being at peace and perfectly calm on a hole, but by myself. And that I could just be like, I’m just trying to replicate that, I’m already there. And that’s I think the big difference, to be honest with you. It’s a weird kind of physio psychological muscle memory.
Josh Nichols
Yes, that’s exactly right. I’m a big fan of kind of training it in a really high quality, effective way, in a difficult way, and then let’s go test it in a situation. So I agree. You said, kind of on this note, and you briefly mentioned it there with overthinking, but you said golf is a sport that punishes overthinking, yet rewards mindfulness. And it’s a paradox where the key to really good golf lives somewhere in this. How, maybe just explain what you mean. Golf is a sport that punishes overthinking, yet rewards mindfulness. Maybe what’s the difference there between overthinking and mindfulness? Expound on that.
Gary Belsky
Mindfulness I would describe as sort of being aware without judgment of a situation, your own skill level, a previous mistake if you can’t get it out of your head. Overthinking is believing that you can intellectualize your way to perfection. And that’s just noisy. Mindfulness is quiet and overthinking is noisy. That’s how I would say the difference, if that makes any sense.
Also, there’s a funny thing about, you know, there’s a book, I talk about all the different, the book is kind of organized where like, two thirds of it is sort of, I think eight essays, short essays, in which I explain why solo golf. There’s a whole, you know, one is about nature, one is about solitude, one is about sound, which is one of my favorite, favorite chapters, because like you hear so much. But I talk about imagination and silliness in one of the chapters, two of the chapters. And there are things that I do, by the way, I experiment when I’m, if you’re playing solo golf well and you understand how to move around the course so that you don’t butt into somebody or get noticed. Like sometimes you’re actually able, you know, it doesn’t count for your handicap. So a round of golf for me, sometimes a solo round can be 11 holes, because why not? Nobody’s counting my, but also it can be like, sometimes I’ll just be, I need to do this approach shot three times. I need to experiment with grip or I need to experiment with swing path, or I think I need to put my foot back or the ball back in my stance. And you can do that.
But also sometimes I will play a round where I’m just going to be like, I’m only using a seven iron today. And I will just play with a seven iron and it’s funny and sometimes it’s very useful. You learn things. And sometimes, by the way, I have played holes where I just use a putter, as long as there’s no carry. And by the way, I’ve bogeyed 480 yard holes with a putter. Yeah, holes that if I was using a regular club, I’m not sure if I would have bogeyed.
But my point about that is that sometimes when I’m playing with friends competitively, I’ll just be reminded of kind of a silly thing that I do in solo golf or a moment and it’ll actually relax me. I’ll be like, oh my God, I think I could use my seven iron now and maybe I should just keep my seven iron in my hands for the rest of this round where I’m betting with my friends or there’s a trophy on the line. I’m not really competing for trophies, but the sort of calling back the solo golf experiences and feelings help sort of center me and put the game into perspective.
I’m really competitive. I do not like to play poorly and I do not like to lose, but I’m a good loser. Meaning that I’m also, I understand that I am not Scottie Scheffler or Colin or Tiger. I am just a guy trying to get better a little bit today at golf. And having the solo golf experiences, including some of the profound ones, but sometimes the silly ones, loosens me up in a way that just takes me out of my head, out of the noise, and into my mind, into the quiet. If that makes sense.
Josh Nichols
Of course and it, you know, it’s the value of meditation or going on a solo walk by yourself without any distraction or you know music or podcast. You are training your ability to notice your own thinking, have a better relationship with your own thoughts, right? So when you’re playing by yourself, all there is is your own thoughts, really. Right? That’s the only voice you’re going to hear, whether it’s inside your head or outside coming out of your own mouth. So when you can go through that experience and grow in an appreciation for yourself or like you said non-judgmental awareness being the definition of mindfulness. Just grow in a love for yourself, right? I have thoughts and they don’t have power over me and I can choose to direct my attention where I want to. Right? All of this, solo golf is a training ground for that. I look at it as a training ground.
Gary Belsky
Very much so. I notice the, it’s funny that you talk about talking to yourself out loud. Many years ago, I have a friend in common with Will Arnett, you know the actor, and he’s a pretty good golfer and I played with him. He was a much better golfer than me and I think he used to make fun of me because I would screw up a shot and talk to myself out loud, basically yell at myself out loud. And he just thought that was the funniest thing. So I know what you’re talking about, but what’s interesting to me, and I still end up talking to myself a little bit, much less now than when I was younger, but what I find really interesting is that when I’m solo golfing, playing solo golf, the word, I hardly say anything out loud, I never yell at myself, but I often will go, huh.
Like I’ll do something and I’ll just go, huh. It’ll just be like, that was interesting. That’s what the huh means. I won’t say that was interesting. And it’s funny. And I’ll just be like, wow, I really shanked that, or I topped it, or that was so funny, I didn’t take that third practice swing. And somehow when I hit the ball, that third practice swing, which is always better than my regular swing, came into play there. And what I will find is that when I’m playing golf with other people, I’ll make a mistake or just, you know, even if I hit a shot well, but not quite as well as I thought. I will be reminded of what I would do if I was playing by myself and I would be like, huh, and just recollecting the attitude that I bring when I’m playing solo golf to my social golf game makes my social golf game more mindful.
