Inside the Country Club Athletes Mind

It is often thought that what makes an athlete great is his or her physical toolkit to adapt to any situation on the field or court. I would argue that a physical toolkit is the baseline to make an athlete decent, but what differentiates an athlete from good and great is their cognitive ability to be aware what is going on in his or her domain, as well as their strategy and planning on how to make their next move after their opponent strikes. This is most prevalent in "country club sports" (I say country club because these are the predominant sports played at a country club) such as golf and tennis or any racquet sport.

In golf you have to analyze the entire hole and strategize how you will attack it. Not only that, after you strategize, then you have to make different variations of "golf swings" in order to drive, approach, chip and putt the ball into the hole. This is not even counting if you get into trouble in a bunker or by trees and have to hit a "bunker shot" or punch the ball back into the fairway. The drive is your initial shot out of the tee box, where you generally use your "Driver Club" to maximize distance, height and speed to get you from the start of the hole to as close to the green as possible. From there you hit your approach shot, generally with an "iron" that varies in both loft and club length based on how far you want to hit the ball. The goal is that with this iron you're going to hit it onto the green to give you a putt at birdie, but if you miss you have to chip from just off the green, trying to chip as close to the hole as possible. Generally, if you are a "scratch golfer" your strategy on a par 4 hole is to drive the ball as far out as possible, hit your approach onto the green and then in two putts you will be in the hole, giving you a par on the hole. "Scratch Golfer" gets its name from the old idea that a scratch golfer gives zero strokes to par, thus when they are playing their best, they will likely par most holes, may get a few birdies and may get a few bogies but will ultimately play the golf course at par. If the golf course is a par 72 then the scratch would shoot a 72 at their best.

I tell you this not to intimidate you with the strategy and rules of golf, but to assess how much goes into a single round of golf. Golfers have specific body awareness over each variation of shot and have to put themselves in the best spots on the course to get par, or if you're a pro, get the most birdies in a round. The physics of the club head of a driver shot is the club should never touch the grass, coming in from low to high at a low angle to maximize outward trajectory as well is giving the ball enough height to glide through the air at about a 15-degree angle from the ground. The physics of the approach is the golfer will strike down on the ball hitting the ball before hitting the ground. The action of striking down into the grass after ball contact creates that "divot" you see in the grass when pros hit their iron shots. These are the variations in swings that pros have to consider all round. Then they have to read the speeds of the greens as well as any undulations in the terrain forcing the ball to go left, right, up or down prior to the hole. A putt is when you use a special club called a putter to roll the ball on the green to the hole. Golfers have special awareness over their own swing mechanics when it comes to these different variations of shots, and the best golfers are good at all these different variations. This takes strong cognitive ability to not only control their body movements when hitting these shots, but the best golfers know where on the course they want to leave themselves for the following shot to optimize their scores.

Tennis players also have to use cognitive ability to strategize each point based on their opponents' tendencies and vary different shots accordingly. The main shots in tennis are the serve, forehand groundstroke, backhand groundstroke, forehand volley, backhand volley, slice, dropshot and overhead. The serve is quintessential for any tennis player because in high level tennis, the server generally wins the "game" more than the returner. The serve is what starts the point, and when a player is "on serve" it means they are the one serving in that "game." Scoring goes as follows, one point in a "game" is 15, two points is 30, three points is 40. When a "game" is tied 40-40 it is called deuce and you have to win two points in a row from a tie at deuce to win the game. But, for example, if your opponent wins one point at deuce it is their "advantage," and you would have to get it back to deuce to get to the point where you would have to win two in a row to win the game. You can only win a game at deuce if it is your advantage and you have to win one point from there. A "set" is the first to six games, but it is win by two, so if you are tied 5-5 it is first to seven and if it is tied 6-6 you play a tiebreaker, which is when you play first to seven, again win by two. Generally, matches are best two out of three sets. As you can see, scoring and scoring awareness is essential to any tennis strategy, you will play much differently if you are down 1 set to 0 than if you are up 1 set to 0 or if you are up 40-15 in your own service game vs. down 15-40 in your opponent's service game. 

Serving is important because it starts the point, but groundstrokes are what keep you in the point, and you will likely in a tennis match hit more groundstrokes than any other type of swing, especially your forehand. A forehand groundstroke is hit when the ball comes to your dominant handed side, a tennis player will cock their wrist back and proceed to brush up on the ball as the ball is coming towards them, creating topspin that will allow the ball to come off the racquet and spin back into the court on the other side of the net. A backhand groundstroke is doing the same thing, but as a forehand is swung with your dominant hand, a backhand is with your less dominant hand. Generally, players hit this swing with two hands, although some players play this shot with one hand, however, the one-handed backhand is still swung with the dominant hand, just on the other side of your body. If the point is not won on the serve, players will generally rally with each other with groundstrokes until one person hits it out of the court or into the net. There are other variations of shots such as a slice, dropshot, volley or overhead, but for simplicity purposes lets focus on forehand groundstroke, backhand groundstroke and serve.

The physics of the serve are the tennis player stands sideways to the inside of the court; they toss the ball up and generally in front of them so they can fall into the court on the serve. As the player tosses the ball up, they load their body, bending their legs and cocking their racquet back. When the ball is at the apex of where the player can hit the ball over their head they "uncoil" their body and explode into the ball swinging their arm at the ball, emphasizing power and accuracy to get the ball into the proper part of the court for the serve to be in. Generally, the person serving wins the game because they have the advantage as a serve is fast and hard to hit a good shot off of it. The "mechanics" of the serve and groundstroke have a ton of nuance, and even pros hit their shots very differently from others. But the core mechanics are still the same in all of these players, which is what allows them to hit with pace, accuracy and precision. It takes a lot of spatial awareness to differentiate and learn all of these different techniques, as well as learning the strategy to win points against better and better players.

Tennis and golf take a very keen awareness in order to perform at a high level in both domains, which is why they are considered sports for the intelligent person. There are many variations in a golf swing and tennis swing, and each takes many hours of practice to master as well as a body awareness to not let one type of swing affect another type of swing. There is a lot of strategy involved in both sports, rewarding minimal errors, and calling for the assessment of the risk vs. reward of each individual shot. Before you say that someone's ability in each sport is "god given" just remember the amount of practice it takes to accumulate the cognitive toolkit each sport calls for, differentiating between each shot as well as mastery of each shot.