Following is an excerpt from our Double Connexion eBook/CDRom

Postscript

It has taken longer than those of us at KeyGolf expected for golfers to give serious consideration to playing the game literally on automatic. A few have put the principles we uncovered to work with outstanding results. Others have toyed with the idea and missed the point. A half-and-half approach, a mixture of mechanical and passive thinking during shot execution, attempted by a few, merely cancels itself out, and will settle on the manual format. Still others have taken short-cuts. They seem to want the benefits without the effort. Some oversimplify the process. The "I've-got-to-control-this-at-all-costs" group tries to change something and manages to interfere with the basic principle. That's like messing with the Windows Registry in your computer if you aren't fully informed about what you are doing.

A few of the "short-cut" group have tried even to adapt the keys for their long games and omitted them with chipping and putting. That's a little like using a hockey stick for the slap shots and your skate blade around the net. At best, it assumes that golf is totally divided into long and short games and that what works in one won't work in the other. The beauty and advantage in basic principles in life comes from their transferability. If it won't work all the time, it's not basic. If it's totally transferrable, it is not only basic, but universal. Clear Keys fill that bill.

It has been the exception that some have gone the full distance with their clear keys. A large share of those were junior players and ladies. Juniors usually have not yet been mentally raided by all the "stuff" out there. Ladies are less likely than men to distrust something new or fear it becuase it is different and simple. Older players generally won't talk about it even if they are doing it. Sounds so unsophisitcated to some that they might be embarrassed by admitting to it, and others just don't want the competition to share their edge. A conversation with an unnamed (I do prefer to protect the anonymity of those who would rather have it that way) PGA Tour player at the Buick Open several years ago indicated that he had quit clear keys for awhile, but realized he did better with them, so he was returning to the process. (He is a Driver, by the way).

Most players, however, remain uninformed, or partially so. Those usually have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. The flood of fragmented presentations and partial references that tumble through the media play on their susceptibility. But, don't assume that statement is just for amateurs. It's true of professionals, too.

Go to the archives and check the series (1990) on the mental game in Golf Digest. There's another in the same vein in the July, 1990 Golf Illustrated. Yet another on "chokers" appeared in what was then a new publication from Britain, Golf Monthly, Vol.1, no.5, also 1990. All are fragmentations of principle, opinion and value judgment. The internet is resplendent with repetitive, incomplete, highly marketed such fragmentations, along with promises of success that simply won't fly. (Maybe for a couple of rounds and then it will be back to the drawing board, another tape, book or guru).

Don't be distracted by those dates, though. Recent visits (1999-2000) to internet sites, such as the online Senior Golfer Magazine, show that there are countless ways of saying the same things. If we filled in the spaces over that decade, it would be with similar drifts. The only significant changes show up in authorship.

At KeyGolf, we once thought that it was just a short time till players and teachers would see the larger dimension in the mental game. Our thought was that everyone would want to make it to the next level of learning and playing. More recently, it has become apparent that it will take much longer than we thought. The vital, missing links in the theater of the mental game and golf psychology are simply still too great to gain full maturity and usefulness. Of course, so long as the new books on the shelves and the journals on the racks continue pumping old refrains, it may stay that way. Editors and publishers will conspire to that end, too. Economics is a heavy taskmaster.

Since 1982, KeyGolf steadily studied and uncovered a new dimension. The results of that are substantial in nature. There is a fully appointed and researched knowledge base and methodology. We know what it looks like, how it works and why. That, however, has earned little more than a blank stare from most of the game's leading advocates. We suppose that comes either from a lack of information or, perhaps, from a political/economic motive. We hope it is only the former. Otherwise, the golfing community will be stuck with outmoded ideas and practices. Indeed they persist in proclaiming standards that manage to crumble easily, especially under pressure. Or as Johnny Miller refers to it, the "WOOD" method is the one most used. "Works only one day."

