 Have you ever had one of those days where the hole looks as big as a bucket and you just can't miss? Or those other days when it looks the size of a 10c piece and you can't buy a putt? Turns out both are true and it's got nothing to do with the hole itself.
Jessica Witt, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, is researching athlete perception and its role in performance and her findings on golf are intriguing to say the least.
The golf hole is 10.8cm in diameter and traditional thinking on human perception dictates that visual stimulus is the only input into how we perceive things. If that's the case, then we should always perceive the hole to be the same size.
But Jessica's research has shown that's not the case. Using 46 golfers who had just completed their rounds Jessica showed them a large sheet of paper with nine black holesf illustrated on it ranging in size from 9cm to 13cm. She asked the players to identify which one was the golf hole and the results were astounding.
"The players who had the best scores that day chose holes that were bigger than the actual hole and the players who didn't score so well chose holes that were smaller," she told Inside Social Golf.
"We have done similar research in other areas and found the same thing. Softball batters who were playing well would choose a softball bigger than the real thing and those not playing well would choose one smaller.
"It challenges the idea that the visual input we have is the only thing that dictates perception. It seems a bit more complex than that."
While this initial study raises more questions than it answers Jessica has a couple of theories about how it might relate to the way humans are hardwired.
"When you see the hole as bigger you might be telling yourself you can relax and freewheel and when it looks smaller maybe you're telling yourself you need to focus and concentrate more," she says.
"But really what the research has done is give us a starting point for further research. If we can work out some perceptual tricks to make the hole look bigger all the time and help performance that way that would be one thing
"But we also want to explore what's happening in the brain in relation to perception and what's hapening there. We're really just at the start of the process but one day we hope we can use it to help people improve their performance."
In the meantime, try tricking yourself into believing the hole is bigger than it is. It can't hurt and it just might help (and if you manage to pull it off Jessica will probably want to talk to you!)
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