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Exploring Flow Occurrence In Elite Golf, Christian F. Swann, Richard J. Keegan, David Piggott, Lee Crust, Mark F. Smith

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Research on flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) has traditionally focused on reactive, externally-paced sports (e.g., tennis) without exploring those that are self-paced and stopstart in nature. This study investigated the occurrence of flow in a sample of thirteen elite golfers by conducting semi-structured interviews discussing: (i) their experiences of flow, (ii) factors that influenced flow occurrence, and (iii) the controllability of these experiences. Results shared similarity with existing research in terms of the majority of influencing factors reported, including motivation, preparation, focus, psychological state, environmental and situational conditions, and arousal, and that flow was reported to be at least potentially controllable. Golf-specific …