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There might be a number of things you could feel as you do this exercise. For instance, you might feel the turn of your shoulders on the backswing, or the strength of your grip on the club, or the lifting of your forward heel toward the end of the backswing.

Now, in your mind, vary the way you moved. If your movements were quick, slow them down; if slow, speed them up. If you were exerting a lot of energy and pressure, relax the effort; if you weren’t, increase the tension of your muscles. While varying those feelings, notice what happens to the quality of your performance. Does your swing get better or worse? As Sherlock Holmes, continue to identify and make mental notes of the feelings that made your performance so good.

Equally as important as the muscular feelings that were associated with setting up and swinging the club are the emotional feelings you had while, not after, you were actually hitting the ball. Those bodily sensations represent the mood or state you were in. Feel them again. Perhaps they were feelings of lightness, fluttering, tingling, warmth, tension, or pulsing that were present in parts of your body. Vary the intensity of these emotional feelings and find out what happens to the quality of the shot. Does it get better or worse when you increase or decrease the intensity? What is the amount of intensity that is just right for making that shot the best possible?

Putting It All Together

After you’ve gone through seeing, listening, and feeling, have some fun with reliving that past performance. Pretend you’ve got a videotape of it, and watch it while using the variable speed and direction buttons on the video control.

First, run the tape twice as fast as normal, then four times as fast, and then bring the speed back to normal. In addition, slow the tape down to half speed and then to one frame at a time. Be sure to bring the tape back up to normal speed. With each variation in speed carefully pay attention, as before, to discovering new visual, auditory, and kinesthetic clues that were essential for hitting the ball so well.

Now run the tape in reverse—in normal, slow, and fast motion—again looking for clues. Finish up by running the tape forward again, analyzing and evaluating your performance in light of what you’ve discovered.

Before reading any further, go through the entire Sherlock Holmes Exercise now.

SHERLOCK HOLMES EXERCISE

Go to a quiet room. With experience you’ll be able to do it out on the practice range or course.

Remember a specific shot that you hit during a round.

See everything you can see about the shot; hear everything you can hear about the shot; feel everything you can feel about the shot.

Vary what you see (from color to black and white, from fuzzy to clear); change the sounds (from loud to soft, from pleasant to unpleasant); alter your feelings from relaxed to tense).

Remember the details. Write them down if it’ll help. Judge what seems most important.

Reactions to the Sherlock Holmes Exercise

Although there are some typical sensory cues that most golfers pay attention to while they’re making a shot, each person has his or her own way of processing and giving meaning to sensory information. There are no right or wrong sensory cues for playing golf. It’s what you do with them that’s important.

To help you understand how professional golfers process information, I’ll share with you what I learned from some of them when they did the Sherlock Holmes Exercise. Their mental processes are often unusual and quite sophisticated.

What the Pros See—the Internal V’s

Former U.S. Open and PGA Champion David Graham sees images of past shots as he decides how to make the shot facing him.

Touring pro Danny Edwards checks his setup as if he is facing himself. For a second or two he mentally steps outside his body, almost into the gallery, and looks back. When Danny is convinced that everything about his setup is okay from that perspective, he hops back inside and lets the ball fly. Lon Hinkle, another