And I can’t, you know, I’m sure whenever I play, I’m always trying to remember how to be chill. But it usually happens, the chillness, when I access a memory from a solo golf experience. I’ll just be like, yeah, if you were playing by yourself, you would just be like, that was interesting, and just kind of apply it to the next shot, whatever it was that I thought. And you know, it’s funny because if you ask me physically where I feel the solo golf experience the most, it’s in my arms. There’s something about going around the course when you’re playing by yourself where like your arms feel really relaxed because I think when you’re tense as a golfer, you’re tense mostly in your forearms and upper arms and shoulders. Just literally, I think that’s where the tension is, you know, you’re always fighting like that’s where you think your power comes from even though you know it doesn’t.
And there’s something about the solo golf experience where like when I think of myself playing solo golf, I think of my relaxed arms. They’re almost in my head dangling in a way that like Ben Hogan or Bobby Jones’s arms used to dangle, right? Like I always look at those old videos and they both talked about this. You just want your arms almost, you know, dead off your shoulders, just alive enough to grip your club. And let your arms go up with the turn and come down with the swivel and let gravity do its work. Bobby Jones was a genius at that. Like his arms looked like they were almost paralyzed except like he would just, you know, stripe those shots when the ball left the club. And I get that feeling when I’m playing by myself and it’s very hard for me to bring that feeling when other people are watching me shoot, even if they’re close friends or family and they’re not judging me at all.
I still get the tight arms. In solo golf, my arms are so relaxed. And sometimes I can bring that feeling to the course with other people. Again, it’s about channeling. Like, it just makes you want to play solo golf more as much as you play regular golf. So that like, if I could, I would almost, if I could in some dream retirement, I’d play golf twice a week with friends. And I’d play on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’d be playing by myself. Because I think that’s how I connect to my best golfing self.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the kind of performative nature of the way we respond, the way you’re talking about Will Arnett observing how you respond, there’s, and you don’t do that when you’re by yourself, there’s a performative nature and it’s ironic that Will Arnett is a performer, he’s an actor, so it’s… really, is he that good?
Gary Belsky
God, he could crush the ball off the tee. That’s all I remember playing with him. I remember him making fun of me and crushing the ball off the tee.
Josh Nichols
I love Will Arnett. I need more of Will Arnett in my life.
Gary Belsky
Yeah, me too. We haven’t spoken in, we were at a party together probably 10 or 12 years ago, but he was a great guy and my recollection was a very good golfer and in any event, a better golfer than me and funnier because he used me as material, justifiably so.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Yes. Right. So, but that performance that we put on for other people, seems like, why… What are your thoughts on why do we do that when we’re with other people? Why do we change when we’re with other people?
Gary Belsky
Wow, that is a profound question, Josh Nichols. Because you’re sort of asking, I think, about the nature of the human experience. I think if we don’t care what other people think, we are sociopaths. And we don’t want to be that because some percentage of sociopaths end up becoming serial killers. Not the majority of them, by the way. I think the estimates are that about 1% of people are sociopaths. And most of them don’t become serial killers, but sociopaths are people that don’t care about what other people think or they can’t access what other people think.
I think the human experience the way we’ve evolved is to want to be parts of things, parts of families, parts of tribes, parts of clans, parts of towns, parts of cities, etc. And in order to be a part of things, we’re not thinking about this consciously, of course, but in order to be a part of things we are always looking for the rules and the rates. By the rules, I mean, what’s expected of me and the rates. I mean, what are the dues? What do I have to do? What do I have to pay in order to be part of this group? And then what’s expected of me? And I think in a funny way, that’s where the performative self-consciousness comes from.
You know, so much of, I always say, I have a business partner. I run a storytelling studio, a communications consulting firm. And my business partner, who’s a good athlete, always talked about that when he was growing up, all he cared about was not looking stupid on the court or on the field or on the rink, on the diamond, whatever the case might be. And I think that I understand that. Cause like the first thing I want to do when I’m golfing with somebody is, and golf is unique in sports, in that you can really play with somebody orders of magnitude better than you, as long as you understand the difference in how to play with them, right? And so the first thing I want to show somebody is not that I’m a great golfer if somebody’s really good. If I’m told that I’m playing with somebody very good, I don’t want to show that I’m as good as them because I can’t. I want to show them that I know how to play, be on the golf course with great players and just be on the golf course in general. That’s part of the performance too is my point. Is I think we are just always as humans trying to belong to the club and do what the club expects of us. And then we’re worried about being kicked out of the club.
So to the extent to which people get self-conscious, and of course as an adult, I’m not worried that I’m gonna be kicked out of any club, literally or figuratively, but I am worried that somebody’s gonna be like telling a story about me later. You know, my God, I golf with this guy and you should see the way he blank, right? And I have a pretty good golf game. So I’m not, I don’t really fear that way, but I did at some point. So I think that’s where it comes from. I think it comes from the need of humans. It’s a need as much as oxygen or water, the need to belong, the need to have people, the need to be part of things. And once you have that need, then you are always going to be thinking about how you’re being evaluated and thinking about how you are being rated, whether or not you’re matching up.
