| Show instinct Is guide of the great by GRANTLAND RICE MCH IS THE MAIN factor in W WHICH sport competition direct abou the subconscious mind much success belongs to quick brain work and how much to insul tion to help settle this issue we called in the patriarch of b brain rain waves the th same being john kieran who in his day was a high class com corn orant Crant grantland land rice at Ford fordham harn and who needs no further comment when it comes to at matter of brain action the subconscious mind according to kieran does most of the work the brain cant work with the speed needed to handle too many situations for example a jockey has less than a fifth of a second on many occasions to decide whether he must go inside or stay outside A ted williams will often wait until the ball Is within 15 feet of the plate before he decides to swing or not to swing that Is another fifth of T second decision some brains of f course work faster than others but bat there are few that can work with split second speed to in making a decision subconscious action takes taken over or intuition or whatever you want to call it 11 both eddie arcaro and ted atkinson bear out this angle in regard to racing ill be moving up arcaro sal said I 1 and suddenly theres an opening to the th left I 1 time to size things up your intuition acts for you and sometimes your intuition can be wrong you can use your brain in mapping out a race in advance but once you get into fast action youve got to depend a lot on your reflexes or your intuition are the products of experience in fact I 1 think this is where experience counts most I 1 mean in giving you the right intuition boxing follows the same rine line A younger fighter in bis his prime sees an opening and punches at practically the same instant or be sees see a punch coming nd andl ducks later on be he ta Is just as smart ills lus brain Is just as good as it was years before but his subconscious action has slowed down his intuitive action has BA gone gon rusty co so ha he punches for the opening too late or he quite duck in time joe jo louis louls for example had as good a brain in 1948 as he had in 1938 1038 but though he kept catching walcott in 1948 1918 his subconscious reactions were too slow to tor land a knockout knock out punch applied to golf now golf is a game J kieran continued that should be played with a subconscious mind entirely but it the ne ball moving so there is the deadly temptation to start thinking what club to use etc this is when the trouble begins remember that round watts gunn had in the amateur at oakmont in 1925 1 I think watts lost the first five holes I 1 know he was being murdered then suddenly he seemed to settle into a trance and he won the next 15 h holes oles 15 holes in a row 1 I talked to him later and watts admitted he remember a thing that had happened in those 15 holes F 1 I never thought of anything be he said 1 I just kept swinging the club head iwas I 1 was in a sort of mental groove there was certainly no conscious effort in anything gunn did he went sailing through until he met bobby jones in the final round where neither conscious nor subconscious effort was of any use direct thought or brain action has certainly wrecked many a round of golf solf kieran continued if it a f ellow fellow could just step up to a ball and think about nothing at all as he swung the tb club head scores would take a terrific dive heres another thought along these lines kieran reported ive known a lot of baseball and football players many of these not all of them 1 I call too smart I 1 sa say gay their brains were too agile although they had bad their share chare of good sense ive seen these fellows make few mistakes they were generally where they should have been some instinct seemed to guide them thern I 1 know tt sharp thinking trying to think on n tha the th other hand ive known extremely intelligent players G 1 I mean inteR intelligent igent ott oft the field who always seemed to be pulling some boner or doing something wrong |
