Golf is a weird game. Playing well is actually fairly demanding physically (assuming you are walking). It requires core strength and good hand-eye coordination. But what makes golf truly weird is the mental dimension. Sure, all sports have a mental dimension. But golf is especially mental. If your head is not right, you will play terribly.
Every Shot Must Have A Purpose, by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott, is described early on as “a life philosophy, not merely a golf instruction book.” It is therefore relevant for anyone engaged in any complex and mentally demanding endeavor (read: investing). Given the nature of this blog, I’m going to focus on the broader relevance of the ideas in the book.
Summary
There are a handful of Big Ideas in this book:
- Focus on process, not outcome
- Learn to bring yourself from heightened emotional states back to neutral
- Trust your swing. It is your signature.
All of this is relevant for investors. Even the part about trusting your swing. I’ll take them in reverse order.
Trust Your Swing
On trusting your swing, Nilsson and Marriott write:
If you can hit the shots you want under pressure, your swing is working. What is important is to make up your mind what swing you believe in, and to have the discipline not to abandon that belief because of a bad round or two. To be in “search-and-scan” mode never works over time. Find your swing, trust it, and stay committed to it.
For the investor, your “swing” is your investing discipline. It is the value creation mechanism(s) that will compound the value of your capital over time.
Classical Ben Graham value investing is a swing form. Munger and Buffett-style value investing is a swing form. Momentum investing is a swing form. All of these swing forms “work” because they are fundamentally sound in terms of economic principles and investor behavior. Just like the golf swing “works” because it is grounded in the laws of physics.
What does not work very well is trying to time different styles to chase “what’s working” at a given point in time. This is the equivalent of trying to rebuild your golf swing from scratch after every round where you score poorly. Both are a recipe for poor future performance.
Bring Yourself Back To Neutral
It is fun to take a pitching wedge from 90 yards out and land a perfect strike six feet from the pin. When you hit a shot like that, you literally get high. But when you chunk a five iron thirty-five yards from a perfect lie in the middle of the fairway, you crash.
Experiencing wild emotional swings is not a recipe for consistent golf.
Likewise in investing, you get high when a stock doubles in three months. You crash when a name halves on some seemingly random exogenous event.
How many times have you hit your tee shot into the trees and then, in a fit of anger, tried to do too much with your second shot and ended up making a triple bogey? The disappointment with the drive leads you to attempt to erase the poor shot with one swing. And we all know how that works out. More often than not, a gamble is greeted with a ball clunking off a tree or remaining in the rough.
The frustrating thing is that on many of those occasions, when you looked back at the round you wondered why you didn’t just pitch back to the fairway and settle for a bogey–or maybe a one-putt par. Anger opens the door to a variety of mistakes: bad decisions, hesitant swings, rushed tempo, and even not seeing the line to the target clearly.
Consistent performance starts internally, with how you regulate your emotions. The goal isn’t to become a robot impervious to emotion. I don’t think such a thing is possible. And even if it is, it’s certainly not healthy. The goal is that whether you hit a good shot or a bad shot (whether an investment is a winner or a loser) you are able to bring yourself back to a neutral state of focus, where your attention is on executing the shot in front of you.
Focus On Process, Not Outcome
One of the reasons golfers–professionals as well as recreational players–can’t take their games from the range to the course is that, in the current practice culture, they are two different experiences. Just as we try to unify the mental with the mechanical aspects of the game, we also must try to erase the line between practice and playing. We want to teach you to play when you practice and practice when you play. In the end, it all has to be about executing golf shots with total commitment when it matters most. To do this you have to learn that playing needs to be a process focus and not score focus.
It’s not that different in investing. Particularly in situations where you have to make a buy/sell/hold decision under pressure. Thinking about the score (returns) doesn’t do any good here. If anything, you’ll fall victim to the disposition effect.
Who Should Read This Book
Anyone trying to improve her golf game should read this book. Investors and other professionals who golf (regardless of skill level–I think I am a 25 handicap) can also benefit from applying these concepts to areas outside the game. I would not recommend the book to non-golfers, as it’s hard to relate if you haven’t struggled through learning the game or fought through some difficult rounds.