#ICYMI - Tiger vs Phil – 18 Holes, $9 Mil

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Tiger Woods. Phil Mickelson. 18 Holes. 9 million dollars. Hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly sit down with neuroscientist Heather Berlin and sports physicist John Eric Goff to breakdown the science, both physical and mental, behind this epic match-up of two golfing titans. Photo Credit: DIRECTV.

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 focus our attention on two of sport's biggest titans. The gloves are off as Tiger takes on Phil in a winner takes all, believe this, $9 million match play event from Shedd Oak Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  Man. Yeah, happy Thanksgiving, man, indeed.

• 0:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Or Black Friday, depending on who wins.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes, if Tiger wins, it's definitely a Black Friday.

• 0:42Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey, you know what's interesting about this is that it'll feature various challenges along the way, such as longest drive, the nearest to the hole, longest putt, like all the stuff that you bet on in a regular golf game when you're playing with your friends. Yeah, so it's just like high stakes, crazy golf, you know?

• 1:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And there's nothing crazier than $9 million.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Woo, making it interesting.

• 1:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, and helping us analyse the physics, we'll have, of course, Professor Eric Gough, but joining us first to unlock the brain sciences, neuroscientist and our dear friend, Dr Heather Berlin. Heather, how are you?

• 1:18Heather Berlin?

  Heather! Hey, glad to be here.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Always great to have you here.

• 1:21Heather Berlin?

  Thank you.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  So, okay, so we were talking about, like, this is really how guys, when they get together and play golf, they're like, yo, man, let's make this interesting. You know, like, hey, why don't we put a little something on it, $10 a hole, like, you know, and so, you know, these guys are doing like on a massive scale what guys and women do all across the nation on Saturday mornings, everywhere, at every golf venue that's open.

• 1:45Gary O'Reilly?

  It's an event that we could, all golfers can relate to directly, rather than watching a PGA Masters or something like that, where...

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  With just two of the greatest players, you know, in the history of the sport. So I'm asking you this, what is driving some, is it more money that will drive, like, $9 million to win, or is it more pride, like, yo, I gotta beat this guy?

• 2:10Gary O'Reilly?

  What's getting them out of bed on this particular day? The money or the pride?

• 2:14Heather Berlin?

  It depends, it depends. People are gonna be motivated by different reasons. So, you know, it depends on number one, how much, for us, I mean, for me, nine million dollars, that would have a big impact on my life. But, you know, if you maybe already have fifty million, another nine isn't gonna make a huge impact.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  This is true, believe me, speaking from experience.

• 2:31Heather Berlin?

  Obviously, right, you would know, as you would know. But, um, you know, so I think the impact of the money varies depending on how much it will affect your life. Um, but these guys, you know, they're in the public eye, they're putting themselves on the line, their reputations, you know, and the risk of embarrassing themselves. You know, if one of them loses, they're no longer, you know, the greatest. Now they're the second greatest against the, the person who wins. So you're kind of, the money is almost, I think, more of a compensation for allowing to put yourself on the line like that and, and engage in this. So I think probably at this level with these two guys, it's more about the pride.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Can the money actually do the opposite? Like, for instance, I have a friend, Carlos, we used to play pool together. I am not the best pool player in the world.

• 3:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, that sounds like a hustle immediately you say that.

• 3:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, but I would often beat this guy, often with no, with no problem, right? But no, here's the thing. Then he would say, yo, man, like it was like he was hustling me, maybe.

• 3:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  He would say, yo, let's put some money on this. However, it's, he wasn't hustling me, I would lose to myself. I wouldn't lose to him, I would beat myself.

• 3:44Heather Berlin?

  When the money was on.

• 3:45Chuck Nice?

  When the money was on the line.

• 3:46Heather Berlin?

  You would do worse.

• 3:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So where, where does Chuck brain, where does his brain go with that?

• 3:51Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 3:51Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and is it possible you'll see, and I called them in the intro, titans of sport, not just golf, of sport?

• 3:57Heather Berlin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Is it possible you'll see someone who's been so event hardened, so successful? Could they go to the same place Chuck's mind went to?

• 4:06Heather Berlin?

