Deep thinking golfers 'harming their game'

Golfers who think too much about their shots could be harming their game, a report said today.

Skilled players were reduced to the level of novices as a result of “over-thinking” their shots, academics found.

The researchers, from the universities of St Andrews in Scotland and Michigan, asked 80 skilled and novice golfers to putt using a particular technique until they had mastered it.

Some were then asked to spend five minutes describing in detail what they did.

The researchers found that the golfers’ ability to perform was seriously impaired when they tried the same shot again, taking twice as many attempts to sink a putt.

The players who had not been asked to describe their shot encountered no such difficulties.

Professor Michael Anderson, of St Andrews University, said: “This effect was especially dramatic in skilled golfers who were reduced to the level of performance of novices after just five minutes of describing what they did.

“Novices, by contrast, were largely unaffected, and perhaps even helped a little, by verbally describing their movements.

“It’s a fairly common wisdom in sport that thinking too much hurts performance - during a game it can be an obvious distraction.

“However what we found surprising is that simply describing one’s putting skill after it has been executed can be incredibly disruptive to future putting performance.”

The researchers believe the loss of performance is due to an effect called verbal overshadowing, which causes the brain to focus more on language centres than on the part of the brain which supports the skills in question.

A similar phenomenon has been shown to affect memories of how things look or taste, but the latest research is the first to show that it can adversely affect motor skills.

Prof Anderson said over-thinking was unlikely to affect top professionals, since they were used to talking about their technique.

He said it was also unlikely to affect novices, as they probably would not know enough skills to forget.

The research is published by the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.