IT'S GOOD FOR YOUR GAME

By T.J. Tomasi

Darting eyes are designed to locate any possible threat — at this point you are in the first stage of the response cycle. The second stage is assessing the info your darting eyes gathered so you can effectively narrow your focus. You start the process with a wide-angle surveillance lens that narrows as the target is profiled. If no threat is found, the alert is canceled; otherwise, an intervention is selected from your arsenal and all relevant assets are marshaled to get the job done.

When you play golf, this same sequence governs each shot, yet most golfers lock on to the target only a few times a round — which is why they don't hit many targets.

How can you hit more targets?

The key is called the “quiet eye,” and whether you’re shooting a gun, a bow and arrow or hitting a golf ball, research shows that QE needs to be part of your aiming repertoire.

“Quiet eye has gained growing attention among researchers investigating aiming tasks ... as a measure of optimal attentional control,” says researcher Don Hyung Lee from the University of Exeter in England. Here, science is telling us that what you do with your eyes after the general information gathering stage has determined

how good a golfer you will be.

If your eyes continue to survey the entire scene using a wide scan, you will be overwhelmed with too much information — you may be looking at the target, but you're not seeing it. Thus, at some point in your pre-shot routine, you must narrow

your attention to the specific target, screening out all excess info not directly related to your precise aim. It is this ability to taper attention from the general to the specific (aka, “aim small, miss small”) that allows a golfer to attain personal peak performance, where an 8-handicap golfer performs as the best 8 they can be, while the 23-handicap is at max also.

Dr. T.J. Tomasi is a teaching professional in Port

St. Lucie, Fla. Visit his website at tomasigolf.com.

The first step is to make what I call a panorama QE scan, where I look at big world features like the overall topography, the wind, how long it’s been blowing, how long the sun’s been shining, the drainage patterns and the type of grass, etc. Then my focus funnels via a portrait QE scan, where I'm gathering small world info about the break of my putt, the area around the cup and the point (marked in my mind by an X) at which the ball will begin its major curve as it’s pulled by gravity into the hole. I must aim the putter face correctly to roll the ball over this point.

My attention has now funneled down even more: I've taken care of direction, and now my sole attention is in producing the correct force – distance. My mind is clean, and the task is singular – speed – everything else has already been attended to in the previous steps. Note: This process of panorama to portrait is how you should simplify a complex task. You should not simplify by leaving things out or skipping important information – KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the fallback position of the lazy