By Forrest Blake
After watching the moving Beautiful Mind, I began researching John Nash’s Nobel prize winning thesis on game theory. It will be very difficult to condense all of his brilliance into a concise email. My goal is to give you a few good points to think about out of the volumes of information I have reviewed.
Nash believed that the human mind could accomplish anything with mathematical ideas. We are going to focus on his strategy from his perspective. Nash describes cooperative games to mean a situation involving a set of players, pure strategies, and payoffs. He visualized a transaction as the outcome of either a process of negotiation or else independent strategizing by individuals each pursuing his or her own interest. Instead of defining a solution directly, he suggested developing a strategy that ask what reasonable condition would need to be satisfied, given the any division of gains. He then posited four conditions and, using an ingenious mathematical argument, showed that, if the axioms (needs of the parties) held, then unique solution existed that maximized the product of the participants’ utilities. Essentially, he reasoned, how gains are divided reflects how much the transaction is worth to each party and what other alternatives each have. This gives him the highest possibility of successes by mathematically analyzing the likelihood of the individual result. Therefore, predicting the future outcome of any negotiations.
Clearly, golf is a game. Does the Game Theory apply? The answer is . . . YES. If we visualize the outcome of any round based on historical situations, then the result will be similar to the last 100 rounds we played. The only way you change the equilibrium of your golf game is to change the strategy. This could be taking a course management lesson or changing your swing at GolfTEC. It possibly, might be as simple as changing the environment and taking a vacation in Scotland.
“If you’re going to develop exceptional ideas, it requires a type of thinking that is not simply practical thinking.” John Nash
The first day of the week creates fear just like in golf. Fear is a major component in every shot for every golfer, from the experienced to the beginner. Many of us develop more intense fear as the game becomes more difficult and our desire to win escalates.
I asked myself what would happen if I settled into a shot, then looked up and imagined a different hole, ignoring the voluminous water that was ready to swallow up my ball. The idea of being able to handle my fear by a simple switch in perceptive was fascinating.
It is Monday and there are so many things to do on the task list as a CEO of three companies GolfTEC SoCal, Fairway Vacations and MyGolfPeople. This brings up apprehension and fear of failure. Can I get this done? What happens if I don’t get back to that person? Am I going to hit that constantly moving budget? How am I going to make my house payment?
Take a deep breath and change your mindset from fear to accomplishment. The only way to do this is to look at each item as stand-alone tasks. Just like in golf. If you focus on one shot at a time, the overall pressure disappears. It is only when you fret about being on the 6th hole with 12 more to go that we feel the fear of performance.
This change in perspective will not happen overnight. When we experience fear, this can be a great place to learn unique ways to overcome it. One shot at a time.
These are some of the pictures from our Fairway Vacations trip to Scotland with GolfTEC.
When I played this hole with FairwayVacations.com I went ahead and hit Drive and it rolled all the way to the green. Here is what the Caddy told me. The ideal position for the opening tee shot is on the high ground to the left side of the fairway. Any drive leaking right will leave a blind approach for the second shot. The approach shot can be played to the left of the green as the natural contours will kick the ball in towards the flag.
A few weeks ago I stood on the tee at Carnoustie Golf Links with a group from my company Fairway Vacations. This is where the Womens British Open is being played this weekend.
The Championship Course that they are playing was originally laid out in ONLY 1840 BY Allan Robertson, with mahor changes being introuduced later by Old Tom Morris. This cours is difficult, but fair, and always rewards good play.
Here are a few pictures of our group on the 18th hole.
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