‘A Lion to tame the Tiger’

Towards a model for the development of excellence in golf.

Stuart Armstrong

Introduction

In 1997 Eldrick ‘Tiger’ Woods exploded onto the world of golf winning a ‘major’
championship, the US Masters, in his first full season as a professional golfer, a
feat almost unheard of in professional golf. On June 15, 1997, in his 42nd week as
a professional, Woods became the youngest-ever No. 1 golfer at age 21 years, 24
weeks. The previous youngest was Bernhard Langer, age 29 years, 31 weeks in
1986. It is fair to say that this amazing rise to dominance shocked the sporting
world in a way not previously encountered, Woods became not just a sporting
superstar but a worldwide icon.

In his book ‘The Chosen One’ (2001) David Owen cites a story told by Tiger
Woods father, Earl as to the moment that he knew that his son was to become a
great golfer, Owen relates, “One momentous day when he was still young enough
not to have mastered all the finer points of walking, he astonished his father by
climbing down from his high chair, picking up a baby sized plastic club and
executing a passable imitation of Earl’s quite good golf swing. At that moment, Earl
realised he was the steward of an extraordinary talent.”

This account of the development of talent has become the stuff of legend within the
ranks of the golf writer. To this extent many within the golfing media have sought to
take this narrative as a means to somehow make sense of the phenomenal
superiority of Tiger Woods over the game of golf. In so doing, it can be argued that
these commentators have created a popular belief that talent is evident in the very
young and that this can be used as a gauge for later sporting success. A study into
the development of expert performance by Ericsson et al (1993) recognises this
popular belief, they write:

“There is a relatively widespread conception that if individuals are innately

talented, they can easily and rapidly achieve an exceptional level of performance
once they have acquired basic skills and knowledge.”
(p. 366)

We have therefore seen that a popular belief has emerged within sport (and
especially within golf since the emergence of Tiger) that youngsters with a level of
ability at an early age should be seen as potential future champions and a vast
amount of interest and support is given to them in the pursuit of this aim.

To this extent we have seen media stories emerge with children as young as 2
years old being touted as the next big thing to hit the world of golf. Golf
competitions have emerged which cater for children as young as 5. Parents are
taking their children across the country to play in as many competitions as possible
and asking coaches for advice on ‘how their 4 year old can take their game to the
next level’. Moreover we see coaches jealously guarding their young protégés from
the advances of other coaches who purport to be able to ‘help them make it’.

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There is a suggestion that this way of thinking has also been prevalent in the wider
sporting landscape for some time. A number of sports and their respective
governing bodies have been working under the brief that they must ‘grab them
young’ in order to develop talent to succeed on the world stage. The emergence of
‘Mini Games’ such as ‘Short Tennis’ and ‘Kwik Cricket’, specifically targeted at
primary school aged children and the associated competition programmes aimed
at identifying talent which run alongside them demonstrates that these sports are
eager to recruit players into their ranks at younger and younger ages.

However, research suggests that this popular assumption may be flawed,

Davidson et al (1998) suggested that talent, while to some extent is partly innate is
not the only determinant to sporting excellence. Their contention was that early
experiences and the availability and opportunity of quality training and practice
were the real factors involved in the development of elite level performance. To
support this argument one can cite Ericsson and colleagues (1993) who conducted
a study which looked at the development of expert performance in a range of
disciplines including literature, art and music and identified the ’10,000 hour rule’.
They argued that this number of hours of ‘deliberate practice’ was a major
determining factor in expert performance. For both of these studies the conclusion
to be drawn was that the notion that an individuals’ capacity at an early age should
be the key indicator of future ability was flawed, the studies contended that a large
amount of time devoted to specific practice activity coupled with a number of other
supporting environmental factors were key in producing excellence.

Recently, theories have been proposed within the field of sports development
which have challenged this thinking. Balyi (2001) has developed the ‘Long Term
Athlete Development’ (LTAD) model which takes an ‘Athlete Centred’ approach to
talent development. The LTAD concept rejects some of the current models of
young athlete training and competition programmes, which are largely based on
chronological age, and instead seeks to identify the developmental stages of young
people and develop specific programmes of activity or training matched to these
developmental stages.

Balyi’s further contention is that the attempts by sports to recruit young and
encourage primary school aged children into sport specific activity can actually be
counter productive to the development of talent as it often leaves the participant
without some of the fundamental physical and cognitive capacities required for
success on the world stage. To this end Balyi’s work seeks to develop ‘Physical
Literacy’ within young people as the building blocks for later sports specific skill
development.

This thinking is furthered by Côté and Hay (2002a & b) who undertook studies of
young athletes and their development, they suggest that the early years of a child’s
development through sport should be characterised by ‘sampling’ with
‘specialisation’ in a given sporting domain being restricted to later stages of
development. Côté and Hay’s suggestion was that the early years of development
should be focused on what they classify as ‘deliberate play’, that is, play structured
by the rules and boundaries of organised sports, coupled with a small amount of
‘deliberate practice’ (Ericsson et al, 1993) would do more to develop and nurture
emerging talent and ensure that the potential for drop out is minimised. Thus as a
child gets older and develops a broader understanding of themselves as
individuals and their ability at given activities, then more time can be devoted to
practice and the true development of excellence.

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Lee et al (1995) offered further evidence against this early ability - early
specialisation concept when they suggested that young children’s definitions of
themselves and their interaction with the world around them is too underdeveloped
for them to be overly focussed on a single specific sport. They contended that as
children develop, so does their ability to accomplish tasks and they begin to
understand their capacities in relation to others around them. The argument was
made that if children are focussed on specific sports too early there is potential for
them to become disillusioned with their own standard of performance in relation to
others, with the further danger that they may evolve an overly restricted view of
their own ability leading either to demotivation, an artificially limited conception of
their ability or at worst complete drop out from the sport.

It seems then that there is a difficulty for anybody who is committed to the
development of golf in that on the one hand there is a pervasive cultural mindset
which suggests that having children start the game young will achieve results and
generate a new generation of champions. On the other hand there is a body of
research fuelled by academic study of elite sports performers which indicates that
this is precisely the opposite method for development. Instead, young people
should develop as young sports people through generic sports ability programmes
aimed at the development of key fundamental movement skills according to their
developmental capacity and that only at later stages should sports specific activity
be encouraged.

Golf is still reeling from the phenomenal emergence of Tiger Woods, his example
of development and subsequent dominance of the sport has become a powerful
symbol to follow by many. Furthermore the emergence of the precocious abilities of
Michelle Wie on the ladies golf scene has only served to further this thinking and
provide evidence for those who would suggest that starting young is the only
determinant for success. These examples coupled with the desire for companies
who are willing to pay vast sums of money to associate with young sporting talent
serves to create an environment which is extremely hostile to suggestions that
young people should not become sport specific too early.

What’s the future for our young golfers? There should be serious concern that we
are encouraging youngsters, overtly or tacitly (through our delivery system), to get
serious early, compete in the ever increasing number of golf competitions as much
as possible, get their handicap as low as they can as early as they can so that they
are picked up by the talent ID systems of the respective male and female golf
governing bodies to better enable their transition into the elite amateur ranks and
ultimately into a highly lucrative career as a professional golfer.

Based on the principles outlined in this article, The English Golf Union (EGU) and
the English Women’s Golf Association (EWGA) are working on a series of jointly
delivered initiatives aimed at maximising the talents of young golfers throughout
the country. The key principles behind the development of this national approach to
talent development which will provide support for young people from ‘Tri-Golf to
Tour’ or from ‘Playground to professional’ will be the subject of future articles in this
series.

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