By Martin Park:-

What does it take to become an expert in any particular field of choice? Sports, music, entertainment, medicine, science, arts and of course, golf.

I have been researching what it takes to make expert level at a subject of my own choice, golf and golf coaching. What I have found in many excellent books is that there is a common theme running through all of them.

But first of all, who do we regard as an expert? The research has common findings that an expert is someone who simply excels and outperforms others in a particular field.

While I believe that every individual has unlimited potential, I don’t subscribe to the theory that people are born with “talent”. There’s certainly no evidence I can find to support this. According to Daniel Coyle the award winning author of ‘The Talent Code’, greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.

Coyle has highlighted the development of research of a protein in our brain called Myelin and how humans learn and then develop that skill through repeated firing of the neural circuits in our brain to coat it with this magnificent substance, which has been described as “broadband for the mind”.

Becoming an expert in anything, especially golf and golf coaching is a result of two factors and both are very much under our control: Knowledge and practice.

First we find the knowledge. Secondly we make sure we practice what we have learned and get those new skills automated in our white matter.

“Knowledge is experience…the rest is just information” – Albert Einstein.

Show me an expert in any area and you’ll find someone with a passionate, almost nerdy understanding of their own specialist area. Experts know more about their field than virtually anyone. And they love to talk about it, too. But how that expert comes to learn this knowledge is of great interest.

Dr Paul Schempp in his book “Performance Matters” highlights where this knowledge tree can be found.

1. Information Sources. Experts rely upon a great many sources for Information. Peers, books, formal education, experiences, conferences, clients, seminars, newspapers, and any other source of credible information receive regular review for useful information.
Picasso once said that good artists copy – great artists steal. If information is out there, it’s fine to steal it…if it helps you become an expert.

2. Asking Questions. Experts tend to ask more questions of their colleagues, clients, employees and even those outside their domain. In this way, experts locate information and perspectives that broaden their understanding, offer new insights, and provide alternatives–all of which allow them to make more informed decisions. Experts are also willing to question the status quo in an effort to find better solutions for recurring problems.

3. Listening. Stand in a room full of people, and look for those who talk less and listen more. These are the individuals who will walk out of the room with greater knowledge. Experts listen. They listen because they believe that they have much to learn.

Research has found that those with less talent, believed they pretty much know all they need to know to perform well. With this belief, one seeks little, if any, new information.

If you’re a golf coach or a player with a thirst for improvement, you should recognise there is a vast body of knowledge out there waiting to be exploited. If you want to learn more, you need to reach out more. How many new areas can be found to research and learn new information and hear and debate new theories/opinions/developments?

The best I’ve found recently has to be Twitter, Facebook and the various golf blogs out there written by an erudite bunch of professionals from all around the world.

One coach hit the nail on the head in answer to the age old question of who was the best golf coach in the world. His answer was…”Combined, it’s hard to beat the twitter golf pros!” I think he may have a point. The knowledge bank there is incredible and information is shared daily.

What about the fear of failure? When you try a new skill and it does not work, is it failure? Not according to Schempp, or Daniel Coyle. Coyle states that it is essential that you make mistakes to help ‘myelinate’ the correct signals from the neurons. Repeated firing of the circuits is paramount to improved performance. Of course, it’s tricky learning anything new at first, but after continued practice through many frustrations, there is often a payoff at the end.

Myelin, according to Coyle’s research is universal and it doesn’t know if you’re using it to practice golf, or practice hitting the Eadd9 chord on a guitar. It is meritocratic. Circuits that get fired get insulated with myelin and the signal from brain to the muscles becomes stronger. The good news is that it works as a one way system. Once that skill you have learned becomes insulated, they become habits, which we all know, are hard to break!

“We are what we repeatedly do…Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit” Aristotle.

It also helps with age. In children, myelin develops rapidly as the brain is extraordinarily receptive to learning new skills. In fact, we are all receptive to learning new skills well up to around our 50s. It’s only late in life it becomes more difficult or time consuming, yet it is still possible with what Dr. Anders Ericsson, author of a fabulous book called ‘The Road to Excellence’, describes as deep practice, real practice and wide practice.

Schemp also stated; “An expert is constantly looking for improvement and new things to discover, failures and successes are scrutinised to discover the lessons they hold. What went wrong so we can make it right…and what went right so we can build on that in the future.”

These are the reactions experts hold to failure and success, respectively.