  Well, the thing is that with, in Chuck's case, when you're out, you're putting money on the game, you're increasing the stakes and you're changing, it's affecting your psychology. So it was before, sometimes when there's less at stake, you're more relaxed, you do better at things, right? You increase that cortisol, increase the stress, it can then interfere with your performance. So just that bit of adding a, a potential loss is what can actually mess you up.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. So I wanna ask you this, cause I have here, I'm pulling this up on my phone, cause I wanna make sure I get it right. Golf is one of the. Top five most mentally challenging sports that there are.

• 4:44Heather Berlin?

  Sure.

• 4:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and they say that the reason is because all top five sports are individual sports. So there are no team sports that count as most mentally challenging.

• 4:58Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Chuck Nice?

  Uh, and here they, here they have them. Uh, number one is swimming. Number two gymnastics. Number three is tennis. Number four is golf. And then number five, baseball. Which last I checked has some teammates.

• 5:16Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 5:17Gary O'Reilly?

  But. Ah, no, for me, it's, I mean, I'm, okay, European, British, but I look at it as the, the twenty first century. Gunslinger kind of shootout.

• 5:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you mean pitcher and catcher?

• 5:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Pitcher, pitcher, batter, hitter, whatever you want to call it.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  I mean pitcher and, and batter.

• 5:34Gary O'Reilly?

  So now that, that, that sort of, I've got to beat you, you've got to beat me. It's, it's kind of like.

• 5:39Heather Berlin?

  It's a one on one competition.

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  It's still a one on one competition.

• 5:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Which is where we are with this.

• 5:44Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 5:44Gary O'Reilly?

  On, on the, on the sedate greenery of Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas.

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  So why are these sports, mainly golf? So mentally taxing.

• 5:55Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so, so there's different, when it's a team sport, right? You are, it's, it's, you're cooperating with your teammates, you're acting all together as one organism. There's something that we call. De individualization, or it's less of a focus on the one individual and more of how you all work together. So your focus of attention is going to be external. There's something we call the executive control network that's activated when you're externally focused. On things outside of yourself, because you want to say, okay, who's, where's my teammate? If it's soccer, you know, who's am I going to pass the ball to? Who's passing the ball to me? It's all about that communication between people. It's not just about you as the individual. But in these sports that you've mentioned, Chuck, it's just about you and your performance. Your biggest competition is, is against yourself.

• 6:38Heather Berlin?

  And so you do all the physical training to train your body to know how to respond. And if all goes smoothly, your body will react in the right way. The thing now that can mess you up is yourself, is your own psyche, is your own um, sort of negative thoughts getting in the way of your performance. So if you second guess yourself, if you start stressing out about how good the other guy is doing. So what you need to do in these cases is have an internal focus of attention, what you activate what's called the default. Um, network in the brain or default mode network in the brain. Where it's almost like clearing the mind, it's almost a meditation. And don't let the things in the external world distract you. So you almost have to block it out. Whereas in the team sport, you want to pay attention to the external. So it's two different.

• 7:19Gary O'Reilly?

  It's interesting.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:21Gary O'Reilly?

  You say that there's eighteen holes.

• 7:23Heather Berlin?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:24Gary O'Reilly?

  And these two guys are gonna stroll around basically in each other's company.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:29Gary O'Reilly?

  These eighteen holes and it'll take however many hours it takes. Do you think there'll be trash talking? Do you think, because they've never quite been the best of buds as far as I'm aware.

• 7:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:39Gary O'Reilly?

  There might be a little something said. And that's an awful long time, even if you're able to take yourself into that state. Can someone maintain it for that length of time? And not crack just at the moment when, oh, you're looking a bit tired. Did you sleep well last night? Oh, is your knee bad? Anything like that?

• 7:57Heather Berlin?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Does it, can, can you sustain that kind of state of mind for that length of?

• 8:02Heather Berlin?

  Well, I think that's the biggest competition. That's the game, right? It's almost like a staring contest, right? Who's gonna break first? So you take these two guys, I mean, you can't, the years of practice and training they've had, you can't take that away. Their bodies know what to do in different situations. They know how to adapt to changing environmental circumstances. The wind changes or, you know, the tree is in the way and how to get around it. All these things, they've built up systems and networks in their brain that will automatically respond to that. So their biggest challenge is going to be not to get psyched out, not to let their competitor say something that's gonna get in and distract them. And so I think that's where the real game is. I doubt they're gonna interact with each other because it's neither of their interests to even go there.

• 8:43Chuck Nice?

  Go there.

• 8:44Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  But you're not.

• 8:46Gary O'Reilly?

  The pay-per-view audience is desperate for there to be a Barney halfway down the fairway.

