Everybody loves feedback. That's half true. Everybody loves positive feedback. You know, the note from the teacher that says your kid is a delight to have in class, effortlessly masters all the assigned material, attacks all the enrichment assignments with enthusiasm and is a popular and cooperative leader among his classmates. Yes, positive feedback is a wonderful thing. Negative feedback is another matter. Nobody likes the note reporting that your child is a disruptive, unpopular student who is frustrated by his inability to perform at even a minimally acceptable level, and that you need to put down the beer, turn off the television, and help your kid with his math homework if he's to have any chance of succeeding in school.
Everybody loves forgiveness. At least when you are the one forgiven, that is completely, not half, true. (Victims do sometimes prefer to see the perp take a long drop at the end of a short rope). Now forgiveness is an asymmetrical form of feedback. When there has been sin, fault or failing, the implicit feedback is that's okay, don't worry about it, keep on truckin'. Even if there is a gentle admonition to go ye forth and sin no more, the pattern of forgiveness implies an acceptances of human frailties and flaws. And when there is nothing to be forgiven, there is no feedback at all.
Now, here's the problem. Most people, to improve at something, need motivation and feedback. If you don't have any reason to excel, you will inevitably be tempted to content yourself with mediocrity. Why exert yourself to do better than average if there's no payoff? And if you don't even realize that your performance is mediocre, or what's wrong with it, you probably couldn't improve even if you were motivated to.
Blades, muscle backs and cavity backs. What does all this have to do with how the manufacturers of golf equipment sell sets of irons? This is an observation on marketing practices, or, more accurately, mis-marketing practices. Since all modern players' irons that are colloquially referred to as 'blades' are actually 'muscle backs', I'm going to call 'muscle backs' 'blades' even though the original blade irons lacked the configuration of muscle back irons, starting about 40 years ago.
In a nutshell, blades give feedback instead of forgiveness. Put another way, cavity backs let you play better currently with your game at a given level, because they are forgiving, while blades motivate you to improve and let you know the flaws in your current game, because they give you feedback. This presents a real problem to anyone flogging golf clubs.
People need forgiveness. And people think they want feedback. And most golfers dream of being better, even if they don't have what it takes to get better. So the poor peddler of golf clubs must meet the needs, feed the dreams and stoke the illusions of his customers. That is a hard thing to do. And the poor golfer, to navigate the flood of misinformation, must start by being honest with himself. That is an even harder thing to do.
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