And of course, you can’t beat experience, can you?  Sir Francis Bacon, the famous English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer and author said “By far the best proof is experience.” Experience has no substitute for instructing because nothing is as meaningful to us as our own experience.
Experts are masters at extracting information from their experiences. By being objectively self-critical, and monitoring closely their performances, experts identify facets of their performance done well, and facets left wanting.

You can apply this to your golf students by measuring and monitoring their performances by what Lynn Marriot and Pia Nilsson of Vision54 and their book ‘The Game before the Game’ call ‘Maintenance Practice’ to automate existing skills and by ‘Preparation Practice’ to get you ready for what you may encounter.

In sports such as football and American Football, this is exactly what they do. They prepare for future encounters by gathering as much information they can and repeating a technique, set piece or playing pattern so that it becomes second nature. They call it Scrimmaging. Golfers need to do more of this instead of the classic range act of ‘scrape and hit’.

During my course with Pia and Lynn, the phrase that stuck in my head was this:

“Practice the game before the game and practice the game in ALL of its conditions”.

Much of their research is developed from these books. As great teachers, they have tapped into the knowledge banks of experts in different areas and applied it to golf instruction, making it holistic in its approach…leaving no stone unturned.

Pia and Lynn have often quoted the research of Dr. Anders Ericsson, a leading
scholar in the development of expertise. Ericsson found that it takes at least 10 years of
intense preparation and deliberate practice to acquire the skills, knowledge and
perspectives of an expert. It doesn’t matter if its golf, music, arts, science, physics, chemistry or learning to ski.

Ericsson also writes that three factors must be present for an experience to constitute purposeful practice.

1. Critical Skills. Performance level in golf depends largely upon the individual’s ability to perform essential skills in a graceful, competent, and effective manner. A coach’s knowledge helps them identify the skills needed to get results. And once identified, these skills are relentlessly and purposefully practiced. Real Practice, Deep Practice, Wide Practice.

2. Informative Feedback. This is the job of the coach. Without informative feedback, purposeful practice would soon take on the appearance of mere experience on the driving range. That practice needs automated…myelinated. Great word, isn’t it? Does your professional offer a supervised practice option on his teaching list? This for me would be part of shift in the way students learn golf and also how coaches teach it.

Informative feedback comes in two forms, and both are essential for improving skills:
a)    Feedback on technique.
The job of coach is not only to teach your student the ‘how to’, but also give positive and constructive feedback on the learned technique to provide information on the correctness of the skill performed. If the student is going in the right direction, they have had a good lesson.

b)   Feedback on performance.
Feedback on performance provides information on the level of success achieved when
performing the skill. What I tend to do is set a skills test to my students in various areas. At times, I do this in areas to identify a weakness, then we remedy the issue with some instruction…giving good feedback when things go well. And when they do go well, we set up a test to confirm what they have learned is showing an improvement.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

3. Repeat and Refine. The improvement of any skill is largely dependent upon the opportunity to repeatedly practice and refine. Improvement in skills is gradual, taking time to refine and ingrain the appropriate procedures until they become automatic. No one learns an effective golf technique in a single practice session. Repeated efforts, combined with informed feedback aimed at improved performance over a sustained period of time are what take one from beginner to winner.

Daniel Coyle likes to call it myelination. He also concurs with Ericsson’s theory.

The best way to ensure a new skill is automated is to have targeted, mistake focussed practice. Fire the circuit, attend to errors, fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option. It’s a biological requirement in learning anything new.

Coyle adds that passion and persistence are key ingredients of talent growth.

“Wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don’t love it, you’ll never work hard enough to be great,” he says.

In our ‘one shot wonder’ society and desire for a quick fix or hot tip, we often overlook this.

Becoming expert is not a birthright or destination. Becoming expert is a journey. Experts see themselves as a work in progress. With knowledge and practice becoming expert is within you.

However, the journey might be a little dull and mundane at times. Daniel Chambliss, author of a paper entitled “The Mundanity of Excellence” makes a powerful case that experts are so because they do all the ordinary things brilliantly. They make each practice session count, each repetition is detailed and they make small steps each day on the journey to the top. Those actions become automated over time becoming habitual, constant, second nature, or as Coyle puts it – Myelinated.

As Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Mary T. Meagher puts it, “People don’t know how ordinary success is.”

Martin Park – EGTF Master Teaching Professional
GCA European Clubmaker of the Year 2009
Park Golf Academy