#ICYMI - Golf’s 2018 Ryder Cup: Physics & Psychology at the Albatros

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Are you ready for the 2018 Ryder Cup? Hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly prepare for golf’s most exciting, and most intense, tournament alongside sports physicist John Eric Goff and performance psychologist Gregg Steinberg. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/golfs-2018-ryder-cup-physics-psychology-at-the-albatros/ Photo Credit: By Lionel Allorge [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or FAL], from Wikimedia Commons.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, we tee up another golf show for you. True, we may swing and miss, but Chuck and I aim to sink a hole-in-one at every hole. So let's be fair, if we do, you are not going to want to miss this, now are you?

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  No, you are not, especially when you hear that we're talking Ryder Cup golf, the biggest thing in the golfing universe by far, and knocking it straight down the fairway will be our very own sports mad professor Eric Goff, who'll be putting the course under close scrutiny and pulling out some hidden science for your review.

• 0:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, and once we have seen, if science can explain how to conquer the albatross at La National, we will be crawling inside of the brain of a Ryder Cup golfer. Of course, all of that with the help of performance psychologist Dr. Greg Steenbok.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  So, clean your balls!

• 1:02Gary O'Reilly?

  You and I, well, we're coming out swinging.

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  So, joining us first is physics professor Eric Goff. It's good to have you back, professor, how are you?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  I'm doing great, and Chuck, I grew up and heard plenty of golf ball jokes, so I'm anxious for this show.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Of course, you know, everybody who's familiar with this show knows that Professor Eric Goff is from Lynchburg University in Virginia and the author of Gold Medal Physics, so...

• 1:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Which we do believe was a stocking stuffer.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  It was.

• 1:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Last Christmas.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Last Christmas, that's right, and it will be again this Christmas because it's still in print, people.

• 1:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:41Gary O'Reilly?

  So, let's start, shall we, professor? Can you give us an overall idea of the kind of course the Ryder Cup players are going to be faced with this time round?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  So this golf course has a mixture of meadow and bent grass greens. And these are a little softer than the Bermuda greens that maybe some of us here in the warmer parts of the US play on. So the golf course, the fairways have a mixture of the bent and the rye and the fescue grasses. So these types of grasses are a little bit more helpful and when the climate's a little cooler. If you tried to use these grasses down around the beach areas or in the hotter parts of the US, they would require a lot of water, a lot of care and taking care of the golf courses. So they're expensive. So the Bermuda grass is what you see when you're in the hotter parts in the US.

• 2:33Chuck Nice?

  By the way, Bermuda grass just sounds like something I want to smoke so bad.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Not the rye grass?

• 2:41Gary O'Reilly?

  No. The interesting thing there is, Professor, with certain species of grass, it's rougher, it's smoother, it would then cause more friction unless it's cut very, very short.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  That's right. And you gotta love something like bent grass. I mean, bent grass, this is, you know, it's pure science. This is hybrid grass, hybrid materials, synthetics. These are really used in the putting surfaces. Something like rye grass, these grow better in the cold. You put the fescue grass near the green. So, I mean, these sciences really taken over the links and really improve the types of play that you can get on the golf course.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  Gosh, I tell you, Professor Eric Goff, there is nothing this guy does not know. He's the groundskeeper Willie of science. This is unbelievable.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you what, we here at the University of Lynchburg have a lot of good students who help me with some of these things. And I got Carter Olds, one of my students, he's a golf player on the team here. So we had a lot of fun breaking this course down.

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  So this course is basically designed to be a pain in the tuchus for the players, right? Is that the whole idea behind designing a course like this? Especially with all these different types of grass, which will, I would assume, affect the play of the ball? That's why you want these different type of grasses. And so is this to make it so that, you know, you're just throwing your clubs into the water? Is that the idea?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Well, I think the biggest issue for the players is going to be when they drive off the tees. The fairways are quite sloped. They're going to have to deal with some pretty difficult lies in the fairways. And sometimes they'll have the ball either a little bit above or below their feet when they're hitting their second shot. If they're firm, the ball should come to rest in a fairly flat spot. They're pretty average width, but you get a lot of the fairways that slope away from the center and towards the rough. So they're going to appear a little bit narrower than they really, you know, they're going to appear a little wider than they really are because if you miss a little left or right of center, you may have a chance of the ball rolling in the rough.

