IN 2014, WE TRAVELED to Palo Alto, California, to do coaching sessions with Stanford University’s women’s and men’s golf teams. Anne Walker, the coach of the women’s team, asked if we might have some additional time to work with a Stanford professor who is one of the teams’ strongest supporters. The person turned out to be former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Condoleezza teaches in Stanford’s political science department as well as the Hoover School of Public Policy and the Graduate School of Business. She’s a 13-handicapper, has served on committees of the United States Golf Association, and is one of the few women members of Augusta National Golf Club.
We’ve coached many high-achieving golfers over the years—lawyers, scientists, surgeons, musicians, and CEOs—so we had a good idea of what to expect with Condoleezza, and planned a little icebreaker to begin our time together. When she met us at the Stanford golf range, we’d written on the whiteboard: WELCOME TO YOUR BRAINIAC54 TRAINING.
First we gave a short overview of VISION54 and the elements we believe go into playing golf: Physical, Technical, Mental, Emotional, Social, and Spirit of the Game. We talked about how each of these factors—in addition to technique—influences your swing and your game. It was fun to watch Condi’s Aha! moments as she took it all in. She told us that everywhere she goes to play, somebody has a swing tip for her. “Sometimes I have so many things going on in my head that when I’m about to swing the club, I can’t even focus,” she said with a rueful laugh.
Condoleezza is like many of us today. Our jobs and busy lives require that we spend most of our waking time in our heads. This tendency transfers to the golf course, too, which means that most of us overthink our golf games—or at least think in the wrong places. To play good golf, you need to balance thinking and sensory awareness. If one is too strong, you need to rebalance them. We drew a big circle on the board with the words “Play Box” inside. Beside it, we drew a much smaller circle with the words “Think Box.” We said to her, “Condi, your Play Box needs to get much bigger, and your Think Box needs to get much smaller.”
Very simply, the Play Box is golf’s moment of truth. On one level, it’s the three-dimensional space where you actually swing the club. On another level, it’s your interior state that creates the conditions for a good swing. It takes 1.7 seconds to swing the club. From stepping into the shot to the finish of the swing, the Play Box should take from four to nine seconds. That’s not very long, which is why this window is so important. Peter Saika, a Canadian golfer and reader of our books, puts it this way: “I think of the swing like a Q-Tip,” he says. “There’s so much attention focused on the ends—that is, where the club starts and where the ball ends up—that everybody glosses over the middle. The problem is, when you put too much focus on the end points, you usually have no idea how you got there.”
We couldn’t agree more.
This is why we wanted Condoleezza to focus on her Play Box. Here, in the middle of the Q-Tip, the Play Box is the space for pure sensory awareness. What do we mean by sensory awareness? We mean awareness related to the five senses: seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, and smelling. Remember, these senses live in the right side of the brain. No matter what kind of performance you’re engaged in, you will generate optimal motor movements through your right, or sensory, brain. For a “left”-brain person like Condoleezza, learning to access sensory “feel” in the Play Box is a new—and critical—skill.
It’s why we put so much emphasis on developing awareness of balance, tension, and tempo. Accessing these three physical states will move you away from cognitive thinking. Our friend Dr. Debbie Crews of Arizona State University studies golfers’ brainwaves by attaching electrodes to their scalps and recording the electrical activity of their brains while they play. She puts it this way: “The Think Box is where you make your decisions about your shots. Once your intention is set, you move your focus to achieving your intention. As you get closer to actually swinging the club, you want to activate more ‘feel’ and less ‘thinking.’ The moment just before you move the club is most predictive of your result. For the best golfers, the left side of the brain quiets down tremendously as they’re about to start the swing, and the right side of the brain becomes more active. I call this synergy, where the conscious and unconscious parts of the brain come into balance.”