• 8:51Heather Berlin?

  You know, you gotta see, it's like, you know, in the boxing games, like in the beginning, the two golfers stand head to head and start like psyching each other out before the game.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that'd be great.

• 8:58Gary O'Reilly?

  That's, that's what the people are paying their money for.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:00Gary O'Reilly?

  To get one of those instances.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Tiger, your father never loved you.

• 9:06Heather Berlin?

  That's how you psych someone out in golf?

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, yes.

• 9:09Gary O'Reilly?

  That might just be round one.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Heather Berlin?

  Right, right.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, so here's something that's really funny. So this is, I'm reading this article and it says, I'll tell you, tennis players suffer sabotage of their nerves. Before, so it's before the match and in between play. So this is where they're most vulnerable. Golfers, very much the same. Pre-round, routine, pre-shot, routine. This is where their game collapses.

• 9:40Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 9:40Chuck Nice?

  Why would that be the case?

• 9:42Heather Berlin?

  So that's the thing, once they're in the motion and doing it, it's it's sort of set uh uh something off that goes off automatically. So it's the setup, it's the mental setup. Where I, as I said, the real competition takes place. And so there's something called the pre-motor cortex, which is active when you're just imagining the move. So I think, you know, a lot of them with golf is they say, think about your swing or get into that mode or concentrate.

• 10:05Chuck Nice?

  They call it a visualization.

• 10:07Heather Berlin?

  Visualization, exactly. And that's basically a routine that you're running in your head before your body actually enacts it. Um and that sets it up for what it's gonna do next. Once the action takes place, it's almost like it's too late. So the setup is the most important part of it. And that's why, that's where the most stress can come in, that's where your thoughts can mess up your performance. Cause once you're doing it, it's done, in a sense. It's so that's the key moment.

• 10:33Gary O'Reilly?

  You know what happens? And it happens not just in uh a one-on-one sport like tennis or golf, but it'll happen in in a soccer game or a football game or something. You'll do something and it hasn't worked out the way you intended. And it's caused a problem for your team, for you, everything else. You no longer are able to focus on the moment and what's coming.

• 10:55Heather Berlin?

  You're thinking about the past, the mistake and the.

• 10:58Gary O'Reilly?

  I always call it on, you're on rewind, you're on a loop, you're on a loop, you're reliving, you're reliving. The things going on in front of you, but you're reliving this other thing. So what's happening with the brain there?

• 11:08Heather Berlin?

  So great, I'm, uh, there's, there's, so your greatest enemy, and that's basically prefrontal cortex, which, which thinks about, um, it causes you anxiety. Thinks about your mistakes, uh, how to, you know, how I could have done it differently. What are people thinking about me? How am I hitting the ball? You know, it just goes on and on. And so what you wanna do is quiet the mind and then actually you wanna decrease prefrontal cortex activation.

• 11:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Great idea, but in the moment.

• 11:31Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Gary O'Reilly?

  You can imagine, you've sliced one off into the trees. And you know that you're about to. It's so difficult to grab that firmly and bring it back. What, what really, how much discipline do you need to be able to do that?

• 11:44Heather Berlin?

  It's about letting go, and I think the best players are best at doing that. And that's a, a sort of what we talk about is mindfulness. It's focusing, there are ways to refocus your mind to be in the moment. I mean, practicing meditation and, you know, studying what happens in the brain of monks who can refocus, re-center their thoughts to just be in the moment, it's all about the moment. And I think that's what the best athletes have trained themselves to do, especially in these sports like golf and tennis.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's funny, now you just said that, just be in the moment, and this is um, uh, the same article that I'm reading here that says, uh, the one big difference between golfers and everyone else is the struggle of how to deal with unoccupied time between holes and each ball. So you gotta walk to the next thing, you gotta think all that time. You're sitting there watching your opponent do his thing, you gotta think all that time. So, uh, that's, I guess that's what you're talking about when you say be in the moment.

• 12:44Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely, it's just like all of us in life, right? It's the downtime where our thoughts can escape us and that's when all the negativity comes in, right?

• 12:52Gary O'Reilly?

  They call it empty space.

• 12:53Heather Berlin?

  The empty space is the most dangerous.

• 12:56Gary O'Reilly?

  You let the squirrels come in, do you let all your stuff run around and get distracted?

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Lots of squirrels up here in this.