• 4:57Gary O'Reilly?

  See, so it then becomes target golf, does it not? Because you're looking at a particular spot on a fairway or a particular spot on the green. And then you're, and then I'm starting to ask myself, what kind of course does this suit? Does it suit the power hitters, the guy who drives it forever? Or is this the guy who's got a short game and can chip and putt and do all the little softs? Finess. Finess, yes, professor. Who's it going to suit?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  That's interesting you say that because the HNA Open to France has been played at this golf course the last, you know, several Julys. And the typical driving distance for the winner has been only around in the 290-yard range. So the players that we've got on our team, you know, the Dustin Jostons, the Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, I mean, these players are driving over 310 yards on average. So they might have a tendency to want to drop that down a little bit on this course.

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  They're going to have to kind of bridle themselves, take a little off the swing in order to play this course instead of just driving through and being a power hitter, huh?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  That's right. They might even want to try, you know, one of Tiger Woods' famous stingers, you know, the two iron low trajectory shot where you keep the ball really low on the fairway and when it bounces, you get a lot of roll after that bounce.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  A lot of forward motion bounce, yeah. Hey, speaking of teams, can you break that down? Because this is the way this is played, right? This is not like regular golf. This is the USA versus Europe and they actually pick teams and there's a captain and a whole deal, right?

• 6:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, they're going to be end up, what, 13 players on the team. You're going to have Jim Furyk, I believe, is our captain. And we've already picked eight players to play. And I believe Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker were picked sometime earlier this year, I think in February. So they're going to be picking a couple more, maybe four more before the play starts at the end of September. The players we have on our team are significantly more accomplished. I will say that the younger, the rookies you're going to see on the European team, they actually, looking up the stats, have slightly better driving percentages.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  So it's going to be interesting to see whether the Europeans are going to be able to keep the ball in the fairway a little bit better, or whether these much more experienced and more accomplished players on the US side are going to be able to use that experience to their advantage.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Speaking of keeping the ball in the fairway, can you break down, from a physics standpoint, the mechanics of hitting a ball straight with a golf club? What is necessary to do that? And what makes one slice left or right?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Well, what makes it slice left or right is if I hit it. If you're going to hit it straight down the fairway, you don't want to be filming me hitting a golf ball. But I'll tell you what, from the physics point of view, you're going to be using a, you know, say, you know, your driver's going to be very flat on the face, and it's going to have very little on the groove action. And the ball's going to be driven with a low trajectory. So only like 10 to 20 degrees off the horizontal. But the spin imparted to the ball, it's going to have some backspin. And if you're aiming for the ball to have a low trajectory, that backspin may only have something like, you know, 2,000 or 3,000

• 8:24Speaker 02

  RPMs on the ball. Now, just to put that into a little context, you know, the football, nice spiral that's thrown on Sundays coming up soon here, you're going to have about 600 RPMs. So these balls are spinning maybe four or five times faster than a football. You know, helicopter blades, maybe you're going to be spinning the golf ball about six or seven times faster than helicopter blades. So even just a normal shot's going to have a lot of spin. And what's amazing about the golf athletes today...

• 8:57Speaker 02

  They didn't just take, you know, Tiger Woods and think, oh, I gotta have to bulk up and get strength. They are really improving their flexibility. You know, a lot of these athletes are going into yoga classes. They're doing stretching every day. And the reason is when you go to drive that ball off the tee for distance, and I'm talking, you know, 310-plus yard averages, you need to get that that club back very far and store a great deal of potential energy in your tendons that are stretched, pulling your arms up, and the wrists are even gonna start turning. I mean, you watch Dustin Johnson hit a golf ball. I mean, his wrists are really cracked at the top of his swing, and he's storing a lot of energy. So when you come through and strike that ball, you want to deliver

• 9:42Speaker 02

  that club head, which is gonna be coming into that ball at, you want to guess the club head speeds?