And obviously nobody is necessarily having those thoughts on a random Sunday afternoon in Bethesda, Maryland when they’re golfing. I don’t know why I picked Bethesda. I’ve never golfed in Bethesda. But they are humans and that’s what humans do. They are aware of the other people watching.
You know, it’s funny, part of that is just because of the natural narcissism we all have that we always have to battle in all aspects of our life. I’m sure it’s come up on this show before, which is, you know, we all are kind of thinking that it’s our movie and everybody else is just, you know, guest starring in the movie for a moment. What I always want to tell people who are nervous about their golf coming out and playing, you know, I want to bring a friend out and he’ll be like, who are you playing with? And I’ll be like, this person and that person, the friend will be like, I don’t know, they’re going to be too good for me. And I’ll be like, they don’t care about you. They don’t even care about your golf. I mean, they’ll care if you make too much noise or go too slow and the ranger comes. But they’re not going to care about you. Nobody’s looking.
And so that’s what’s funny about so much of the things that go on in our head. Sometimes you’ll be like, I’ll make a swing and I’ll think, oh, I wonder how that looked. And then I look up and somebody wasn’t even paying attention and worse, they don’t know where my ball went. Right? So one of the things I always try to tell people is nobody’s looking. And even if they’re looking, they’re not paying attention. And even if they’re not paying attention, they’re not being judgmental. And even if they’re being judgmental, you don’t care what people like that think, because who cares what judgmental people think. All of which is a way to sort of get yourself out of that performance mindset. You’re not performing for anybody, you are having an experience for yourself.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, that’s so well said. And that’s where some self-awareness comes in of kind of catching yourself in that loop or the intrusive or even non-conscious thought of, I’m worried about what they’re thinking. If you just catch yourself doing that, whoa, I can tell I’m performing for these people. If you’ve been playing solo golf, you can recall back to the time where this is how I felt when I played completely alone and there was zero people to impress or perform for. And I loved that feeling and I loved who I was in that moment. So I’m going to recall that feeling and be that person right now. And I think that’s awesome. So.
Gary Belsky
You can give yourself triggers even, the better, right? Like the huh that I talked to you about is a trigger. If I can just make myself go, huh, I’ll remember that like I’m just trying to understand what happened and apply it to the next shot. And sometimes I will do a thing where I’ll be like, I’ll laugh at myself because I’ll just do something. And when I can laugh at myself on a course playing with other people, there’s science behind this. You immediately get more relaxed immediately.
So I’ll do something and I’ll just be like, that’s what I do in those situations, you know. And as soon as I do that, and ideally, by the way, I like to do it on the way to a shot, like, if I’m walking down a fairway and thinking that like my ball might have trickled off and it’s in the rough, I’ll sort of, when I get to the ball and see it in the rough, I will try to remind myself to laugh because, you know, the laughter just brings down the pressure, brings down the valence of the moment. And you just golf better when you’re chiller. You just do.
Josh Nichols
That’s right. Yeah. You had a quote in the book and perhaps that’s the ultimate lesson here. That golf stripped of its trappings, rituals, and material things is at its heart, a simple game of striking a ball and enjoying where it takes you. So why do golfers lose sight of that enjoyment? We’re talking about laughing. Yeah, that’s a great line. That’s why I took it down. So why do golfers lose sight of that enjoyment?
Gary Belsky
Boy, that’s a good line. I’m glad I wrote that. Lose sight of it? Wow. You keep asking these profound questions.
Josh Nichols
Quit stalling for time. Just answer. I’m just joking.
Gary Belsky
I mean, I want to start a little bit because, I mean, to be honest with you, like, the answer is in Buddhism or, you know, in Zen Buddhism. It’s like, because we do so many things to remove ourselves from the moment. You know, I was just telling my, we were at lunch, my partner and I were at a lunch, my business partner and I were at a lunch with some friends. And on the way back, I was telling him the story. There’s that, I saw a short film at a film festival yesterday in New York City called The Parable, and it was very, very well done. And the parable, the director was a guy named Jeremiah Dickey. It was a short film and it was an animated parable of a Zen Koan, I think it’s pronounced, know, K-O-A-N. Those like, and the story is basically a man, he’s being chased by a tiger, he outruns a tiger but goes over a cliff, he grabs onto a vine, there’s a tiger below, a tiger above, and the vine is being slowly about to break. He’s about to die in this Zen parable.
That’s basically everything going on in a golf game, weirdly enough in this analogy. And he’s about to die. He’s about to have to take a shot with a lot of people watching and a lot of money at stake. And all of a sudden on the side of the cliff, he notices a vine and there’s a strawberry. And he plucks the strawberry and bites into it and he thinks, that’s the most delicious strawberry I’ve ever tasted. And that’s the end of the parable. Right, because he was like tiger above, tiger below, he’s about to die, and he’s able in the moment to enjoy, right before he dies, to enjoy the taste of the most amazing strawberry he’s ever tasted. That’s what we’re looking for on the course.
