Mark:
Oh, I think touring pros certainly do have options! I don't know exactly what Pat Mucci meant when he said they don't have or don't use options. I'm sure he doesn't mean they totally disregard their options and have only one single way of playing. It's just that the options they do use and consider are significantly more fine-lined and sophisticated than what we think about as options. But they are definitely meaningful options to them--very much so!
Touring pros certainly do use what they call their "game plans" which is a basic course management outline or plan for how they want to or think they need to play a course any given day or round. That doesn't mean they don't use or don't consider options, it's just that their options are also considerably more preplanned then ours are. But they are certainly capable of reconsidering them, altering them at any time considering various situations.
For anyone who has never really analyzed or paid attention to how a Tour player and his caddy go about a 72 hole tournament or any particular phase of it would probably be quite surprised.
I guess the amount of information available to them at all times would probably surprise some, maybe not. However, the way they go about it in a shot by shot context always surprised me in how apparently casual they are about their choices and execution.
Unless in a highly meaningful situation they also make their decisions and execute quite quickly. There usually is little indecision all of which probably indicates how good they really are and how confident they are in what they can do. When a tough time comes though they do slow down far more than we might!
Mostly tour pros who are playing well sort of coast along in a real "percentage mode" weighing most carefully the factors of what not to do. They are acutely aware of the yardages to danger areas everywhere and are generally given approach yardages to front, back, pin and the short side of the pin, as well as the yardage to the spot they want to hit the ball, whatever that might be! Interestingly Tour pros don't consider the yardage to the middle of the green like almost all of use fixate on unless there's some other particular reason to do so!
Mostly that's what they mean when they talk about "patience" or "staying patient" or even "staying in the moment". "Staying in the moment" to them probably means it's Thursday or Friday, not Sunday afternoon so don't think it is and play in that mode which may have different options and choices.
To most of us "staying in the moment" probably means more to try to concentrate on what it takes to hit a good shot and how not to get nervous or freaked by doubt or some external situation on that shot. If tour pro playing well thinks about anything on shot mechanics it's probably just some general mundane thing that might surprise even us in its simplicity. Woods appears to be a bit different in this way in his ability to filter more mechanics through though while playing!
I think Tour pros very much have options, just not our type of options. To them I believe real tournament strategy is how to get to Sunday afternoon somewhere around contention. We certainly hear them say that enough. The rest of it, and what we call options are probably no more than tactical considerations that involved almost rote-like execution to them!