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's a good, that's a good guess. We can, but we're probably gonna be nowhere near accurate. Let me just think. I'm just trying to get it in my mind, because you can't even see it when the guys swing it. So I'm gonna say 220 miles an hour.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Um, actually, it's a little bit lower than that. It's more like an average of about 120 miles an hour.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Aw, crap. I'm so far off. It's like, it's a little bit lower than that. In other words, Chuck, in another city.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  No, you were, you were good on the kilometer per hour guess.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's what it is. Way to clean it up for me. I meant 220 kilometers.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  So if you want to look at the ball speed coming off, the ball's gonna be springing off. You know, you got this smash factor that's gonna be bigger than one, where you take the ball speed over the club head speed. And for a really top-flight golfer, you know, this is gonna be about a one and a half factor. So they can get speeds upwards in the 185 mile an hour range. Um, average speeds tend to be around 180 mile an hour coming off the, uh, the driver. And to put that into a little bit of context, I mean, uh, we had a Indy 500 race this year that was running. The winning time was about three hours, I think. So you're looking at about 167 mile an hour average in an Indy car, and this golf ball is gonna just fly right past it.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  Not bad.

• 11:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Put it into context.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool, man. That's, that's really kinda cool. Hey, let me ask you this. So when you go back in time, right, and you take these old, like, they used to call them woods because it was actually wood.

• 11:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay. What kinda speed would a ball get then? I mean, what, what's the difference in play now between, like,

• 11:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Like a wooden tennis racket.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  Like a wooden tennis racket and a, and a carbon fiber, uh, tennis racket. What's the difference between, like, these composite clubs or drivers that they're using now, uh, and like the old real woods back in the day?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Well, the materials now are so much better and the, the clubs are actually made much more aerodynamic. In fact, you look at some of the, the new technology, I'm thinking about like the, the Ping G thirty, uh, driver. They now have these turbulators on them. So when we talked about, uh, soccer balls before, or if we talk about golf balls with the dimples, uh, you start roughening up the surface of a ball and you can actually reduce the air drag on it. And they've done this with golf club heads. They, they will put some kind of roughening around the head of the golf club so that when it comes down toward the ball, it's, uh, actually past the, what Chuck loves is the drag crisis. You can actually move it

• 12:32Speaker 02

  past laminar flow into turbulent flow and with these turbulators. And there's some really neat, uh, online images that Ping has made from wind tunnels that show this. So this technology just dwarfs anything that happened back with the woods. I mean, you know, they, they were not driving anywhere close to, you know, a ball off the tee at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. I mean, you're looking at maybe two thirds of that speed.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Turbulator, honey, that's what they call me when I'm wearing my thigh-high heels.

• 12:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm. Okay.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Turbulator.

• 13:01Gary O'Reilly?

  You had to mention drag crisis, professor. He's off. We may not get him back for about another hour. The thing is, um, when you're, when you've got this sort of velocity from club face to ball. Is the ball going through any deformation? Or does it retain its shape as it's moving?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Oh, there's a good reason you call it a smash factor. The golf ball itself gets smashed considerably. If you look at high-speed video that's taken of these collisions, that golf ball gets smushed up against the club face when it is hit. And then there's a springiness that will come back out. So when you stored, like, in a spring, you've stored a bunch of energy into that ball's compression. And when it bounces back off like a trampoline, that's why you can get the ball bouncing off at a speed greater than a club head speed.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that is...

• 13:54Gary O'Reilly?

  What sort of timeframe are we talking about? For a ball getting smashed and then returning to its original shape?

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  And how much compression are you seeing there? How much deformation are you seeing? I mean, I would say percentage-wise, can you give us like... So think of the ball as a perfect sphere. What would it kind of end up looking like when it makes contact?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  I mean, it will look like you've got a half, you know, a hemisphere on the ball with the bottoms of hemisphere that's smushed against the ball. I mean, it will look like, you know, the top of a bald head or something. I mean, it's just completely smashed. And then, yeah, the, you know, the dimples and stuff, all those things will spread out. It's quite a violent collision.

• 14:38Gary O'Reilly?

  And if you hold a golf ball in your hand and tried to squeeze it? No chance?

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  Nothing.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Get it, forget it.

• 14:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, but you can, just with the use of a golf club, you basically take that golf ball out.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 14:52Gary O'Reilly?

  I can see you playing golf with a picture of someone on a golf ball.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely. I just want to see this in high-speed slow-mo. Like, I can't believe I haven't seen this yet. Like, the actual thing, high-speed slow motion.

• 15:06Gary O'Reilly?

  So, let's take a quick break. When we come back, more from our super sportsman professor Eric Goff, analysing the Ryder Cup course for 2018. So don't go away.