One of our VISION54 students is a renowned neurosurgeon who works at Washington University in St. Louis. He described this synergy in his own way: “Let me tell you what happens when I do a neurosurgical procedure. The surgical movements and maneuvers occur in a delicate sequence. I concentrate on the goal of the surgical movement, not the mechanics of the movement. My knowledge base and the concept of the surgery are set long before the procedure is performed. Having formed a plan and a goal for the surgery, I need to let my intuition take over to visualize and achieve the surgical objective. This involves the ‘sensory’ parts of my brain, not the language or strictly cognitive brain networks. Essentially, I’m in my Play Box during the surgery.”
Debbie Crews reminds us that the left brain, the language and decision center, comprises only about 5 to 10 percent of our brain power. “The right brain is about 90 to 95 percent of our brain power,” she says. “Our right brain allows us to perform motor movements more successfully, because the subconscious is like a supercomputer. The left-side language center gets everything organized, but it can’t run motor movement efficiently. It takes 450 milliseconds to complete the swing, from the top into impact. The club is traveling at 50 mph to more than 100 mph, and so the left brain can’t do much with that. It just isn’t able to send information to our muscles fast enough.”
This is why players who clutter their brains with swing thoughts during their strokes often don’t make many good swings while playing. I’m stuck. Better throw my hands at the ball. Those tree limbs on the right side of the fairway are sticking out. I need to hit the ball to the left. Many of us aren’t even aware that we’re thinking these thoughts. We don’t perceive our interior monologue as separate from the part of the brain that has agency over performance. We stay stuck on the left side of our brains, and in response, our bodies essentially short-circuit.
Accessing a “feel” state helps you shift into that right side of the brain. “Our data shows that the two variables that help this process are feel and target,” Debbie says. “ ‘Feel’ is a product of the right brain, whether it’s sensing a low center of gravity in your body or feeling the state of getting to your left side in your finish. ‘Target’ is also right brain; your focus is on a visual image, maybe the flag or your aiming point in the fairway. Activating a target focus is not something you can order your brain to do as a sequence or set of events.”
The greatest golfers of all time probably never called the state in which they hit the ball the “Play Box,” but they implicitly understood the very natural, sensory aspect of the golf swing. Jack Nicklaus wrote in his book Golf My Way that he saw every shot in its entirety before he started his swing, suggesting that he operated out of a heightened visual sense. Sam Snead liked to practice barefoot; he wanted to feel the ground under his feet, and he said he swung the club to an internal waltz rhythm (that is, tempo). Arnold Palmer threw his entire body into the shot. He lived for the physical sensation of the pure strike. Each of them understood the unique sensory “feel” necessary to achieve peak performance. Jack Nicklaus was a relatively slow player standing over the ball, especially on putts. Lynn has talked with Jack’s longtime caddie, Angelo Argea, who was on his bag for more than 20 years. He recalled how before Jack would putt, he would visualize every revolution of the ball toward the hole. He would see it drop into the cup, and then visually reverse the ball’s motion all the way back to his putterface. Jack wasn’t having a debate about his line with himself. He was waiting for the picture of the shot to complete itself. He wouldn’t step up to the ball until that picture was crystal clear.
Tiger Woods’s version of his “Play Box” was more tactile. When he played well, he would say, “I felt the shots in my hands.” One year at the Masters he told reporters, “I can feel the target in my hands.” The more competitive a match became, the more he was able to heighten his ability to access his senses.
Like Nicklaus, Annika Sorenstam always visualized her shot standing behind the ball and looking toward her target. She described feeling the shot in her gut. The moment she felt it, she would step up to the ball and hit. Annika was described as a fast player; she was fast because she didn’t want to lose the sensory feeling she was accessing in her Play Box.
Ai Miyazato, an LPGA Tour player from Japan whom we coach, experiences her Play Box feeling as a low center of gravity in her abdomen or a smooth tempo. The famously unorthodox Canadian golfer Moe Norman said he could taste a good shot. LPGA Tour golfer Brittany Lincicome finds a visual connection to her target, whether it’s the flag, a tree, or a bunker in the fairway. “If I’m going for the pin, I see that pin over and over in my brain before I hit,” she says.