• 13:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Or do you go monk mode? Which I'm now, I'm now labeling monk mode.

• 13:05Heather Berlin?

  I like that monk mode, okay, just credit me to that, yeah, that's right. But I think also that's why a lot of these, um, and swimmers as well, you see Michael Phelps, they wear headphones, they listen to music before and they try to get in the zone, which is about, don't let your thoughts, it's turning down the prefrontal cortex. And we see that pattern of brain activation when people are daydreaming, and when they're meditating, certain types of hypnosis. When you let go of these self-criticism, of questioning yourselves, of thinking about the past, and you're just completely in the moment, so music can help get you there. So if I was this golfer, perhaps I'd play some kind of meditative type of music. Between and just focus in on that internal world.

• 13:44Chuck Nice?

  I wonder if they have rules where you're not allowed. I've never seen a golfer do that. Take headphones or they might have rules where like one of the rules is you have to walk to the next hole. One of the rules is maybe you can't.

• 13:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Your caddy could be a rapper.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  That'd be cool.

• 13:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, we're reinventing golf, baby. Get the rapper out there all of a sudden between.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  That'd be kinda cool. Yeah, just like. Don't worry what you missed. No, whatever. I'm not gonna try it. I'm not gonna do it.

• 14:13Chuck Nice?

  They'll take my black card.

• 14:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't do that.

• 14:16Chuck Nice?

  That was awful. And your husband's like a prolific rapper, which is so funny.

• 14:20Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, just speaking of rap and how it relates to sports, it's interesting that some of the top rappers will no longer freestyle in public because they don't want to risk messing up and embarrassing themselves.

• 14:30Gary O'Reilly?

  So now we have a complete correlation to what we're discussing here.

• 14:34Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, because like Tiger Woods, why, why would he be motivated to put himself on the line of this and potentially embarrass himself and lose? But that's where the money comes in and the motivation to do it. But it's the same thing with the rappers. They're not gonna just freestyle and, and risk doing it poorly.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  For nothing.

• 14:49Heather Berlin?

  For nothing.

• 14:49Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. Dude, you just rhymed bread with bread. You suck.

• 14:54Heather Berlin?

  Like Jay-Z, man.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  Words like bread and Fred and dread and you went bread with bread? God, you're the worst. Okay.

• 15:04Heather Berlin?

  Street cred.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, it's cred. There you go. Street cred. Okay.

• 15:08Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the older white guy entering into this conversation. Dr. Heather Berlin, what a pleasure as always. Thank you so much.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  But we're gonna keep you if you don't mind.

• 15:16Heather Berlin?

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 15:17Gary O'Reilly?

  We are gonna take a break.

• 15:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let's take a break.

• 15:19Gary O'Reilly?

  When we come back, the physics therein, the swing, the course, the ball, whatever you need to know. The good professor, Professor Eric Goff, will be with us when we come back.

• 15:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science and our Tiger versus Phil, show me the money, nine million dollar matchup.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Which by the way, you just told me a pretty interesting fact of why it's nine million bucks instead of 10 million.

• 15:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, it's something to do with both players being part of the PGA Tour and I think the finalists get 10 million dollars and therefore they didn't want to compete with that, so it's now this kind of old nine million dollar figure.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 16:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Now if I'm wrong, I apologize for throwing that out there as a false factoid, but if I'm right, go me.

• 16:08Chuck Nice?

  There you go, right. Either way, it sounds good and as far as I'm concerned, you could be President of the United States. Okay.

• 16:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Not today. Right, so we have Professor Eric Goff, University of Lynchburg, joining us and but still with us is Dr Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, so it'll be an interesting conversation. Professor, welcome to Playing with Science once again.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  Glad to be here and I'll definitely take Gary over our current president.

• 16:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so let's look at Shadow Creek, Las Vegas. What can we expect from this particular course, Professor?

• 16:44Speaker 03

  Well, the course is 7,560 yards at a par 72 and I think both golfers are going to find the third hole very challenging. Most of the holes are straight, so when you look at the third hole, you've got a par four, but it's going to clock in at 486 yards and you've got water on the side of it. Now, I think when you're looking at the difficult holes for each golfer, there are going to be three holes that dog left, one, four and seven, and you're going to have three holes that are going to dog leg to the right, which are 10, 16 and 18. So I think if you've got a, you know, a left-handed golfer like Phil Mickelson, who's going

• 17:26Speaker 03

  to want to do perhaps a little bit of a slice whenever he swings, try to angle this to the left a little bit, he might have an advantage on those first three that I mentioned. If you want to slice a little bit to the right, then Tiger's going to be on the ladder, the back nine, the 10, 16 and 18 holes.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  So what is, what's the physics of slicing and hooking? Like, uh, when you're hitting the ball and the slice is to the right, right? Is that how it goes?