• 15:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. This of course is our 2018 Ryder Cup special. And for your pleasure, we have sports mad professor Eric Goff analysing this year's Ryder Cup course and the physics and science that lie within. Going back to the course itself, Professor, what I've seen is it's built a little bit like a links course with lots of undulations and little areas where you can get trapped. And I think the final four or five holes have an awful lot of water around them. And I'm guessing that's probably where the excitement will take place for the fans.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there's what's the hole? There's one hole that actually has just a little island. It's actually surrounded by water with a little bridge to walk over it.

• 16:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Tell me there's sharks in the water.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  I mean, the 18th hole has certainly got a lot of water around it. You know, that final hole. But yeah, you have a lot of water traps in these in the links. The entire course itself was definitely built with links course in mind. It's got kind of a almost a stadium feel where the edges of the golf course are built up a little bit. And you definitely have a lot of undulation. You've got these different types of grasses that are in the rough. The intermediate rough that's right off the fairways is only about two inches tall. But the greens, when you get near the greens, some of that rough gets a little less than four inches tall. So the play near the greens is going to be really interesting

• 16:55Speaker 02

  because, you know, you're going to have to be very accurate when you're driving down the course off the tee. And then it's that second shot, you know, that lead up to the tee where the green is, it's going to be really important to see where the players decide to play it. Because there are some of these holes that, you know, if you just miss a little short, you're going to be in the water. If you play the spin wrong, you're going to be rolling back into some pretty tall grass. So those lead up shots to the greens are going to be critical.

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  So we talked to you once about baseball and humidity.

• 17:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  And baseball and in the rain and how so how does that play when it comes to golf? Like humidity, cool weather and wet like actual a wet atmosphere or actual precipitation? What does that do to the golf ball?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  So humidity is, it's counterintuitive, but it actually lowers the, uh, the mass density of the air. Uh, the ball can actually fly a little bit farther in humid air compared to cold air, cold, dry air. So the, you know, the baseballs in an October World Series where it's cold, don't fly quite as far as maybe in July or August when, you know, it's, it's steaming hot summer and humid. Uh, the players, however, are gonna notice a difference if it's humid. So there's gonna be a physiological effect as well. Um, but one thing to note on a lot of the holes for this particular course, you don't have a lot of, uh, tree cover and that leads to some wind conditions. And if you've watched

• 18:29Speaker 02

  some of the, the highlights from the, uh, from that HNA Open to France, it's played in July. I mean, you could see the wind blowing and whipping the, the rough and the grass and even hear it on some of the, the course mics. You could hear the wind blowing.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  And how does crosswind, okay, so we had the Magnus effect. Is the, which, you know, you can explain what the Magnus's effect is so that I don't look stupid when I explain it. Uh, but can you talk about wind shear against the Magnus effect? And so one, so after you explain the Magnus effect, can you talk about wind shear against the Magnus effect? What does that do?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  So when the golf ball is hit off the tee, uh, or even, you know, if you're trying to lay up a, a perfect shot onto the green and you're gonna slice the golf club down on the ball and try to induce a lot of backspin, uh, that backspin is gonna create a, it's gonna have an upward component of a force that we, you know, refer to as the Magnus effect, the Magnus force. When you have wind blowing over the ball, then of course that's gonna be pushing the ball, perhaps, you know, if you have a crosswind, it's gonna be pushing it sideways. So you're gonna have the, uh, effect like, you know, you stick your hand out the window of a car and you could feel the wind pushing your hand back. I mean, it's gonna be an added push on the ball. It's gonna be, uh, in the direction of the wind.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So the players are definitely gonna have to take note of, you know, the wind and which of the holes are gonna be covered with the trees and which ones are not.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  And can you render the wind ineffective? Like for instance, when you watch football on a windy day in the stadium, right? You'll see quarterbacks, they're like, oh, he's throwing hard. Like, he's throwing hard because it's windy and he doesn't want the flight path of the ball to be affected by the fact that it's windy. So the wind really has no effect on, on, on the pass. Can you do that with a golf ball a- and the wind?