We suggested to Condoleezza that she try different Play Box sensory “feels” as she hit shots on the range. She visualized her ball flight as a blue trajectory line, and she experimented with grip pressures and tried sensing her swing at 75 percent of her normal tempo. In addition, she imprinted a target in her brain, created relaxation in her shoulders, and paid attention to the sound of the club and ball at impact. She tried counting her breaths and putting her hand on her heart to feel her heartbeats. All of these sensory “feelings” helped shift her focus away from the left side of her brain.
We’ll be honest: Learning which sensory awarenesses work for you in your Play Box takes practice. You need to initiate your “feel” for every shot. You can never go on automatic. Fortunately, Condoleezza had been a competitive figure skater when she was young, so she understood the idea of the performance state. “I knew about visualization from skating,” she says. “Before a competition, I would always visualize myself going through my program. But I had never really thought about it in golf. Did I see the shot? Did I hear the shot? Did I ‘feel’ the shot in my feet? Using my senses in golf was completely new.”
Condi is also a concert-level pianist, and she has strong hands. When she was a child, her piano teacher would say to her, “Condi, you don’t have to hammer the keys. Don’t put so much muscle into playing.” She said she realized she had a tendency to do the same thing with the golf club, so focusing on a constant, light grip pressure helps her find a calmer, more physical state.
Staying present to a sensory “feel” for the entire duration of her shot was also a new idea. “In figure skating, your performance is only a three-and-a-half-minute burst of energy, but you have to be present the entire time—or you’ll end up on your rear end,” she says. “Taking that feeling of being in the present, and not letting your mind wander, has been an important thing for me to learn for my golf game.
“I’m one of the fastest players on earth,” she adds, laughing. “I learned to play when I was secretary of state, so I never had much time. When I got the chance to play, I was running out onto the course to try and catch a few holes somewhere before dark. One thing I’m trying to do is to use the sensory state to slow myself down. I tell myself, Just be in the present. When I’ve decided what club to use and what shot to hit, I stand over the ball, clear my mind, and connect my energy to the target. I’ve found this special moment now, and I love the idea of being present.”
We’ve coached opera singers and professional musicians before, but Condi helped make the similarities between golf and music more clear. “Like swinging a golf club, playing the piano is a very complicated set of movements,” she explains. “People think of making music as artistic, but it’s extremely physical. You’ve got to make big leaps across the keyboard with your fingers at exactly the right moments. Striking the right key at the right time takes a lot of coordination and a lot of focus.”
She told us about the time she was invited to perform Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with the Omaha Symphony a few years ago. “I hadn’t played with an orchestra since I was 19 years old, and I realized I’d have to play without the score because there was no page-turner available. A friend who’s an experienced pianist told me, ‘Learn the piece by slowing down to the point where every movement is completely isolated. If you do that, you’ll know the piece.’ ”
Several famous golfers, including Ben Hogan, have used a similar idea, practicing tai chi swings, which are extremely slow repetitions of the full swing. (You can look up videos of Ben Hogan’s slow-motion practice routine on YouTube.) We do this in our programs, too. The VISION54 record for one complete swing in extremely slow motion is five minutes and 15 seconds. Condoleezza decided to apply the tai chi method to her own golf swing. “I use this in my own practice now when I’m working on my technique,” she says. “When I go out onto the course, I put it all together.”
After exploration, Condi chose balance, breathing, and grip pressure as her Play Box sensory “feels.” “It’s a very simple thing to make sure you’re swinging in balance,” she says. “I take a practice swing before my shot with my feet together, which gives me a super-centered feeling over the ball.” She also focused on maintaining the feel through the end of her swing and not stopping it at impact.
