The world’s best golfers make the game look so effortless that it’s hard to imagine what’s going on in their heads. But modern neuroscience allows us to do just that. My team’s new study shows how different parts of a professional golfer’s brain are activated when he hits his ball into the hole.
Putting is a crucial part of the game of golf. When the ball is on (or just off) the green, golfers use their putter to gently roll the ball toward the hole. Good putting is a hallmark of the most successful players in a tournament, as it can account for 40-50% of the total strokes taken in a round (an average of about 1.8 putts per hole). Winning a tournament can often depend on hole-making that final, dramatic putt.
Our team focused on what makes golfers good at putting, specifically the mental processes required to do it well consistently. The structured routine of putting makes it easy to study and analyze. Before each putt, golfers begin with a preparation phase in which they stand still with the putter directly behind the ball (a position called “address”). This phase can provide insight into the mental and physical processes involved in preparing to putt.
To explore these mental processes, we measured brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. This provides an accurate way to measure the timing of brain waves as they occur, making it ideal for sports research.
Scientists categorize brain waves based on their frequency ranges (measured in hertz), which are associated with different functions. The brain waves that researchers primarily study are the theta band (4–7 Hz: associated with concentration and error detection during motor tasks), the alpha band (8–12 Hz: attention and arousal control), and the beta band (12–30 Hz: associated with motor preparation).
In our study published in the Journal of Frontiers in Psychology, my colleagues and I sought to determine whether there were differences in brain activity between successful (when the ball goes into the hole) and unsuccessful putts.
Successful putts show different brain patterns
We recruited 28 professional golfers (20 of them men) with an average age of 24.2 years for a test session. Each of these participants made 140 putts while wearing an EEG device on their head to record their brain activity.
We used two methods to analyze their brain activity. The first was “time-frequency analysis,” which looks at how signal frequencies change over time. This allowed us to measure what was happening in the brain in the last three seconds before the player made contact with the ball on each putt.
The second topic was “movement-related cortical potentials,” which help us understand how the brain plans, prepares, and executes movements. In our case, the movement was the golfer starting to putt.
Our study shows that successful golf putts exhibit distinct patterns of brain activity.
From time-frequency analysis, we found that successful putts were associated with changes in beta and theta brain waves in the last three seconds before putting. Successful putts showed a greater decrease in beta activity during preparation than unsuccessful putts, suggesting that these golfers were better prepared when they putted the ball into the hole.
Based on these findings, we advise players to focus on their swing and have a clear plan in mind so they can experience the onset of beta suppression sooner. The key is not to change their plans just before putting.
If you are unsure about the strategy to use—that is, which direction to aim the ball and how much force to hit it with—we recommend that you take a step back and then restart the putt with a clearer plan.
Concentrate on your shot
In our study, successful putts also tended to show lower theta activity in the frontal area of the brain, especially just before contact between putter and ball. The higher theta activity during unsuccessful putts may indicate hesitation or the need to adjust the movement plan before execution.
Our results underscore the importance of paying attention to your putting stroke. This is common coaching advice, but now we have data to prove why it’s so important.
Our analysis of movement-related cortical potentials also revealed differences in brain activity. Successful putts were associated with more efficient processing and lower energy expenditure compared to unsuccessful putts. Successful putts therefore cost players less brain power.
Many golfers report that they know what it “feels like” to putt well. However, it is difficult to reproduce that feeling consistently. If you want to improve your putting, practice your skills so that you can reliably execute the motor movement and handle the pressure of competition.
This result supports the theory of “neural efficiency” in sports research, which states that neural activity decreases in professionals when they perform a job-related task.
In various sports, from archery to tennis, researchers have found that mental processing is simply more efficient in professionals, allowing them to activate different parts of their brains while playing. In other words, playing a sport doesn’t just change your body – it can literally change your mind.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