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Well, certainly if the players notice that they've got a headwind, I mean, if the, if the wind's blowing right at them, they may try a little extra oomph on those tee shots. They may try to get a little more on the ball, knowing that they're going to meet up with a little bit of extra air resistance. If they feel a tailwind, they're going to be a little bit more careful. They don't want to overdrive the, the shot, try to, you know, keep it in the middle of the fairway. So that, I mean, they're definitely noticing the wind when they get, you know, to the tee at a given hole. And they're certainly going to notice if they have a crosswind, they're going to have to play a little bit left or right to compensate for that crosswind.

• 21:01Chuck Nice?

  This game is so hard. Why would anybody play it?

• 21:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Thinking about that, Professor, if you've got an exposed area, as it's with no tree lines, would it be better to keep the shots lower rather than to belt them up into the sky where it's likely to be more windy?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Sure. I- if you can play the ball low, then, you know, you're going to keep this, the, the, the drive a lot closer to the ground. And when you get that nice bounce, uh, you're going to get a pretty good roll. Now, the wind, of course, when they're going to be playing toward the, the putting greens, that's going to be critical because if they really want the ball to, you know, to drop without a lot of, uh, roll, they may play for a loftier shot. So, you know, they may get a pitching wedge or, you know, a, a club like that where they're going to get a lot of loft and a lot of spin. And, you know, some of these greens are, are pretty slick. I mean, the, the, the greens at this particular golf course,

• 21:58Speaker 02

  uh, they, they came in at 10 feet, 6 inches using that step meter. And that is a fairly fast green for a pro. So, uh, if they're going to be wanting to avoid a long roll on the ball, they may have to play it up into the wind a little bit.

• 22:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Extra because you you remember the skyhook.

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:18Gary O'Reilly?

  And it comes down vertically because he's he's creating a larger target.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:23Gary O'Reilly?

  If you to if you would have just hit it low, the chance of as a professor hitting the green and scooting off or overshooting is there. But if you go for the elevated shot and drop it down.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  Let it drop on the green.

• 22:34Gary O'Reilly?

  You're gonna put yourself in a position where you're fighting a crosswind.

• 22:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:38Gary O'Reilly?

  So it just depends. And this is how, I mean, what sort of calculations are players gonna go through to work this out?

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  You know what they need? They need the professor on the side right there instead of a caddy, just working out the calculations for what the what arc they need to put on the ball.

• 22:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Imagine the caddy sitting there with a calculator and a slide rule and all sorts of different things just to try and get them a chance of a decent shot.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  I have a feeling if I start yapping Magnus effect, I'm gonna have a five iron up the side of my head. I mean.

• 23:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, it depends if you say it in French or not.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, they're gonna be focused on, you know, some of those dog legs that they're gonna see. I mean, you got a lot of these links that are not gonna be straight. They're gonna have to play into a left or right turn when they get about two thirds of the way down the the hole. So, I mean, they're gonna have to be very careful where they lay up that first shot and playing for that second. I mean, I I look at the course and, you know, look at all the holes and the and it looks like what I was able to determine holes four and seventeen, I would say, are probably the the toughest on the the the course. I'm just thinking of from a physics point of view. I mean, the the fourth hole has a kind of a right to left jog in it. It's four hundred and eighty six yards.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  You you you're gonna have all this undulation that's in the in the putting green. You're gonna have the grass to contend with. You've got some traps. You get down into a hole like seventeen and you're looking at a par four that's a pretty long four hundred and eighty yards. And it's got a. Very, very steep drop off if you miss the green in one particular spot. So it's a very creative hole. If you're a little bit wide, you could get in some pretty tall grass. You get a little bit left, you're going to find yourself down in this hole. So it's got some interesting challenges in it that I think it's going to be fun to watch.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, cool. I'm looking forward to hearing a lot of curse words on 2017.

• 24:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, once again, thank you so much for your time. And I never fail to be impressed with your range of sporting knowledge.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Amazing.

• 24:53Gary O'Reilly?

  So we'll take another break and coming up next, we'll be chatting with performance psychologist, Dr. Greg Steenberg and crawling, as I said at the top of the show, inside the mind of a Ryder Cup superstar.

• 25:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science and today, as you are well aware, we are focusing on golf and in particular, the 2018 Ryder Cup, which will take place at the delightfully named concourse called the Albatros at Le National, just southwest of Paris in front.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Hanging around my neck.