• 17:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well, if you, depends if you're right-handed. If you're right-handed, you're gonna hit from left to right.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:00Gary O'Reilly?

  If you're hooking, you're right to left.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Right to left.

• 18:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  So, but what happens? Cause they don't really wanna do that. I mean, sometimes they wanna do that on purpose.

• 18:07Gary O'Reilly?

  And they do.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. Sometimes they wanna do it on purpose, but I'm saying if you're going straight down a fairway, you want the ball to go as straight and as far as possible. What causes it not to do that?

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Well, when you're hitting the golf ball and you, you hit it, you, you square it and then you're gonna get some backspin on that ball. And what's gonna happen is the ball is gonna achieve some Magnus force with a lift going up. But if you slice it, if you're right-handed and you slice it and it starts to spin in this direction, then the Magnus force is gonna send it off to your right. If you're a right-handed golfer, it's gonna send it off to the left if you're a left-handed golfer.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So it's really all about the spin of the ball and where you put the face of the club on the surface of the ball. And if you push it one way, so it's spinning to the right, then you're gonna get the, the slice.

• 18:57Gary O'Reilly?

  You've got to think multi-dimensional here.

• 18:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Because it's not just a left, right, right, left.

• 19:01Chuck Nice?

  No, it's spinning back and right or back and left.

• 19:04Gary O'Reilly?

  So for instance, if I'm dropping that ball onto the green, cause now I'm an elite golfer, by the way, just in case you were wondering.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 19:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And I know that green's on an angle and the pin is towards the lower end of it. I'll overhit it with some backspin.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, so it'll roll backwards to the pin.

• 19:20Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, it's just the ability to be able to have soft hands and feel the ball. We've always talked about pilots and racing drivers having an intuitive feel. The car, the aircraft is an extension of them.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:34Gary O'Reilly?

  It must then, Doctor, be an exact same replication for a golfer. That club is now just another part of their body.

• 19:42Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, you, after a lot of years of training, what you do is you have this pre-motor cortex, which is the planning out, okay, you have a plan of how you're gonna do the shot.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Heather Berlin?

  And then there's the actually carrying that out. So that's gonna involve the motor cortex. Also, the cerebellum, which is these fine motor movements and smooth and balance and, and these sort of more refined aspects of motor movement. Then you have other parts of the brain that are involved in proprioception. Your awareness of your body and space and how it's moving.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:11Heather Berlin?

  You know, and then you have also the, something called the entorhinal cortex, which is like your GPS system.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Say that again now, the...

• 20:17Heather Berlin?

  Entorhinal cortex.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Entorhinal, the ento-anal cortex?

• 20:21Gary O'Reilly?

  No, GPS.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:23Gary O'Reilly?

  GPS.

• 20:24Heather Berlin?

  The GPS part of the brain.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  GPS part of the brain. Entorhinal.

• 20:27Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Gary O'Reilly?

  GPS.

• 20:28Heather Berlin?

  Entorhinal cortex.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  Ento-anal cortex.

• 20:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't sit over there.

• 20:33Heather Berlin?

  Sit in the corner, Chuck, no. I don't care, somebody! That kind of is like navigating in space and, and remembering where things are in space. So you have to enact all of these parts of the brain, which you've trained over time, so that when you psychologically say, "Okay, I wanna do it, you know, hit it there and then have it do a backspin." Well, in carrying it out,

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:52Heather Berlin?

  all these aspects of the brain have to be in coordination for the, the big muscle movements, the fine muscle movements, and, and knowing where your body is in space and all of that. So it's, it's a whole, um, sort of a orchestra of different parts in the brain, like, working together.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  It's so funny, when you talk about proprioception, there's a training where, so, I mean, people think it's corny when you see, uh, what is it, that movie where they blindfold the guy, Karate Kid, and he's blindfolded and standing on a pole.

• 21:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Are you sure that's what you're thinking about?

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am.

• 21:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, fine.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  But he's blindfolded and standing on a pole, and that's actual training for balance athletes, because when you close your eyes, your proprioception is completely off.