In that line you quoted me, you’re just looking to think like, I’m just trying to have fun, because it’s a crazy, insane game that I’m trying to knock this ball hundreds and hundreds of yards with a weird-shaped stick in as few strokes as possible. And bizarrely, the first stroke that I hit, let’s just say, 225 reasonably straight, counts the same as the fourth stroke that I hit six inches. Like on the scorecard they count the same. That’s an insane game, but really fun. I should just keep in mind that’s what I’m trying to do. That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m trying to do it with the spirit of guys who did it 600 years ago just because they had nothing else to do or they were bored.
The reason why it’s hard to do is because life just throws tigers and vines and cliffs at you. And we throw them at ourselves and our brains. You were talking to an evolutionary biologist, I think you might’ve known this because I’m sure they sent you my biography. I have a side business where I give speeches and I lecture about the psychology of decision-making and, you know, that intersects a little bit with the world of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. And basically what you’re describing is what people call the excess brain capacity problem, which is the reason why we are at the top of the food chain on planet Earth is because we learned how to eat meat and then we learned how to make fire and the fire allowed us to eat more meat and our brains got really big and these big brains allowed us to solve things that other animals could not solve. The problem is we don’t need our brains these days for so much of survival as we did back then and so we have all of this excess brain capacity.
And the happier people are the ones who figure out what to do with it in calm and peaceful ways. And the unhappy people and the problematic golfers are the ones that don’t know what to do with that excess brain capacity. And they just start thinking unhelpful thoughts. Those unhelpful thoughts can come in a marriage, they can come in a friendship, they can come in a job, they can come in investing, they can come in anything and they can really come on the golf course.
Those unhelpful thoughts, right? Just think of how many places in your life that you just had these intrusive thoughts because your brain’s got the time to conjure them up and it’s like, that didn’t help me at all. That just in fact makes my life more difficult, but it’s hard not to. I’ll be honest with you, for a while the working title of the book was how playing alone can improve your life. Like, because I find the solo golf experience helpful in the same way I find yoga helpful. You know, I talk about yoga off the mat, right? I don’t know if you do yoga, there are principles of yoga that if you can remember them at work or wherever the case may be, they help you be happier and better and more relaxed. The same is true of solo golf. If you can take solo golf off the course and just sort of remember, like, I’m just trying to knock a ball down the fairway. I’m just trying to have a couple of swings that just feel like they are natural. I’m just trying to recollect that feeling where my body was loose and not tight. That can help you in a contract negotiation. That can help you in a fight with your husband or your wife. It can help you in so many ways. It’s a meditative practice.
I think that’s why it resonated with you, because you think about these things, right? And golf gets no better than when it becomes a meditative practice, when it’s just flow, when it’s just, and by the way, I’m sure you’ve had this experience. Sometimes, you know, on my best days at golf, and I’ve had some good ones, I’m working at it. I’m grinding it, playing well. Sometimes, you know, even grinding it mindfulness, if that makes any sense. Sometimes you play with people and you’re just, you watch them and you’re like, they are playing a game with which I am not familiar because they are not thinking at all. They’re just like, somehow they line it up naturally well. Somehow the arms are hanging from their shoulders naturally well. And you watch them and you’re just like, it’s almost like watching somebody paint or watching somebody play chess in a way that you understand, but you really don’t understand how you can think 11 moves ahead.
It’s like watching a master at work and you’re just like, I aspire to that. But it’s funny, I play better when I play with people like that because all that does is calm me. If I play with fellow grinders who are better than me, it can intimidate me. If I play with somebody who’s better than me where it’s just clearly a natural, easy experience, that just calms me down because I’m like, that’s what I want to be. Give me one of those.
And so, you know, I think the answer to the question is the reason why it’s hard for people to just remember what they’re doing is because our brains are too big. We’ve got too much time on our hands.
Josh Nichols
Is that enjoyment perspective, that mindfulness, that kind of zen-like state, do you think that is… because you know you watch pro golfers and you hear the way they talk and it sounds 99% of the time like enjoying is not part of the factor right? They might say that was fun out there, I really enjoyed the grind, I enjoyed the difficulty of the competition, enjoyed the discomfort. So does the kind of, this should be a blissfully enjoyable activity. Is that a false expectation? But also does that clash with kind of competitiveness and improving at golf?
Gary Belsky
Well, I think when you talk about professional golfers, it’s a weird. It’s not really analogous to the experience that you and I have mostly because professional golfers are really professional compartmentalizers.
You know, I always explain to people, I worked at ESPN for 14 years, I always explain to people that like, I’ll give you an example in a second, but rare is the person who is succeeding at a professional athletic level who was the best athlete born in that year, right? Like Michael Jordan, I think he might be my age, let’s just say he’s 65 and he was born in 1961. Michael Jordan was not the, you know, he was arguably the best athlete born in that year in terms of professional success, but he wasn’t the best athlete from the physical specimen point of view, but he got to where he was because he was able to marshal world-class athleticism with a world-class athletic brain, right?
