Undercover Tour Pro

The battle of dumb versus smart

- Max Adler

An agent—not mine—once told me his secret for success was to recruit golfers who were “really smart or really stupid.” Average intelligence, he believed, had a strong correlation with average careers. Implicit in his confiding this was that he held me in the former category.

Sometimes I wish I were in the latter. I don’t believe there’s a sport where more information is thrown at the athlete than golf. To have an unthinking nature can be a huge blessing. You can just disregard all the TrackMan and ShotLink data and go play. Of the top-125 players in the world, maybe 30 operate in this state of blissful ignorance, and there are at least four or five in the current top 20. The following is a teebox interaction I overheard between one such player and his caddie, who’s no Mensa candidate, either.

PLAYER “How far to carry that bunker?”

CADDIE “310.”

PLAYER “But we’re up a tee box from yesterday.”

CADDIE “Oh, yeah . . . 340. No way to carry it.”