• 21:29Heather Berlin?

  That's right.

• 21:29Gary O'Reilly?

  You know, you have to engage everything else.

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. So the idea is to do it without relying on your vision, and it fine tunes the other areas of your brain.

• 21:37Heather Berlin?

  Like your inner ear and all these other aspects.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  And that helps you with balance.

• 21:41Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, you said...

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  The brain is amazing!

• 21:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, welcome to the world. You talked about this course, and the fairways being particularly straight. Who, to your mind, will have a better opportunity on the fairways off the tee in terms of which game will be stronger and better suited to this type of fairway?

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Well, Tiger does have about a two and a half yard driving average distance advantage over Phil, and he's actually a little bit better with driving accuracy. And this course is designed to be somewhat difficult off the tee. So Tiger gets about 59% of his fairways this year, and Phil's only getting about 52%. So there's a slight advantage to Tiger this year on the way he's been driving for distance and for getting accuracy on the greens. Now, just to give you an idea of what one of these dogleg holes is like, the fourth hole is a par five, 581 yards, and it's got a dogleg right to the left.

• 22:45Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a monster.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  And you're gonna have to hit this thing about 280 yards just to get it to that first turn left. But if you're hitting it too far, you're gonna go right into the trees. If you're a little, you know, short, or if you try to hit this thing too far to the left, you're gonna be right in the water or a sand trap. So they're gonna have to be very careful with when they play these doglegs to make sure they're not in the trees or in the water.

• 23:10Chuck Nice?

  Is there a hole particularly that is most challenging for one golfer or the other, depending upon the game that they play?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Well, I definitely think that if you're gonna try to, you know, play these doglegs a little bit to the advantage of the course, where you're gonna try to maybe play a slice to get it to hook a little bit where that turn is, then, you know, as I was saying, the dogleg lefts are gonna happen on the front nine, and the dogleg rights are gonna be on the back nine. So if you're trying to get this thing to angle left, let's say, if you're gonna be Phil trying to slice this thing and get it to curl around the dogleg, he's gonna have the advantage on those holes one, four, and seven. Tiger would be more on 10, 16, and 18, coming up toward the finish.

• 23:55Gary O'Reilly?

  It's interesting, because at no point is anyone gonna gamble on this.

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Right?

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Oh, sure, yeah.

• 24:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Really, yeah. So now, now you've outlined that, you can bet those that do are analyzing along the lines of the professor.

• 24:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Gary O'Reilly?

  And they'll load up to get money on Phil on those particular holes, and possibly to be in the lead on the first nine, and then they'll jump. And go on to Tiger to go that and then maybe have a decision on who they think will win.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  That's interesting.

• 24:22Gary O'Reilly?

  And so the physics behind it now is going to enable people's thinking as to how.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  You should put out some betting lines, Dr. Goff.

• 24:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Open up a stall in Vegas. Fly the professor down to Vegas. We'll get a little boost.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  And I don't know, I mean Tiger's had a great comeback year after his back surgery. I mean, around the greens, he's number one this year in strokes gained for approach shots. And Phil is about a half stroke behind him. So when you start getting near the greens, Tiger's going to have about a half stroke advantage during the entire course.

• 24:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Selling the Tiger.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Although Phil's got a slight, Phil's been putting slightly better this year. So if Phil can get it on the green, he might have a slight advantage on the putting.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Well, drive for show, putt for go.

• 25:09Heather Berlin?

  I was just gonna say, I find it really interesting, the analysis in terms of the statistics of human behavior, right? It's almost, it reminds me of the like, the Moneyball guy who was doing all those stats on the, but you know, human behavior is notoriously very difficult to predict. So although we have these, you know, statistics and who tends to do better on what, in the moment, you know, I think anything could, and a mental change can affect all these statistics in terms of their previous behavior. And, and you know, maybe something like free will or certain things.

• 25:43Gary O'Reilly?

  That's, that's why.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Well.

• 25:45Heather Berlin?

  But there's no such thing as free will.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Do we believe in free will?

• 25:48Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why these guys have been.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  There is no free will.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Look at that, we're all in agreement. Look at that.

• 25:52Heather Berlin?

  Are we all just?

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  Look at all the scientists, no matter what the discipline, everybody jumps in, no, there is no free will. What is your problem?

• 25:57Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing is, what you would do as an elite athlete, as someone who's at the very pinnacle of their game.