So most people are not, you know, necessarily golf. So many people who don’t succeed at the highest levels of golf are better ball strikers or have better hip turn or better swing path than the professional golfers, you know, than Jim Furyk, right? Not to pick on Jim Furyk just because he had that unusual swing. But what these guys are able to do, they are grinding in so many ways, correct, but not when they’re over the ball. When those guys are over the ball, they are, their minds are empty. When they go into their backswing, they’re not thinking. If they are, something usually goes wrong.
They’re professional compartmentalizers because they are grinding. So asking about is it, it’s hard because they’re trying to make money from it and they’re trying to make a living from it and they’re super competitive. But the actual experience of golf, meaning the golf swing, which is all golf is, is a golf swing. That’s all you do. You play 18 rounds and you have about 120 seconds of golf. If you play 18 rounds. And a lot of walking and a lot of thinking and about 120 seconds of golf. People always talk about, you know, there’s only 11 minutes of football in an hour long game. I’ll tell you where there’s not a lot of the sport. There’s not a lot of golf in golf, but for those 120 seconds, you know, 72 shots, roughly the amount of times to take those shots is let’s just say two or three seconds. They are at peace. They have to be. You can’t do what they do without it. And the rest of it is a grind.
And so I think it’s just that. And for the rest of us, it’s trying to get to that level where whatever else is going on in that swing moment, we’re just not thinking about anything. And then when you’re done with it and you know that feeling, by the way, you know what I’m talking about, because that’s what a golf shot is. You take a shot and you’re like, I know, I don’t have to put my head up. That ball is exactly where I intended it to go. And if it’s not, I don’t care. Because that’s how it’s supposed to feel, right? You have those. If I have a good run, I have 10 or 12 of those a day, forget about what the outcome is. I’m just like, yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to feel like. It feels like that most of the time for them, but that’s what we’re all aiming for. And so the grind is the setup. The grind is everything else. And the enjoyment, the more you can make the walk between shots less about beating yourself up and more about observing and more about being mindful, the more that becomes joyful too. That’s what I think we’re all striving for.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, and that’s really hard and I know it’s not fair to, you know, the thousands of people listening to this are not pro golfers so that’s a huge mistake that we as amateur golfers do is either aspire or compare ourselves to pro golfers, so it’s not a fair yeah.
Gary Belsky
You know, the sport teases us. It allows us to. It allows us to think we could actually do that.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, right. Yeah, because.
Gary Belsky
You know, I’ve been up close and personal at football games, at basketball, you know, professional. Like I played hockey in college for a little bit. Like, there’s never a moment when I’m watching an NFL game that I think like, yeah, I could have done that or I could do that. You know, sometimes you’re looking at golf and you’re like, why can’t I do that? I should be able to do that exact thing. That’s why golf is such a tease.
Oh, by the way, the thing I was going to tell you was I believe that LeBron James might very well have been the single greatest athlete born in America the year he was born. And in fact, he’s having a career that suggests that he is the single greatest athlete of his age in America. Right. So once in a while, I think both things come together. And also I’ve met him. He is extraordinarily bright and really knows how to put the psychological with the physical. But almost every professional athlete is smarter than we understand because they’ve been able to meld the psychology of the game with the physicality of the game because they are hardly ever the best athletes of their age cohort. They are just the ones that marshaled world-class athleticism with world-class psychology.
Josh Nichols
That’s so so well said and on the kind of margins between us and pro golfers and we shouldn’t be comparing. I’ve never seen it laid out like this. This is so cool. Well, it’s the one where you say if you average 73, okay, okay. Yes.
Gary Belsky
You want me to tell it? I know what you’re talking about. Yeah. Should I tell it? It was told to me when Tiger Woods was at his peak. And it’s a little bit of a trick, but it’s fantastic. I try to explain to people kind of the, you know, the one way to explain to people the margin of error in golf and how narrow it is, is that you can miss hit a ball by millimeters on your club and it could end up 75 yards in the opposite direction of where you were aiming.
The other way I explain it is to tell them about, you know, par on the course is 72, most courses. And I explained to them that if you average 73, this is what I learned in 2002, 2003. I said, if you average 73, you could be the most popular person at your municipal course or your country club. And if you just average one stroke better, 72, you can go to college for free. If you average one stroke better than that, you can make a living playing golf. 71. If you average 70, you can be a millionaire. If you average 69, just four strokes better than where we started, you can be a multimillionaire. And if you average 68, you’ll be the most famous person in the world. Five strokes better.
Because at the time, Tiger Woods was averaging 68, and he was arguably the most famous person in the world. And that’s how I try to explain to people, like, this game that sort of looks like everybody who plays it can kind of play it together, it’s razor thin, the differences, but they are sometimes unbreakable, those razor thin kind of barriers. The difference between somebody who averages 75 and somebody who averages 70 can be so insurmountable as to be laughable that we think somebody could ever fix it. Not always, but sometimes. And it’s like, that’s why golf is such a frustrating sport, such a glorious sport, such an unusual pastime, an endeavor, a hobby, a sport that requires so much mental agility is the word I’ll use because you can’t lose your head. You just have to use your head in a way that we’re not used to doing and it takes a lot of practice for 99% of us. And a lot of concentration at not thinking in a funny way.