Condoleezza can now rely on her sensory awareness skills to get herself out of trouble. “I was playing in Korea not long ago,” she says. “I was there to give a speech, and my host is an avid golfer, so he wanted to play. I don’t know why—maybe it was the environment or I was tired—but I couldn’t hit the ball straight for the first four holes. I was spraying it all over the place. So I stopped and said to myself, Okay, you’re not present over your shots. I took a moment just to pause, put my feet together, and feel balance, balance, balance. I started hitting the ball much better. So I’ve seen how the Play Box ‘feel’ can help you make corrections in the middle of a round. I also like to take a few deep breaths as I approach the ball. Those are my go-to states.”
After one recent coaching session with Condi, she said something we loved. “If people can get away from all that technical stuff—Are my hands high enough? Am I coming from the inside?—the game becomes more enjoyable. I know I still have to do technical maintenance work on my swing, but using these human skills makes golf feel more like a sport. And that’s more fun.”
We’ve seen how a reliable Play Box “feel” can help alleviate anxiety on the course, too. Under pressure, which each person experiences differently on the course—a tight fairway, hitting over water, leading a tournament into the final few holes, etc.—the left side of the brain will attempt to take over, which could mean trouble. After determining which Play Box “feels” work for you, the next stage of mastery is to work on deepening those sensations, so you can rely on them when a match is on the line or you’re putting to win a tournament.
In 2016, we began working with Ariya Jutanugarn, the astonishingly talented young player from Thailand. Ariya (whose nickname is May) was a phenom at a young age, and qualified for the Honda LPGA Thailand tournament when she was just 11, making her the youngest player ever to qualify for an LPGA Tour event. Over the next few years, she exhibited a powerful game, but she also suffered some epic meltdowns. In 2013, when she was 17, May had a two-shot lead heading into the final hole of the Honda LPGA Thailand. With her countrymen and -women watching, and on the verge of becoming the first Thai player to win an LPGA tournament, May triple-bogeyed the 18th hole to lose by one stroke to Inbee Park.
Her collapse occurred in front of her entire nation, which is a tough thing for a 17-year-old. She managed to climb to No. 15 in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings that year, but then she tore the labrum in her shoulder. Even though Ariya earned her LPGA Tour card in 2014, she struggled. She began to doubt her shots, including her drive, once the best shot in her arsenal. “I knew the problem wasn’t my swing,” she explains. “It was nothing with my golf game—only my brain. I got to the point where I was scared to hit the ball. I was scared to miss cuts in a tournament. I kept thinking about all the bad things that could happen. Everything got worse and worse. I knew that if I kept on with the same thing, I wasn’t going to win. So I tried to find help.”
That’s when Ariya’s agent called us.
Early in 2016, we spent four days with Ariya and her sister Moriya, who also plays on the LPGA Tour. We taught them about the performance routine—Think Box, Play Box, and Memory Box. “It made very much sense to me,” says Ariya. “Before, I didn’t call this part of my routine Think Box or this part Play Box. It was all mixed up together.”
Ariya had always been a natural ball-striker. She had managed to play well enough, even though she lacked commitment and tended to be unfocused during her shots. We knew that her natural talent could take her only so far.
During a practice round before an LPGA tournament in San Francisco, we did an on-course exercise with Ariya and Moriya. They explored different ways of getting present with their senses before stepping into their Play Boxes. On one hole, they each practiced “seeing” the ball flight in a bright color. On another hole, they “felt” the shot in their guts; on another, they relaxed their shoulders; and on another, they stated their decisions out loud to reinforce their commitment to the shot. On one hole, we asked them to access a “feeling” of happiness before their shots. It resonated immediately with Ariya. She began using the “happy feeling” regularly for her Play Box, which she would trigger by smiling as she approached her ball. (Many people have now commented on Ariya’s “smile”; what they may not know is that it’s the secret to her Play Box.)