• 26:02Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 26:03Gary O'Reilly?

  You have been so practiced that you have taken out that element. Or taken out, but reduced it to such a small area of inconsistency. People will now follow you, spend money on or against you because of your consistency or lack of therein, and that may fluctuate. Over a course of weeks, months or years, or diminish at a certain time in your career.

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, Heather. With respect to what we were just talking about, what Eric was talking about previously and the difficult holes. Let's say you're, the first three holes, you're doing super well and it's, you know, happy-go-lucky. And then you know in your mind, the fourth hole, you always mess up on this.

• 26:45Gary O'Reilly?

  That's your kryptonite.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 26:46Heather Berlin?

  Right, right.

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  What happens in the brain that makes that actually come true? Where, you know, you, it's, I look at it like.

• 26:54Heather Berlin?

  It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Heather Berlin?

  So your thoughts can affect your behavior. We know that. So if you change your mindset, if you think you're going to do poorly, if you're told, for example, you're going to do poorly on this math test, people tend to do worse than if they're told, like with girls, you know, girls tend to do better on math and they'll do better on the math test. So telling yourself, oh, this is the hole that I usually mess up on, is going to really negatively affect your performance. The other thing with this game, which is interesting in terms of the psychology, is that the way it's set up in terms of the holes that Tiger will do better at and the ones that Phil will do better at, the order in which that occurs could affect the game. So if like you're really good holes, or you know at the end, that's going to have a certain effect.

• 27:35Gary O'Reilly?

  That's going to be major pressure.

• 27:37Heather Berlin?

  Right, right. So I think that the, the order in which the, of, uh, the difficulty is set up and it's different between the two different players is going to have a significant effect.

• 27:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, um, is there one, or there may be more than one particular hole that has a particular interest to you as a physicist as to it might be a par three that's really tricky and it might be one that drops down and you have to have a more vertical approach? Is there anything like that on this particular course?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Actually, I think the hole that interests me is the third hole. I mentioned this before. It's going to be a very challenging hole. It's a par four, but it's 486 yards. And it's quite a narrow fairway. You've got some water off to one side. You've got some traps. And, you know, you might have Tiger coming up with that Stinger II iron of his, trying for a real low trajectory to get a roll. But if he just misses very, very slightly, I mean, he's going to be in the sand or in the trees. So you have to be very, very careful going for distance on a hole like that. So I'm really anxious to see what that third hole provides.

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Would you call the third hole the signature hole of the course? Or is there another one out there that's going to cause a lot of interest?

• 28:50Speaker 03

  I would definitely call the third hole the hardest. I'm really looking forward to the six dog-legged holes. And then you've got eight holes with water traps near them. So those things always make for very interesting play when the, you know, I mean, to piggyback a little bit on what Heather was saying, I mean, the interesting thing about, you know, the way the mind is worked is you have these laws of physics that are guiding all these processes that are happening. And then the emergent behavior gets very unpredictable, even if you do have the statistics. But once they start hitting the ball, of course, then the laws of physics are going to govern how this ball is going to travel. So all these little perturbations to the initial conditions and how they hit it could lead to these vastly

• 29:31Speaker 03

  different results in how they get the ball toward the tee. So I mean, a hole like, you know, number three is going to be one that I'm really going to be interested to see.

• 29:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Are there any kind of environmental effects that might come into play that, you know, if you're watching this at home and you've spent your money on pay-per-view, that you're not quite aware of, but the golfers themselves, is there going to be a desert breeze? Are we going to suffer an awful high temperature? It's unlikely to get a lot of humidity. But will there be those sort of factors that come into effect some of the physics?

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Well, you you gotta, I don't know if you if you haven't looked at this course from Google Earth, it's worth doing because it sits, it's this rectangular shaped course that sits in a a bunch of neighborhoods and you have all this sand and you don't have these, you know, large parking lots because I don't think they're even gonna have a gallery there. And, you know, you you don't have the the, you know, kind of traditional looking large golf course spectacle. Uh, there's some private residences, you got a clubhouse. But when you're watching the the play on the on the pay-per-view, I mean, you got this Bermuda grass that they're gonna be using, which is good for the desert, and this bent grass near the greens, which has to be watered a lot. You know, you're out there in this

• 30:44Speaker 03

  arid climate. So the the holes are gonna be pretty fast on the greens, but a lot of this is gonna be due to the to the how the groundskeeping is done ahead of time because if they don't cut it too low, if they're not, you know, if they're really gonna try to make sure that the scores aren't gonna be too high, you know, they're not gonna cut the course in such a way that it's gonna be too difficult. So, you know, a lot of this is gonna be coming down to how the groundskeepers are gonna do it.

