Jordan Spieth's Brain Games

Golf Digest has an interesting article about mirror neurons and how Jordan Spieth uses the science behind them to improve his game. It may not appeal to some of you but I'm guessing that a lot of you are just plain curious.

Everybody's brain has neurons, billions of them. At the risk of oversimplifying things, they're responsible for muscle memory. Mirror neurons are a subset of them -- roughly 20% or so -- that allow you to watch someone else do something and feel the action closely enough that you can copy it.

In other words, reflect neurons may assist provide an explanation for why we play higher while we play with proper players and worse while we play with players who are not so suitable... At the least, no longer on the day we play with them.

Yeah, this is dreadfully oversimplified... However it's appropriate enough for our purposes.

Jordan's coach Cameron McCormick says that Jordan realized this relationship early on -- that is, he noticed that relationship between your play and that of the players you watch -- and talked to him about it. McCormick then says that "from then on [Jordan] made a concerted effort to pay keen attention to players who do things well, and to ignore those who didn't."

The article then covers some matters you could do to use this data that will help you play better. I won't list them here because it's now not a long article and I don't need to simply replica McCormick's work. But he has three examples of methods to use this information... And numerous humorous methods to keep away from looking awful players on your foursome, inclusive of:

  • 2-Fairways-Over Slicer: Embark on an exhaustive search in your bag for that candy bar you ate already
Many of you have probably already figured this out, and you watch players you admire -- for example, you watch videos of Steve Stricker's swing and imagine what it must feel like -- while looking away when your partner starts jerking his putts ten feet off-line. But this article will give you the basic scientific reasons for it and maybe help you find some new ways to copy your golf heroes.

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