• 25:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, isn't it just right? So to help us with the psychology of golf, and there's nothing goes on in the body without the brain first letting your body know what to do, we have Dr. Greg Steenberg. Now, this might take a second or two, so bear with me. Hailed by Golf Digest as one of the world's best performance psychologists.

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:47Gary O'Reilly?

  That's good.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  That's a good thing.

• 25:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Author of The Mental Rules of Golf.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 25:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, weekly guest on the Talk of the Tour on the PGA Tour Radio Network on Sirius XM. Yes, we like them, they're nice. And he writes a weekly mental game column.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  Very nice.

• 26:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, on that on the PGA Tour dot com. So that's the brief outline of Dr. Greg Steenberg. Greg, welcome to the show, sir.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  When you, when you look at something like the Ryder Cup and you, and you look at the players, what do you think is the most important thing to do mentally to prepare for and play in a tournament such as this?

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Well, most of the players will tell you that the Ryder Cup is the most pressure-packed situation there is all, the two years that they play it, every two years, even more than a major. And you're thinking, how could that be? Because they're not winning money, they're ultimately winning the trophy. But I think it's because they're playing in a team event, and they know if they don't play well, they're gonna not only let down their country, they're gonna let down their teammates. And so, the preparation has to come with this, and that is knowing that you're gonna feel immense pressure, and knowing you're gonna play on a team, and so, the mental, let's say, mental preparation is a little bit different than the other tournaments.

• 27:09Gary O'Reilly?

  So how do you get a guy who's all about him or her, putting the ball in the hole 18 times and walking off and with a nice big fat check, to focus on, it's not about me, it's about us?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  And I think, one, of course, it comes with experience. So the players that have played in a bunch of Ryder Cups, like a Phil Mickelson or Sergio Garcia, they're used to this pressure, they're used to playing on a team event, they're used to playing for their country. I think the best strategy is the players that have not played on the Ryder Cup very often, or it's their rookie year, like Bryson DeChambeau, they have to ask guys like Phil Mickelson and Tiger, you know, how do I deal with this pressure? How is this pressure different from tournaments? And how have you done it? So the rookies and the young guys, they have to ask the experienced guys how they have done it before.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of experience, you talk about emotional toughness in some of the talks that you have online. And can you explain the concept of emotional toughness, and maybe give us a little peek into how that might apply to golf, and particularly the Ryder Cup?

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Well, you know, people always say, and they use this term "mental toughness", but through my experiences working with professional athletes and collegiate athletes and young athletes, is that it's not about the mental toughness, it's about the emotions. When you master your emotions, you master your world. And so when you have control over your fears, when you have control over your confidence, when you have control over your anxiety, then you have control over your game. And I always tell players, even if you think the right thoughts, if you don't have the right emotions, you're still gonna choke. So the secret is, you gotta really focus on the emotions out there. And how you do that is this: you have to recall times when you played your best, and

• 29:08Speaker 03

  what emotions you had at those moments, and then try to replicate those emotions. Because some people, when they play their best, they're nervous, other people are calm. But the secret is, figure out what makes you tick, and then move in that direction with your emotions.

• 29:20Gary O'Reilly?

  So what work will you do with a golfer in particular? Because I know you work with a range of athletes and elite businessmen and women. So if I'm someone who thinks they work well with a little bit of nervous edge in my mind, but actually it's not the right solution for me, how do you work out which is for a golfer?

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Well, the right answer and the right solution is this: you recall, let's say, three or four times where you were in the flow or the zone, and figure out your intensity level for that, for those three or four times. So let's say you discovered, for you, and let's take a scale of 10, 10's totally amped, 0's totally flat, for you, you have to be at an 8. And you've looked at this three or four times, and every time you're at the zone, you're at an 8. Now you gotta figure out images, actions, and words to put you at an 8. Like, for me, I need to be at a 3, so I gotta get to figure out how to stay calm. I have to figure out images to make me calmer, and words. So, what I call their primers.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Primers are words, actions, and images, which push our emotions in the right direction. So first, you gotta figure out where you need to go, that's awareness, and then figure out how to get there.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Now suppose you're a person who really doesn't have very good measured responses and you start thinking of primers and they send you like all over the edge, then you gotta think of another primer to bring it back down. Now all of a sudden, I'm like an emotional junkie. I need my uppers to get me up, I need my downers to get me down. I don't know where I am, what I'm doing. Help me, Dr. Gregg, help me.