That’s your whole premise. I understand why there’s a regular show in it, a regular podcast, because in math they would call it an asymptote. You can keep getting halfway closer to the wall and you’ll never reach the wall. You can just keep improving and you’ll never get to where you think you need to be. By the way, those pro golfers don’t ever get to where they think they need to be.
Josh Nichols
Yes, right. Yeah. Yeah, and with golf you can always count five shots probably. You could shoot a 60 and you could count five shots. But you aren’t a guy who averages 80 compared to a guy who averages 75. The guy who averages 80 could count five shots more than that any given round, but you’re not shooting five shots lower, right? So there’s a reason why that five shots is not there. And I like what you said that kind of professional compartmentalizers, know, we can all be really good at decision making. We can all be really good at practicing and we can all be really good at preparing with the best equipment, all these things. But if you can’t compartmentalize when it’s time, when the actual moment of truth happens, then all of that is still incredibly important, but all of it just doesn’t translate quite as well. That compartmentalization is truly what it’s all about.
And you did a quote, it’s not a matter of trying harder, but rather of disappearing into the act. So how, what does that mean in the first place, disappearing into the act? And how do we do that?
Gary Belsky
I think it’s about that self-consciousness that you alluded to earlier about the performance anxiety or the performativeness of the whole exercise. The more you just think about what you’re trying to achieve and rather than think about you achieving it, the more likely you are to disappear into the act. The more you’re just thinking like, I know what it’s supposed to feel like to flush a shot. I’m just gonna try to keep in mind those things or recall the memory of when I did it on a solo round or in a previous social round, the more you can make it about the shot and not about you making the shot is how you disappear into it. Because you’re basically forgetting other people. And if you start forgetting other people, eventually you get to yourself and you forget yourself too. And that’s really ultimately the goal.
And then you hit a ball and you’re like, I did that. That felt perfect. Huh. And then you walk to the next shot and you hope like, I should just keep this up. This is a good vibe. And if you can do that, you can just do that easier when you’re not having to watch somebody else’s ball or do golf chatter or help somebody find a ball or whatever the case may be. By the way, again, I love playing with other people. But there’s something about playing solo golf that makes you relax when it works and it works most of the time.
You know, and oftentimes you end up playing solo golf sometimes in bad weather, sometimes on bad courses, sometimes with borrowed equipment. And inevitably you’re just, you get taken to the essence of the game and everything else drops away. And that’s always what you’re trying to do.
Josh Nichols
I love that. Okay, so this book Solo Golf, when I first got it in the mail, thank you for sending it to me. This is awesome. I did. Because I’m a VIP, of course. But when I first got it, I thought, okay, this is kind of like a nice, you know, coffee table book with cool pictures and you know, some quips in it. And this book is chock full of deep psychology and yeah it has practical stuff of like here’s how to play a round of solo golf because it’s not as easy as you would think but it’s just like it’s full of really good psychology.
Gary Belsky
Yes, I want to. Yes, so it’s funny you mentioned that because I’m very proud of the look of the book. Workman Publishing did a really good job and it’s probably about 15,000 or 20,000 words total. We didn’t want to overwhelm people and it’s a quick read. But I wanted to make it so that reading it and leafing through it would give you the feeling that you get when you play solo golf.
So I tried to make the writing of it, you know, sort of smooth, but also have a lot of information in it. It sounds like, at least for you, that that worked. And it’s funny, earlier you mentioned the pictures. You know, golf books all have a certain look, because, you know, beautiful pictures of holes and beautiful pictures of trees. And so this needed to look like a golf book, because people, the first time they pick up a book, they thumb through it. It needed to look like an authentic golf book, but I didn’t want it to look like every other golf book. So a lot of the pictures were very carefully chosen, you know, these like, tracks in the sand, the close up of a dirty ball, the ball washer. I wanted to make it about the, there is a solitude and an isolation in there that we wanted to make it feel like a real golf book visually, but feel like a solo golf book. And there’s never been a book like this before. And so I really think the publishers hit it on the nail because we wanted to give you the feeling of playing solo golf when you read the book.
And I hope we did because I hope it makes people, you know, golf course superintendents or owners won’t like this, but I hope it makes more people try a solo round. It’s funny since I started to talk about this people are coming out of the woodwork telling me that they play solo golf and they’re like, I never knew anybody else does this. I try to do this once or twice a week where I just go and just play five holes by myself, or they’ll tell me these stories and I’m like, yeah, I know because if you discover it, and I discovered it by accident, I tell the story how in the book, if you discover it, you go like, why aren’t I doing this more often?
