Early Specialization, (Un)Necessary For Golf Performance?
Recent findings on an age-old debate
Does early specialization in golf or a multi-sport upbringing lead to long-term performance excellence?
Perhaps the answer isn’t so black-and-white.
An interesting paper titled What Makes a Champion? Early Multidisciplinary Practice, Not Early Specialization, Predicts World-Class Performance, offers valuable answers to this age-old question.
The researchers sought to answer one simple question:
Does a focus on intensive specialized practice facilitate excellence, or is a more diversified, multidisciplinary practice background better?
The Two Hypotheses
The early-specialization hypothesis (ESH) holds that high-intensity, specialized golf coaching from an early age supports the rapid development of elite golf performance.
The early-diversification hypothesis (EDH) holds that a multi-sport upbringing combined with specialized golf coaching later in an adolescent’s development is optimal for fostering elite golf performance.
The Bottom Line
The authors found that…
Most successful juniors do not become successful seniors, whereas most of the successful seniors were not as successful in former junior competitions.
While early specialization often leads to rapid success, the potential for long-term improvement is limited.
In contrast, those who achieved success at the senior level didn’t thrive during their junior career.
An Alternative Hypothesis
The authors’ conclusions seem to support the EDH. However, they argue that neither the ESH nor the EDH can explain their findings.
They propose three interrelated hypotheses.
First, playing multiple sports is associated with a lower risk of overuse injuries and burnout.
World-class senior athletes may have reached that level in part because they were less encumbered by injury or burnout.
Second, gaining experience in multiple sports helps an athlete identify a sport that they excel at.
Athletes who engage in multiple sports during early athletic development are more likely to find the sport that best matches their talents and preferences. Athletes who discover their optimal sports match are more likely to be world-class athletes than if they select and focus on a less-than-optimal sports match.
While there are examples of world-class golfers that went all-in on golf from an early age (eg. Tiger Woods), they are the exception, not the rule.
A minority of athletes became senior world-class athletes despite specializing early…those few successful early-specializing athletes likely either selected their optimal sport without sampling by luck or were talented in multiple sports, one of which was their selected sport.
Third, playing multiple sports creates more varied learning experiences from a young age. This supports specialized skill development later on.
More varied earlier learning experiences facilitate later long-term domain-specific skill learning and refinement.
It also helps adolescents identify learning strategies that work best for them.
…experience of greater variation in learning methodologies may provide an athlete with enhanced opportunities to understand the principles that lead to individually more or less effective learning, which facilitates the development of the elite athlete’s competencies for self-regulation in learning.
Coach-Led Practice is Important
Not all practice is created equal. Simply playing a variety of sports without any coaching is not beneficial for long-term performance.
…multisport coach-led practice but not youth-led play in various sports facilitated long-term senior performance.
Talent Development Pathways
Golf talent development pathways (TDP), promote early achievement.
If you’re not flourishing in AJGA events while garnering attention from college coaches, you’re deemed to be lagging behind.
Ironically, while TDPs intend to help golfers achieve long-term success, they don’t.
…early TDP involvement correlated negatively with senior world-class performance, indicating that early selection and involvement in TDPs is neither necessary nor beneficial to long-term senior success.
In other words, competing in AJGAs, being selected for a regional/national squad, or being recruited by Division I coaches are not prerequisites for golfing success.
It is a rather paradoxical situation for TDPs.
These sports organizations make a choice, which may or may not be conscious and well informed: to reinforce rapid junior success at the expense of long-term senior success or to facilitate the long-term development of senior performance at the expense of early junior performance.
The structure of most TDPs rewards early specialization.
Parents adopt an early specialization approach to help their child “keep up”. Otherwise, their child will miss out on development opportunities.
…the selection strategy will likely have a “radiating” effect, encouraging reinforced specialized practice among all the young athletes who aspire to be admitted to TDPs or to receive a sports scholarship.
We think that rankings such as the Global Junior Golf Rankings or Junior Golf Scoreboard Rankings are valid indicators of a junior golfer’s future success.
However, this is likely not the case.
no one has yet been able to devise a test that can accurately measure the potential or talent of an individual…it's impossible to apply a single metric or one-dimensional scale to something as intricate and multifaceted as human development. And yet we as a society measure, rank, and sort ourselves more than ever before.1
Conclusion
Adopting an early-specialization approach to golf seems logical at first glance.
However, a multidisciplinary and diversified practice background supports long-term golf development.
Progress is not linear, and success is never guaranteed.
The following passage summarizes the key points well.
…the amount of multisport practice was a critical factor in discriminating between adult world-class athletes and their national-class counterparts. Senior world-class performers engaged in more coach-led practice in sports other than their main sport during childhood/adolescence and, relatedly, began playing their main sport later, accumulated less main-sport practice and reached performance milestones at a slower rate than national-class performers. That is, senior world-class athletes who began their main sport early and specialized are the exception, not the rule.”
Karlgaard, R. (2020). Late bloomers: The hidden strengths of learning and succeeding at your own pace.