Surfing the net recently uncovered posting from 1999 repeating the "muscle memory" theme as a key to learning. It is with great difficulty that we try to understand why so few have seen through that term. "Muscle memory" produces a deceptive picture. Many continue to pay it "gospel" homage anyway. Thinking that muscles are able to "remember," huge numbers of players beat balls at variously suggested rates. They have been led to expect that eventually, their muscles will "memorize" the motion. Not true. Muscles can be physically conditioned - Yes. But to think we can leave templates of memory on muscle tissue - No. It's that kind of confusion that keeps natural talent under wraps and derails true development. Still, if you ask, someone will tell you that folks prefer the term "muscle memory."

Also constantly resurfacing on the web are strong advocacies for "target" golf. Golfers are urged to focus on targets in the distance while hitting their shots. Apparently no one wants to notice that such a focus has much more chance of promoting anxiety than it does accuracy, unless you use target focus only in pre-shot. Over the ball target concentration hides the non-discriminatory blocking action likely to be inspired by anxiety, as explained elsewhere in this book. You already know what anxiety does to rhythm, natural motion, and pace in swinging. Hopefully you also know that If you want to encourage the yips, just keep your attention on the target. If anyone tells you different, encourage them to take a course in physiology.

At least the internet now tells us that it has finally become popular to suggest that players use a "different" thinking mode at the moment of shot execution from what is applied during pre-shot. But it still misses a point. The recommended procedure aims at an "empty" mental moment. Even a student of the most elementary psychology understands the impossibility of that notion. It keeps on being touted for golf nonetheless. Is there no end to our willingness to surrender to archaic, incomplete notions in lieu of valid, tested principles?

At best, it is toilsome to find and open new pathways for ideas, especially when they threaten existing philosophical, political and economic positions in life. Perhaps it's time to break through that barrier.

If KeyGolf had not made a bit of "noise" about the mental game, the puzzle surrounding the failure of golf psychology to come up with any new insights might have resolved itself as simply "a matter of no record." Nobody else made a case even though it appeared everyone was looking.

There are likely several reasons the Automatic Principle and the Clear Key process have not yet "made the front pages." One stands out like the proverbial wolf in the midst of a flock of sheep.

While it may seem miles from the golf course, and eons from your expectations, a movie we saw several years ago highlights the matter clearly - "Tucker," based on the true story of the man and his dream.

If you saw the movie, or heard about it, you know that Tucker had creative, innovative ideas, which have long since come to pass, been vindicated, and even legislated. At the time, they were new and different and they upset both the social register and the automobile barons. As Tucker put it, if Benjamin Franklin came along with his kite today, he would be arrested for disturbing the status quo.

Tucker had a vision for his automobile, with the consumer in mind - seat belts, rear engine, aerodynamic design, multiple safety features. The establishment cut him down. Economics, politics, power, control, and, yes, even embarrassment were the "hidden agenda."

Who wants to find out, let alone admit, that all the time they were saying the world was flat, it was really round? When you've made several million dollars with the idea of "killing" the competition, who wants to hear that win-win is a better way? What happened to trains when planes came along? How much energy has been consumed on obsolescence?

Tucker was "long-gone" before his innovations made it through the maze of arrogance symbolized in the courtroom scenes of the movie where he faced the bastions of tradition and self-investment.

We have already grown accustomed to a similar noise that hangs around our Clear Keys. Before "automatic" is generally understood and recognized for its value in shot-making and playing the game, it will have to endure inaccuracies, omissions and diversions from "established authorities."

Before it is accepted, by players, media, office-holders, "keepers" of sport psychology, and any others who might wind up having to say, " Gee, that's so simple...why didn't I think of it?," it will have to survive some doubt and mishandling. And that may be the bottom line. It will be a while before the traditional perception of the mental game gets beyond the platitudes that have been institutionalized by the game's pontificates.

Today, it's a safe bet that most people don't know, or care that steam engines, gravity, automobile safety, flying, space exploration, a variety of medical procedures and electricity were objects of ridicule and prejudice long before they became so commonplace that we could casually take them for granted. And let's not forget that it took from 400 BC till 1927 for the validity of Hippocrates' studies of human behavior to make the scene.

All finally made it because the people who championed them could measure the difference between a "garden path" and the world of principled reality. The odds didn't matter and opinion couldn't distract them.

It's beginning to look like Clear Keys may have a similar fate, but they are in good company, even if they wind up only on the author's tombstone.

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