And again, I love playing with friends, but there’s something about this that just is restorative. It makes you feel better regardless of what your score was. And by the way, that isn’t always the case with golf. Sometimes you have a great game of golf and you feel great. And sometimes you have a bad game of golf and you still feel great. But a lot of times if you don’t have the game of golf you want, you’re kind of annoyed for the rest of the day. And so I’ve never been annoyed after a solo round. Never. Just always in a good mood.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, right. Because of that, huh. That curiosity, that self-exploration, that self-acceptance. Yeah, relaxed.
Gary Belsky
I’m just relaxed. I just did this thing that people have been doing for hundreds of years and I did it in a beautiful place with beautiful sounds, with a little bit of time to think, with a little bit of time not to think. Right? Like, I’m like anybody else. I’m walking through an airport, I’m walking to work, I check my phone. I’m never tempted to check my phone when I’m playing solo golf. Just not. I hit a ball, I walk to the next ball, I look around, I’m thinking, I’m not thinking. It’s funny, like I only realized this on this call, like I never check my phone when I’m playing solo golf. Just don’t. And you know, that’s how you know you’re in a flow state.
Josh Nichols
No desire. Yeah, no desire to, right? You’re purely present and you want to be purely present, right? You’re not looking for an escape. This is your escape. This is where you want to be.
Gary Belsky
Yeah. Josh, I’m sure your regular listeners know this, how long have you been doing this podcast? I’m a journalist, so at heart, is it okay if I ask you questions?
Josh Nichols
Of course, yes, please, yeah, early 2019.
Gary Belsky
How long you been doing it? What prompted you to start doing it?
Josh Nichols
A lot of this kind of self-exploration thing, I wanted to learn more about the mental game, and this was… I started out as just a solo thing, it’s funny, I started out as a solo, just topical, let’s talk about self-awareness, let’s talk about confidence and whatnot, but I wanted to kind of force myself to have to learn about these different things with the mental game. Out of a, I felt like I got really good at golf through being good mentally, but I didn’t really have an understanding of why or what specifically changed about my golf game mentally speaking. So I wanted to learn and pair knowledge with experience. And this podcast has kind of been that. And now I’ve been talking to a lot of people who know way more about these things than me, like yourself, and I’m further pairing knowledge with experience, hopefully helping listeners.
Gary Belsky
Well, that makes me want to ask you a question, which is now with the benefit of all the knowledge that you’ve accumulated, when you look back at your game and realized that you improved and the… What do you think you figured out retroactively, even if you didn’t know you were figuring it out at the time?
Josh Nichols
Yeah. The number one thing was acceptance. It was pre-acceptance of a mistake. Really. It was like, anything can happen today and I will be okay. I had the feeling back then, and out of a cacophony of things of practicing well, having a good instructor, having met my then girlfriend, now wife, so my pie of my life got more balanced out, which allowed for golf can be bad and I’m okay. But I’ve learned since then the kind of mechanisms of acceptance and the different parts of the brain that are associated with this sort of thing. I’ve, looking back, I realize no wonder that was such a powerful mental state for me.
I was able to be totally present on the golf course and not worry about past shots because they didn’t matter. It’s been so cool to be able to look back and say, okay, it was not a fluke. It wasn’t just because I had a bunch of time to practice. There were real psychological things happening that are real things that anybody can do.
Gary Belsky
Yeah, God, it’s so interesting that, how funny is that that acceptance is such a, there’s a, until you understand it it just feels like the funniest thing that somebody would tell you like the way you get better in a sport is to accept your mistakes. Because that sounds almost counterintuitive to sort of improvement and so it’s funny because accept mistakes, accept weaknesses, accept. I still play in a pretty competitive, like hard touch football game. And I’m old. I mean, most of the guys who are playing are in their 20s, 30s, 40s. I’m in my 60s and because I’ve never stopped, I wrote about this for the Times about eight or nine years ago in my mid 50s when I thought I was gonna stop playing football soon and I still haven’t.
And I wrote about it at the time and it was really true that part of the success in keeping playing was keeping playing because if you keep falling down your bones stay strong. But it was also recognizing that like I’m not the player I was when I was 15 or 25 or 35 and being okay with that, being okay with being able to do different things on the field than I used to, being okay with doing the things that I’m still doing on the field not as well. And in accepting who I was, I was able to sort of lean into the things that I was still good at.
Like I play when I’m not blocking, because I’m a big guy, 6’1″, 215. When I’m not blocking, I play quarterback and I play reasonably decently still, but mostly because like I don’t try to run, I don’t try to get out of the way of rushers. I try to get rid of the ball fast because I’m a good decision maker. I can read the field quickly because God knows I’ve been reading it for 55 years. That’s an advantage I have over 22 year olds or 25 year olds or 30 year olds.
Sometimes I still don’t read it fast enough, but in knowing and accepting that my legs are not what they used to be, that even my strength is not what it used to be, I can actually go, I know what I’m good at. I’m good at reading the field quickly and making a decision and letting go of the ball. By the way, sometimes I’m like, I see a deep pass, I’m good at accepting I can’t throw that deep anymore. And so I’ve got to look at my second or third read.