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, groundskeeper Willie, once again, determining.

• 31:14Gary O'Reilly?

  You are so predictable with that. So the devil's gonna be in the detail, particularly on the greens. I mean, so much as the riot of grass, it's going to be, and this comes down to the friction, how short they want to cut them. And then of course, obviously, the pin changes that they'll make on the greens themselves.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, it it, you know, every, and you're gonna have holes that are gonna have, you know, some of the par threes are gonna have to be hit, the ball is gonna have to be hit over the trees. So, you know, there there're gonna be some really interesting holes and, you know, obviously, I mean, Heather can speak to more of this than I could, but I mean, if one of them starts getting a lead early on, then, you know, are they, is the other one gonna wanna start taking more chances, trying to, you know, play for that long distance? I mean, you gotta hold.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  Desperation.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  I mean, like hole 11 is a is a par four, it's 324 yards. I mean, if Tiger's about, say, two strokes down by hole 11, is he gonna try to go for it on that one, uh, that one hole?

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, that's a very interesting point that, uh, Eric just made, Dr. Goff.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Let's say you are now, you're losing, right? And you make an act of desperation and it works out. What happens in the brain then? Do you now just feel like more relaxed? I'm going balls out. I'm just gonna do whatever, cuz things are going my way, baby. Or do you say, alright, I'm back to even now. Let me get back on track. What is, what kinda normally happens in the brain?

• 32:48Heather Berlin?

  Well, I think there's a difference between what would normally happen in a person's brain and between a trained athlete, right? So what's interesting with Tiger Woods is if, um, I always thought he's an interesting case cuz if you look at his personal life, you know, he got in a lot of trouble with sort of reckless impulsive behavior, you know, cheating on his wife and lots of sexual escapades.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Lot of bad prefrontal cortex.

• 33:09Heather Berlin?

  Right, that which would not, yeah, which would not do well for his prefrontal cortex. But I always use him as a case example because although he was impulsive in these other aspects of his life, when it comes to golf, he's the opposite. He's extremely focused, you know, and you're, you're really using your prefrontal cortex when you're, when you're at that level of, of focus and concentration. So I think when it comes to golf, we call it dissociation. I think there's a sort of dissociation of behavior and, and the best players are able to um, just focus on the game and not be affected or try to be affected as little as possible by what has just happened before. So in the regular human brain, I would say, yes, you know, you do something reckless. You're like, oh, now I'm on a roll, I'm gonna keep going with this or whatever.

• 33:52Heather Berlin?

  But with, with these kinds of golfers at this level of play, I'm gonna say that they're gonna not be as affected by these, these fluctuations in the game throughout.

• 34:00Chuck Nice?

  Awesome. Who knew dissociative behavior had a good role to play in your life?

• 34:06Heather Berlin?

  It could be adaptive.

• 34:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's go back to that. They get out of their own head.

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  I'll remember that the next time I bury a, never mind. Body in my bed.

• 34:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Glad you edited that. So, so getting out of your own head.

• 34:16Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't bother me at all.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Hey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

• 34:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Goff, bringing me home, baby.

• 34:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah. And I think that's a great line to end on.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you to Dr. Heather Berlin. Thank you to Professor Eric Goff from University of Lynchburg in Virginia. Get out of your head, Chuck.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  I shall.

• 34:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Do the tiger thing, get out of your head.

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  Get out of my own head, baby.

• 34:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 34:43Chuck Nice?

  Get out of my head and into my car.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Let me leave you with one last tiger bit.

• 34:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  The average force between that golf ball and the club hit when it's hit is going to be about two tonnes and that's going to be twice what a tiger bite is.

• 34:59Chuck Nice?

  Nice. I see what you did there with the tiger and the tiger. Yes, right on. I'm going to call that a club drop. Bang.

• 35:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey. That's been Playing with Science, a golf special. Fabulous Professor Eric Goff and Dr. Heather Berlin. I've been Gary O'Reilly.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  And I've been Tiger Woods.

• 35:15Gary O'Reilly?

  And this has been Playing with Science.