Golf and Memory

Walked the front nine at Magnolia Country Club today. I've been playing golf for 3.5 years now and I don't keep score most times; I like to replay my bad shots. Of the many things I think about on the golf course one is how much I remember about each round. For instance, I could easily and accurately report every shot I took today. On the other hand, I would have a lot of trouble accurately describing the rest of my day. Memory for golf could be a fun topic to research.

Here's what I did on the first hole. I did not warm up or take any practice swings. I hit my tee shot with a driver. It rose to about 40 feet, flew about 200 yards, faded just a little, and landed about 90 yds from the pin. It was an ideal first shot. I had hopes of dropping a high 9 iron onto the green at this point. Although my second shot traveled about 90 yards, I bladed it and it went low and to right of the hole about 20 yards and landed on the wrong side of the cart path. My short game is deficient (as you will soon see) but I decided to hit a lob wedge anyway. My third shot traveled all of 10 ft, as did my fourth and fifth. I picked up my ball and marched to the second tee. By the end of nine holes, I decided to practice my short game more. Now, my lob wedge is residing behind the seat of my truck, ready for practice at any time.

The point is that I could provide this level of detail for all nine holes I played today. Could I do it as accurately a week from now? What about if I played a few more rounds in the next few days? Would they retroactively interfere with my memory of today's round? (As I write, I'm trying to remember how I played the first hole the round before today. It's much fuzzier. So, I predict that my most accurate memories will be for the latest round and that intervening rounds will negatively affect recall. I'm ready to experiment.)

Time to quit blogging and to get back to drafting the Instructor's Manual. Tonight's topic is within-subjects designs, which, appropriately enough, fits nicely with my golf research :-) Let me practice my new line, "Honey, I've got to collect data at the golf course again."