"Let's try to stay on Barney's topic, albeit a highly bizarre topic and question: I think what he was getting at was that everybody has an inflated version of their golf games and are therefore poseurs who ought to just accept reality.
Well, I sure as hell can't disagree with that. You've officiated enough amateur events to know that's the case. 3/4 of the fields doesn't break 80. Even among better players, most guys basically stink. Do you disagree?"
Shivas:
No, I don't disagree with that.
Most on here have no real idea what competitive pros, tour pros and even good amateurs are thinking about out there.
Some on here tend to totally over-analyze what not only goes through their minds but what should go through the minds of even semi-hackers.
One thing really good players know how to do a thousand times better than hackers who over-analyze everything is to manage their expectations. Hackers who over-analyze their own games and strategies have no idea at all what really good players are thinking about strategically. Some semi-hacker ultra strategic over-analyzers like a David Moriarty are imagining strategies and expectations that even a good tour pro wouldn't bother with. If you sit down and talk to really good players about what they're trying to do you'd find out most all the time they're just trying to keep things pretty simple. That really is a concept most all semi-hacker over analyzers seem to fail to understand.
A good example of that is something from Peter Jacobsen to an old hacker at my club some years ago.
This guy asked Jacobsen breathlessly in a clinic;
"Peter, Peter, when you're coming down the stretch on Sunday in a championship I just can't imagine all the strategic things that are going through your mind. Would you explain some of them to us?"
(this guy had a hearing aid on, by the way). Jacobsen looked at that and said to the guy:
"What are you connected to, the tower at the Philadelphia airport? I think about putting the ball somewhere in the fairway, somewhere on the green and hopefully making a decent putt."