Basically what I’m saying is I can continue to play it at a reasonably good level for my age because I’ve accepted the parts of my game that I wouldn’t really want to admit when I was a 25 year old. I wouldn’t want to admit anything I couldn’t do. And so it’s interesting how important, I mean, when you said that, I was like, yeah, that’s really smart. That is a key that weirdly unlocks better performance. Acceptance of subpar performance. It’s funny how that works. It’s counterintuitive.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Yeah. I mean this Padraig Harrington quote, the biggest thing I learned from golf is embrace making a mistake. I mean that, that’s yes, that’s so, I mean I could not say it better. The biggest thing I have personally learned from golf that translates to life, but also that has translated to improvement in golf is I could make a mistake here and it will be okay and I likely will because golf is so hard. And I heard a Rory interview where he said he will draw up the thought of what’s the worst that can happen? What’s the worst case scenario here? I hit it in the trees. I have to punch out. I try to make par. Cool. I move on. The worst case scenario is not that I’m going to die, right?
I can, the worst case scenario isn’t great, but it’s not that bad. I’m okay. Even if the worst case scenario were to happen and the freedom that comes from that is massive because now you’re not going to play scared of the thing that you thought was scary right. When you actually look and can see clearly the worst that can happen here is blank, I hit it out of bounds, I have to re-tee and I have to hit another one. Okay that feels scary but if you actually realize okay that’s the worst case scenario, I’m not actually scared of that so I can swing more freely, which tends to allow the good shot to happen and not hit it where you were worried about hitting it in the first place.
Gary Belsky
Exactly. And I’ll go Rory one better or add on to what you were saying, which is that, when I’m doing consulting on decision-making or speaking on decision-making, I talk about this a lot, which is that people have one of the biggest influences in life is something called regret aversion, which is that oftentimes people aren’t afraid of the bad outcome. They’re afraid of feeling bad about an outcome, which is different. Right.
And so I often tell people, I try to never talk about my golf game because I’m not a good enough golfer that you should want to hear about it. But my best stories and my best feelings from golf are actually, I would say two to one where a third of them are lined up, tried to hit a great shot, hit a great shot. Two thirds of them are hit a bad shot, recovered from it.
I always tell people who are just afraid of making any kind of decision, any kind of mistake, I’d be like, have you lived a perfect life from a decision-making point of view? And of course they laugh. They’ll be like, no. And then I’ll say, can you think of one or two examples of something that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, but something really great came from it? It could be like, I didn’t get into the college I wanted to, but I went to this other college and that’s where I met my husband, or whatever. Life is decision trees and they can go in a million ways. So is golf.
So many times you hit a shot you don’t want to hit and if you can, huh, if you can just go like, huh, what happened there? And then you go and then you find yourself in the woods and you punch out and it turns out you play it perfectly and you end up not destroying the hole. Maybe you got a bogey but you thought triple bogey was in play or whatever. Maybe you parred it when you thought there was no way you weren’t gonna get away with anything less than double bogey because you recovered well. Like in some ways that’s often some of your best feelings on the course, how you rallied. Resilience. And it’s that acceptance, it also reminds you that yeah, some of the most fun I’m ever going to have in life is the resilience part of it. Nobody asked to be in a bad situation, but that’s the test. The test is like, what do I do when I screw up? And oftentimes if I find out that I can actually stay calm and just take the next shot, that’s pretty good. In fact, like that’s kind of what I want. That’s kind of what, you know, people wax all the time about how golf is a metaphor for life. It’s true when it comes to that. If you can learn how to accept your mistakes and punch out smartly in life, you will do very well, my friend.
Josh Nichols
The more mentally strong person is not the person who is only thinking positive thoughts all the time. It’s the person who can handle negative experiences, bad results, and be okay. Right? Resilience, to use your word. I’m a big believer in that. You asked me what I learned looking back retroactively. That’s it. So, Gary, this is amazing. I never know how these conversations are gonna go, but you brought the heat and I can see why. Well, I appreciate that. You’re an awesome guest. So, Solo Golf, when is it out?
Gary Belsky
Well, you’re a good interviewer. Comes out, the official date is May 5th, but of course people can go online and order it at any of their favorite booksellers. My name is Gary Belsky and the book is called Solo Golf, but if you put Solo Golf in. By the way, it’s so funny the way Amazon works. You know, there are these people, somebody, because it’s been listed since January, somebody has already come up with some like very small, clearly it looks to me like a very quickly put together book of like games to play when you’re playing solo golf. You know, because they’re hoping to like get people to buy that too. And in my book, I actually talk about things, you know, while you’re playing, ways to sort of experiment so that it’s a fun experience and you can have a lot of variety in it.
But I hope people will buy it. I hope people, I think people will enjoy it. I think it’s a good gift. And I think it’s a good gift to yourself because I think it really can just sort of put you in the right frame of mind to get into the right frame of mind, which is what we’re all trying to do.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, it’s so cool. Gary, thank you so much. This has been a true pleasure.
Gary Belsky
Thank you, Josh. Thanks for having me on.
