PGA Tours: The Golf Success Formula Unlocked

There is a simple formula that can explain the level of success you have achieved in your life thus far. I was extremely fortunate to attend a business seminar more than twenty years ago where I first came across this amazingly simple formula and armed with it I have been able to improve many areas of my life and also those of my students.

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When I was starting out as a young golf professional I spent a great deal of my time practicing and trying to improve my golf skills without any form of success pathway to guide me.

"I always wondered why some golfers seemed to achieve more success than others given that in many cases the more successful golfer wasn't working at their game near as hard."

What was it that they were doing that seemed to make all the difference?

Some years later when I began my career as a full time golf instructor my mentor suggested that I start to attend business seminars to develop my golf teaching business. I took his advice and started to attend as many seminars as I could and listen to different experts discuss the best strategies for improving the bottom line of your business.

This suggestion and my subsequent action changed my life as I quickly realised that the business world is every bit as competitive as the professional golf tours and that business people were well schooled in understanding the process that led to business success.

It was at one of these seminars that a very famous business speaker and expert in developing human performance potential Brian Tracy revealed a simple formula for success that quite frankly changed the way I lived my life.

He started by writing the formula (to the right) on a white board and asked the audience to work out what they thought it meant.

After a lot of guesses he explained to the large audience that the formula was so simple and elegant that many people would simply pass it off as being simplistic and consequently many in the audience (before they left the seminar) would pay little to no attention to it, and he was absolutely correct.

"I sincerely hope that you will pay attention to it..."

I on the other hand wrote it down and really thought about it and in the beginning I believed that I understood what it meant, but I realised that the more I thought about it the more it revealed to me about what it takes to succeed.

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Was this the reason why Greg Norman was the dominant golfer in the World at the time? It made sense that he was doing things a little bit differently to everyone else. Of course the golf media described his extraordinary abilities on the golf course as God given gifts or rare talent and yet I knew that he started playing golf much later than other golfers and seemed to get better faster.

"Did the formula explain why he and other great golfers got so good so fast?"

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Greg Norman was producing outstanding results playing on the same golf course as many other highly skilled golfers and yet was able to dominate many of the events he played in. Tiger Woods has also had the ability to do this and as I studied the formula what became apparent was that the formula explained that the results they were producing were controlled by two elements; the effort they applied and the level of understanding they possessed.

V.J Singh got to number one in the world after forty years of age competing against tour professionals nearly half his age and he came from the small Island of Fiji. He wasn't a product of a traditional junior golf development background but he found a way to the top.

V.J has always had a reputation for working harder at his game than the mojority of his peers but I already knew that hard work helped.

This wasn't the complete answer...

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When you look at the formula you have Results at one end and Effort at the other. Applying effort to your game will produce a result, there's no doubt about it. The big question is, is it the result you desire. If the answer is no then we need to look at the middle part of the formula for guidance. The middle part of the formula is Understanding and in producing desireable results we need to develop the correct level of understanding to achieve them, or at the very least get closer to it.

One  definition of  understanding is that it's the limit of a concept. To understand something you have to be able to conceptualize it to a given measure. To not understand how to improve your golf score is the limit of your knowledge about how to improve your golf skills so that it would lead you to improvement in your golf score.

In his essay "The Limits of Reason", Gregory Chaitin, a noted computer scientist argues that understanding something means being able to figure out a simple set of rules that explains it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding)

When you hit a golf shot you are required to know how to play the shot. Your knowledge of how to play the shot determines to a great extent your level of understanding.

"What are the rules you use to to be able to hit a wedge shot from sixty yards out to within 10 feet of the pin 70 percent of the time?"

This amazing and simple formula will work for you one hundred percent of the time in your golf game or any other area of your life where your desire for improvement. Remember this though.

"Do not put effort into improving your golf game if you don't really know what you're doing."

Remember that the key is to realise that the result you desire requires that your level of understanding to be at least the same; and the effort you employ is designed to compliment the level of understanding and results you're striving for.

If you study and apply the formula r = u x e you will experience the results you want faster and more effectively than any other way. So give it a shot and let us know here at Pro Tour Golf College how the "Golf Success Formula" works for you.

Lawrie Montague

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