• 30:55Gary O'Reilly?

  How did I know it was going there?

• 30:56Speaker 03

  If you're that kind, I'd fire you.

• 30:58Chuck Nice?

  He said if I was his client, he'd fire me.

• 31:00Gary O'Reilly?

  He doesn't need a caddy, does he?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  You're way over the edge.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  You know, the idea is that, yes, it's really a trial and error, you know. Sometimes words and actions, you think they're gonna put you in the right emotional state and they don't. So it's more of a trial and error, you know, figure out what words really work and then move in that direction.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  So now, let me ask you this, just following up on that. I mean, I was joking a little bit. I was really talking about me, so I wasn't joking.

• 31:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Of course.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  But, okay, is this something that works for just these elite players because they're so close in their skill sets already that these small tweaks to their emotional state puts them in a much better or a much more advantageous position? Or will this help the guy on the weekend who's out on the links with his buddies having beer? Is it gonna help that guy?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it helps everybody, but of course, if you're, let's say, a beginner and you are focusing on the mechanics and you gotta work on the mechanics, it's hard to focus on the mental game. But the way, and the emotional game, the way I put it is this. Golf is 100% mental and emotional and 100% physical. They're totally tied with one another. And what most people do is they only work on the physical. So they're only working like with one hand. But if you work on the mental and emotional, you're working with both hands. And, and, and the biggest problem is people don't know what to work on. And, and to give the listeners probably the best advice is that everybody's unique.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  You gotta figure out what makes you play your best. Even if you're a beginner or a weekend player, you still played really well certain times. And you gotta really do some soul searching and figure out why you played your best those days and then move in the right direction.

• 32:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Greg. So, for instance, if I make an analogy to track and field, if I've got a 100 meter race or 200 meter race... I'm on the be of the bang, I hit the finish line. That's all I've got to think about. If I'm playing Ryder Cup golf, I've got a crowd, half of whom probably hate my guts. And I've got 18 holes and I've got to get up, get in the right place or dial myself down 18 times, plus from tee to green every single time. So the capacity for it to go completely wrong gets, well, I don't know what the factor is, probably minimum of 18.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Well, if you're worried about the crowd and whether they hate you, you're in trouble already, let me tell you that right now. Of course, if you, if you let the crowd bother you, I can say you're done for. But you know, the idea is that a pre-shot routine puts you in the right emotional state. It's like a bubble that goes around you. So the idea is the crowds creating all this noise and people are screaming. And as you're walking near the ball, you might hear that. But as soon as you start your pre-shot routine, and this is what I work on with every golfer I work on, you have to get a pre-shot routine that's bulletproof. And it basically, the idea is it creates a bubble around you. So all the thoughts and emotions that are people or crowd noise bounces right off. And the stronger your pre-shot routine, the better you're going to play.

• 34:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't that Kevin Costner in The Tin Cup? Yeah. Basically, yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  Release the mechanism.

• 34:12Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. So this is, this is what you actually do with golfers?

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, some of them. I mean, I do with everybody, but what I'm saying is it's, it's some of what I do. And the idea is that an amazing pre-shot routine puts you into a reactive state, gets you calm and creates rhythm. So the idea is that when you're in this right emotional state, then you're going to basically play your best. But if you're thinking quick and you're thinking negative, it's going to, it's going to feed into your swing. And that's when you play your worst. So that's why a pre-shot routine is not just waggling it three times and doing some physical things every time. It's actually creating the right mental emotional state before you hit your shot.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  So does that actually translate to outside influences? I know Gary said, the crowd hates me, right? And I understand when you say if the crowd is bothering you, you're done. Already.

• 35:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  But let's just say for instance, uh, and this doesn't really happen in golf as much. But let's just say for instance, somebody kind of really sticks it in my craw. Like they do, they do something and they just really get me upset. And I'm not really upset with myself or my game or how I'm playing. I'm actually upset with someone else. So how do you recover from something like that? Or do you just go through your process until you reach the eight or the three or the wherever you're supposed to be?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Well, if, if your playing partners are bothering you.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Uh, that's when you need to see a sports psychologist.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  They, they can't, uh, if they're bothering you, you're in trouble because they're going to do stuff to try to bother you. And if you, if you let them bother you, then you're not bulletproof. And yes, the idea is that if there's some gamesmanship going on and they get to you, they're winning. So what you have to do is just allow them to do their thing and, and be prepared for that. You know, that's the, the preparation we talk about with the Ryder Cup. You gotta be prepared for the loud crowd noises, people screaming, cussing you out. Um, people with, uh, doing gamesmanship, uh, and all this stuff going on. If you're ready for that emotionally, then it's just going to brush right off. But if you're not ready for that, that's when you get real nervous and that's when you choke.

