Golf: The Path to Perfection

When the British Open was contested at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in 1998, Justin Rose, a 17-year-old English amateur, finished in fourth place after holing a 40-yd. (36 m) pitch shot on the final hole. The defining image of the tournament was of Rose smiling at the heavens after his improbable shot, his arms raised in jubilation. Pundits and players alike predicted that he would be golf's next great champion.

But as miraculously as it appeared, Rose's form deserted him. After Birkdale, he went on to miss 21 consecutive cuts in professional tournaments, trailing the leaders by such a distance that it seemed he might never again make it to the final day of play. His slump sent him searching. He started out by hiring one of the great experts on golf technique, David Leadbetter, who showed him how the mechanism of his swing could be broken down into components that could be rebuilt for greater reliability. Then, in 2006, Rose hired Nick Bradley, a Buddhist who told him that successful golf incorporates elements of reincarnation, as the completion of each shot sets up a new beginning for the next one. Now 27, Rose has finally emerged as one of Europe's top golfers, and is among the favorites to win when the Open returns to Birkdale, near Liverpool, on July 17.

Rose's employment of both swing doctors and spiritual gurus on his return to top form is not unusual for a professional golfer; the debate over whether the game is best mastered through technical engineering or mental fine-tuning may be more pertinent to this sport than to any other. When Tim Gallwey published The Inner Game of Golf in 1979, in which he documented the division of a golfer's psyche into a "thinking" and a "feeling" self, he articulated what lovers of the game have long understood: there are two approaches to becoming a great golfer, and each appeals to a certain type of personality.

The first approach emphasizes order and precision, and appeals to tinkerers and mechanically minded players such as former Open champions Nick Faldo and Ben Hogan, who dedicated their lives to studying the angles and positions of an accurate swing. The latter approach embraces more poetical notions like rhythm, focus and visualization, and is exemplified by "feel" players such as the Texan Ben Crenshaw, who credited his 1995 U.S. Masters victory to the mental strength instilled in him by his golf mentor Harvey Penick, and who mused mysteriously that the U.S. Ryder Cup team won in 1999 because "there was something in the trees."

These two approaches can result in absurdity when taken to extremes. Professional practice ranges are lined with golfers hitting balls while standing on one foot or rigged up to mechanical swing aids such as metal arm braces or restrictive leg harnesses, all under the watchful eye of their earnest swing coaches. At the same time, no sport attracts more mental mumbo jumbo. Leadbetter says Argentina's Eduardo Romero credits his late-career success to yogic breathing during his swing. Spain's Ignacio Garrido said his win in the 2003 European PGA Championship stemmed from "practicing less, reading more" — particularly the works of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra. And Nick Bradley, Rose's Buddhist coach, told TIME that he advises his pupil to remember in the heat of battle that "even at a rock concert there's silence, if you take the noise away."

The great golfers of each generation fuse the two approaches. Tiger Woods regularly reassembles his golf swing — sometimes midround — if he feels his technique needs tweaking. But as the son of a Green Beret father and a Buddhist mother, he brings to the game an idiosyncratic brand of mental resilience and focus that is unmatched by his rivals. When Tiger was 13, his father, Earl Woods, hired a Navy clinical psychologist who reportedly used interrogation techniques to test the boy's concentration. "I tried to break him down mentally," Earl once said. "I tried to intimidate him."

Woods will skip the Open this year to recover from knee surgery, improving the odds that one of the nearly-greats of golf might win. But even without Woods, Birkdale will provide an intimidating test of emotional fortitude and technical acumen. Colin Montgomerie, who finished second to Woods in the 2005 Open at St. Andrews, says British links courses such as Birkdale magnify the inherent capriciousness of golf, demanding extraordinary patience and equanimity in the face of fickle conditions. In contrast to American courses, the rough in Britain is typically not uniform, leading to inconsistent results for errant shots. What's more, the weather along Britain's coasts can change so quickly that golfers teeing off in the afternoon may find themselves playing in completely different conditions than competitors who started earlier in the day. At Birkdale in 1998 Woods lost his chance for victory when he caught the worst of the weather on the second day, struggled to a 73, and eventually lost to veteran tour pro Mark O'Meara by a single shot.

Blustery weather places equally stringent demands on a golfer's technique. Like serves in tennis or free throws in basketball, golf shots are unusual in that they start from a point of total stillness. In fact, this stillness occurs twice in the swing — once before the take-away of the club and then again at the top of the swing. This latter pause is crucial, as this is when the golfer initiates the all-important downward motion toward the ball. While a golfer can self-correct during the backswing, it's almost impossible to do so after the downswing has begun. This period of vulnerability in the swing is particularly exposed in the windy conditions of the Open — a strong gust can blow a stationary club raised above the shoulders out of the correct position. Of course, a lot else can go wrong during that pause at the top of the swing; doubts can creep in, and a player can twitch at the key moment — a disaster when millimeters of variation in the angle of the clubface lead to yards of dispersion in the flight of the ball. To avoid such errors, a blend between the two approaches is necessary: whoever wins at Birkdale will have consistently succeeded in maintaining the correct technical position while also holding his nerve.

Like athletes in all major sporting events, golfers at the Open undertake this challenge with the added pressure of intense scrutiny: spectators, TV cameras and journalists dissect every aspect of their game, and up-to-the-second scoreboards offer players the strange meta-drama of watching their own performance unfold in front of them. That said, British Open courses such as Birkdale tend to be more sparsely decorated than the courses on which U.S. majors are played: with fewer scoreboards and no JumboTrons, the Open reminds competitors that golf is essentially a lonely sport, designed to be played over a large expanse, often in wind and rain. This feeling of isolation is intensified at Birkdale, where fairways run through valleys carved out of sand dunes. Playing among Birkdale's shadows and swales for the first time, says Leadbetter, "is like playing on the moon."

As they venture across this alien landscape, players must seek through technique and concentration a peculiarly thrilling reward: the perfect control of a ball's trajectory over hundreds of yards, through contact that lasts less than a split second. When it all goes right, as it did for Justin Rose on the final hole at Birkdale a decade ago, no sport offers a greater sensation of mastery. It is this elusive joy that explains the golfer's endless pursuit of perfection. As Leadbetter says, "That's what it's all about in golf: the quest."