Some lessons from golf
It’s that time of the year, time to ease back on the golf outings, though I suspect “sweater golf” is in my near future—the chill won't keep me away.
This week, on a crisp, glorious morning, I joined my friends as two of them tried their hand for the first-time at a nearby nine-hole course, witnessing firsthand their discovery of both the quiet joys and maddening frustrations of the game. Thanks to my former FAA colleagues - who sent me off with a generous gift card to the Montgomery County courses - I have spent far more time on the fairways this year than usual. Walking those local loops has offered plenty of time for quiet reflection on golf and life. I want to share a few lessons from those deliberations.
The Vision 54 philosophy defined and popularized by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott is a good place to start bringing the Zen of golf into thinking about everyday issues. It is a way of looking at possibilities instead of limitations. The “54” in Vision 54 stands for the idea that somebody (don’t know who, don’t know when) can shoot a 54 on a course - the idea that if you can birdie each hole separately, then one day someone can string together a perfect round where those individual possibilities are gloriously combined in one round. Every golfer knows the frustrations, but it is the possibility of a birdie or better on the next hole that keeps us going back. In addition to the vision, their philosophy also emphasizes positive emotions and action. Their book, Every Shot Must Have a Purpose, is a great read (maybe even for non-golfers).
The book centers on the idea that better golf comes from improving yourself as a whole person, not just the mechanics of your swing. The way you approach the game matters a lot. One of their core tools is the Think Box/Play Box concept. They draw a boundary between planning and execution - between deliberation and action. The Think Box (they suggest standing behind the ball in an imaginary “box”) is where you survey the yardage, the slope, the lie, the wind and decide on what shot you are going to hit and how. You cross the decision line to the Play Box and hand control over to the motor system. Here there is only the target, rhythm and uninhibited athletic flow - you let the body execute what you had planned. No more replanning and indecision as you stand over the ball - easier said than done. But if you have spent the time formulating a plan, focusing on execution is key. If you execute perfectly and the results are not what you expected, you get feedback on the plan’s flaws.
You are not shooting for a score - you are responsible only for executing the shot directly in front of you. Strong echoes of Epictetus here. The score at the end of eighteen holes is an emergent property. You control only the current shot and it deserves your full attention - the past is behind you and the future remains unwritten.
The lie, the wind, the fact that you do not swing like a tour pro, are factors outside your control. Playing within your limitations is often dismissed as passive or uninspired. In reality, it is the highest form of strategic maturity. As the systems thinkers of The Limits to Growth realized, when a system tries to solve every localized friction by simply pushing harder against fixed constraints, it accelerates overshoot and collapse. Choosing a self-imposed restriction - laying up, taking your medicine, playing for the center of the green, is the deliberate decision you take in the Think Box. The hardest shot in golf is not a 220-yard carry over water into a tight pin; it’s the discipline required to punch-out back to the fairway when you’ve driven into the trees.
The temptation of that little gap in the trees, that “if I hit this low long iron shot just right…”, that is a failure of planning.
A huge number of large projects fail because they are built on the idea of a lot of little things going right.
To support that discipline, your practice must mirror the reality of the game. It cannot be an endless, mindless session on the driving range bashing through a bucket of balls; it must be intentional.
Consider the three-foot putt. In his prime, Tiger Woods turned this mundane, nerve-wracking shot into an exercise in high-reliability engineering. The tolerance for (putter head hitting the exact line) error at that range is ± 1.5o. In a four-year window from 2002 through 2005, spanning major championships and elite tour fields, Woods attempted 1,543 putts from inside three feet and missed only three—a conversion rate of 99.805% and an error rate of less than 0.2%. For an average amateur scoring in the low 90s, the make rate from exactly three feet is roughly 84%, meaning a missed putt on one out of every six attempts.
Woods’ performance was not an accident of raw talent. It was the output of an uncompromising, deliberate practice routine:
Two-Tee Gate: Driving two tees into the practice green just outside the putter’s heel and toe, three to four feet from the cup, providing instantaneous physical feedback against off-line paths or dynamic face-angle deviations.
Trail Hand Isolation: Stroking putts using only the right hand to feel the natural release of the putterhead and eliminate upper-body steering, alternating sets with his standard grip.
Visual Focus and alignment: Aligning a line drawn on the ball with the intended target to verify a true end-over-end roll, keeping his eyes anchored to the turf beneath the ball until well after impact..
The Reset-to-Zero Rule: Mandating a continuous run of 50 to 100 consecutive makes from three feet. Missing a single putt—even at number 99—reset the tally to zero, deliberately inducing the somatic stress of tournament conditions.
None of us can practice with the singular obsession of Tiger Woods, but his routine is a clear reminder that the appearance of effortless calm under pressure is the downstream product of deliberate preparation.
The extra time spent on the fairways this year has been a boon, and I managed to hit the personal goal I set for myself at the start of the season. More than that, the walks have reinforced the value of being methodical in the think box, relaxed in the play box, forgoing low-percentage heroics, and grounding practice in deliberate intention.
Here’s to focusing on what we can control—and to a few more crisp, sunny walks accompanied by friends along the fairways.