• 36:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. What is the worst slash best dirty trick you've heard of on the Ryder Cup? Cause you will know you're the, you're the sort of guy that will be privy to that kind of knowledge. So please share with us.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I, I've, I've heard this before with a few people. They might move a little bit when the person's hitting the shot or making a, a little noise. But, but most of the players are, are pretty cordial. Um, there's not too much gamesmanship. What's really going on is the crowds are siding with, uh, you know, a team and, and they're creating more of the havoc versus the players, because you know, the players, even let's say a Sergio Garcia that's been playing forever on the Ryder Cup. He plays in America and his friends are on the American team. So there's a, there's, there's a lot of friends. And so it's not like us versus them per se, only for that week. But in reality, it's it's more of a it's a great team rival.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  It's a friendly rivalry, a friendly rivalry, kind of, yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Right, a friendly rivalry.

• 37:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Last Ryder Cup was 2016, post the tournament, which the US won, just so as a European is saying that, by the way, yep. You said Phil Mickelson was your main man, your standout guy. Why? What made him so important to you, watching that whole Ryder Cup?

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I think if you look at Phil Mickelson, just as a person and as a player, first as a player, you know, he's been playing professional golf, I think, since he's been 21 as an amateur, and so he has the experience. And now, he, I think he's in his mid-40s, I know he's in his mid-40s, he's in the Hall of Fame, and so, everything for him is gravy. And so, playing at this highest level is just gravy for him. But as a person, he's a high-risk taker. He loves the risk, he loves the challenge, and I think what happens at the Ryder Cup,

• 38:30Speaker 03

  it increases his risk-taking personality, and that's why he always, I think, plays really well in these situations, because he has said, like at the Masters, when he drives through to Augusta National, through the drive, he feels a different sense. He loves that feeling. And I think at the Ryder Cup, same thing, he loves the feeling of the challenge of us versus them, the risk, the high risk, and all that stuff just boosts his intensity level where he needs to be. Where other tournaments, that aren't so meaningful, he can't get at that level, and so that's why he never plays his best.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 39:05Gary O'Reilly?

  So, just to quantify that, the bigger the game, the bigger the game Phil Mickelson brings?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Exactly, the same thing with a lot of these players, you know, they play pretty well in the regular tournaments, but in the majors, they raise their game because their intensity level is that much higher. You know, that's the difference between Tiger Woods and the rest of us normal people. When Tiger was playing his best, he could raise his game for everything. Like, every shot mattered to him. It's like Rafael Nadal, he plays every shot like it's the most important point in the world to him. Same thing with Tiger. When Tiger was playing his best, every shot was the most important shot in the world. His intensity level was high, no matter if it was a meaningful tournament or a major.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  And that's why he played so well. Where I think the other guys, they can't get to that level every tournament.

• 40:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Amazing.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  That is great.

• 40:02Gary O'Reilly?

  It is.

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  Good stuff.

• 40:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Greg Steenbok, thank you so much for your time and opening up the brain and mind of a Ryder Cup golfer. Pleasure.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

• 40:11Gary O'Reilly?

  No, thank you.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 40:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you very much indeed. And that's our show.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 40:15Gary O'Reilly?

  So, the Ryder Cup, end of September, it is three of the most intense days. You go and play, as Dr. Steenbok was saying there, it's not about you, and your whole career's been about you. You play the course, you're the person that puts the ball in the hole. This then becomes you part of a mechanism, you part of a bigger unit. And that brings its pride, its passion, and it is something to behold. So if you haven't watched the Ryder Cup before, please tune in and watch, it is going to be awesome, no matter which team wins.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  No, no, it's going to be awesome when the US wins.

• 40:53Gary O'Reilly?

  As I said, no matter which team wins, as long as it's the Europeans.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  [laughing]

• 40:59Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, that's it from us, from Chuck and myself, this has been Playing with Science, we look forward to your company next time.