“It didn’t come right away,” Ariya says. “I needed to practice it. At first, when I go to my Play Box, I’m still thinking about something else. But then I start to know what ‘feeling’ makes me comfortable to hit the ball. Suddenly I’m not scared. This helps me more every day.”
In April 2016, Ariya played in the ANA Inspiration in Rancho Mirage, California, the LPGA Tour’s first major of the year. On Sunday, she had a two-shot lead over World No. 1 Lydia Ko after the 15th hole. Everything looked sharp, until she made three consecutive bogeys, including a snap-hook tee shot into the water on the 18th hole to lose by two strokes.
Ariya cried afterward, but this time she wasn’t devastated. We talked with her about what we had observed during those last three holes. All players react differently to pressure. Some overread putts. Others get too slow or too fast with their swings. Ariya’s tempo got way too fast during her last three holes. We shared with her that she looked tense in her shoulders and around her mouth. Her smile looked forced. She wasn’t taking deep breaths.
“I thought I had a good Play Box,” she said later. “It was working fine until I got really nervous. Then it didn’t work anymore. Pia and Lynn told me afterward, ‘When you are nervous and excited, you may need a deeper Play Box “feel” or sensory state to help you through. If your tendency is to swing too fast under pressure, you may need to “feel” 60 percent of full tempo and take long exhales before you swing. Or you may need to change your Play Box “feel” altogether.’ So I practiced some more. Now I take a really deep breath when I move from Think Box to Play Box at important moments. I feel extra happy and I tell myself, I love this shot before I go to my Play Box. That feeling makes me smile. It works.”
We’re very proud of Ariya. Using her stronger sensory skills, she went on an impressive stretch the rest of 2016. She won the Yokahama Tire Classic. The following week, she won the LPGA Kingsmill Championship, followed by the Volvik Championship the next week, where she pulled away from the field by five strokes on the back nine. Those three consecutive wins put Ariya into some exclusive company in the LPGA history book. Only four players—Mickey Wright, Kathy Whitworth, Annika Sorenstam, and Lorena Ochoa—had won four tournaments in a row on Tour. Ariya, with three consecutive victories, came just one shy of that mark.
“I’m different now,” she says. “I’m interested and happy about every shot, no matter if it’s a good or a bad shot. Think Box and Play Box have given me a way to play, and tools to use, so that I’m confident I can reach my potential. They help me see golf as a very big exploration rather than a fear.”
AFTER MANY YEARS of teaching and coaching, the general observation we have about golfers—professional and amateur—is that they are “over-present” to elements of the game such as practice, technique, and results. They spend time on the range memorizing their swing thoughts, and focusing on their equipment, scores, handicaps, tournament wins, and losses. But they are “under-present” when they’re actually hitting a golf shot. Bringing the Play Box to the course is one of the most important skills a golfer can add to his or her game.
When we ask players to stay focused on a “feel” such as grip pressure through their entire swing on the practice range, they’re pretty good at it. But when we take them onto the course, and ask them to stay present to the “feel” until the end of their swing, it’s not so easy. When they get onto the course, their attention naturally shifts to the outcome of the shot—that is, where the ball landed. They forget about that Play Box “feel.” Understanding that you haven’t stayed with your shot until the end of the swing is something you can only see in the context of the game. Only on the course can you see your true patterns that emerge under pressure—and how the Play Box sensory states can help them.
We don’t want to overcomplicate the Play Box. It’s a simple, natural state that we automatically access in most reactive sports. You make a decision when you throw or kick a ball, then you do it instinctively. Golfers, however, can have a hard time finding that Play Box, which is why we recommend different sensory options. Focusing on “feeling” grip pressure, or “seeing” your ball flight, makes it easier to be present to something specific.
Your ultimate goal is to find several Play Box “feels” to stay with through your entire swing—on the golf course. Like Ariya, you might find you need different “feels” for different shots, different clubs, and different situations. Explore various sensory states, and build a routine that includes a repertoire of good, deep Play Box “feels” that you can rely on for your entire round.