First of all, a definition of one club golf. No, it is not golf played by members of advertising’s famous One Club. Rather, it is a round played with a single club. That is correct—one, single solitary club and all the skill, creativity and talent you can bring to that particular round of golf. And yes, you must putt with this club as well.
It’s become my favorite way to play golf. Just last month I played a round with Joe Sorge, a.k.a. @ajbombers at the wonderful Missing Links par 3 golf course in Mequon. Missing Links is pretty much the perfect course for one club golf. It’s a Jack Nicklaus designed layout with holes ranging from 75 to 210 yards, where water seriously comes into play on 4 holes. Joe chose a 9 iron while I played the round with an 8 iron. We had fun, laughed, and of course tweeted updates of our match to the eagerly listening Twittersphere.
Four holes like this, one club to carry the water
Without getting too much into the details of golf, one club forces you to hit all kinds of shots with a club you ordinarily wouldn’t choose. I hit my 8 iron about 155 yards, so hitting a shot 100 yds downhill straight over water takes a fair amount of thought, some skill and a lot of guts. And a four foot putt with an 8 iron? It ain’t no gimmee. Forcing yourself to do things you ordinarily wouldn’t attempt gives you an entirely different perspective. And it’s refreshingly fun.
Ian Baker-Finch would say "Ah, lovely recovery shot there by AJ."
So what does all this have to do with digital, strategy or creativity which is what I usually write about here?
A lot.
Let me ask you this: How many of us are hindered by thinking we can only play with a “full bag of clubs?” Think about it. The following is an incomplete list of complaints I’ve heard over the years for reasons you can’t come up with a creative solution for a client:
Really? If you buy into this type of thinking, you’ve disqualified yourself before you even started because you can’t see a way to succeed without the proverbial “full bag of clubs.” How sad. Because in my experience, how often do you actually get to play with the “entire set?” Instead, I’d suggest seeing those limitations for what they are: things you don’t need to worry about. If you only have a week to work out an idea, then get to work now instead of kvetching about the several weeks you’d like to have.
Yes, all this rah-rah talk is empty without any real life examples. So I offer you one of my off-the-course one club stories. A few years back when I was still toiling for my agency Octane, we were working on a project for the local chapter of the Salvation Army. We had no budget. We had zero time. I literally had one day in the schedule for conceptual development. One morning I left at 5am to drive to Minneapolis to work with my long-time writing partner Rob Franks. We started concepting at 10am at a funky coffee shop in Uptown. We had lunch at Bryant-Lake Bowl, then finished the day outside at a table at Dunn Brothers. I got in my car at 4pm to drive back to Milwaukee. Six total hours of work. (Okay, we talked about movies, music and the Packers too). We had a notepad of ideas. We presented the next week and produced the campaign within another two weeks. One of the ideas—not a TV spot, but a sign that hung above the famous Salvation Army kettles—ended up in Communication Arts and The One Show (heh, One Club, see?). The campaign led to a huge increase in holiday donations that year.
It can be done.
I still remember sitting outside that day coming up with ideas on a beautiful September afternoon at Dunn Brothers. There was no time to worry about what we didn’t have at our disposal. We had X amount of time, Y amount of talent and we flat out had to execute.
Son, give me that 8 iron.
Maybe you have a story about embracing limitations, and then going on to do something you never imagined possible. If so, I’d love to hear about it.
Fabulousness as always Mr. Fairbanks.
I think the reliance on the “full bag of clubs” not only hinders movement and progress, it actually dilutes learning and understanding. When forced to only use one club, it forces you to understand the art of hitting the ball at its core. That learning is something that can then be applied in the situations when you actually play with a full set. If you only play with the full set, you actually miss out.
Plus, playing with only one club takes a lot of decision making time away, which frees up more time to tweet how the game is going…. oh, wait. Nevermind.
Wow Cynthia, with that comment I’d swear you play golf.
But you are absolutely correct, removing distractions forces you to focus on the doing. It’s amazing how we let all sorts of things take us away from this. Joe and I are playing again this coming Monday. Maybe you can join us and do the tweeting. 
Mark, what a great takeaway from one-club golf.
As I was reading I couldn’t help but think, wow, I really need to work on perfecting my “one club”.
Actually, you’re pretty good at it. Whenever you tweet “burgers” that’s one club stuff.
Nice piece. I remember that day well. I also remember we repeated the process about a month later for another client, and that day ended with a poor meal comprised of two words, which when used in conjunction with each other will no doubt strike fear into your heart and digestive tract: Jurassic Shrimp.
Hah. The jurassic shrimp, one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten. Actually, I think we played a fair amount of one club golf from October-December 2003. At which point, we swore off golf completely.
Well imagine that “the pretty one” has a brain too
Seriously, I think it’s when we start adding the clubs that we stop being creative. Not always a bad thing but something to consider as the number of proper tools at our disposal increases. Are we then spending more time picking the right too and learning how to use it than we are doing the work?
Jimmeh! It all comes down to how sound your swing is, doesn’t it? If it’s good, you can play (and explore your creativity) no matter the limitations.
Mark, I was just reading your post and realizing that the whole idea of sketchnoting is centered on working with very limited tools and situations:
1. You have a pen, a book of paper, that’s it. No digital gadgety things to get in the way or distract you from what’s at hand.
2. You can’t erase a pen. When you make a stroke on the paper you either deal with it by accepting it as is, or you try and find a way to make it into something else to cover it.
Lately I’ve been leaving mistakes I happen to make on purpose, to remind myself that it’s not about perfection, but processing ideas.
3. You can’t control the source you have to capture. Someone or several people are talking, sharing ideas at speed. They have no idea you are out there, and aren’t going to talk slow because you can’t catch every word. If there are several, then you really have to pay attention and shift to capturing sound bites that are meaningful.
4. You’re forced to make decisions on the fly about what’s important in the presentation. You might screw up, but I think once you get the idea of sketchnotes and it clicks, you can filter out the stuff that’s not important. You can also spot a rambler that goes off on tangents a mile away.
5. Sharing sketchnotes also reveals your decisions on what to capture and what to leave off. It’s personal, which is why they can be so attractive and at the same time are scary because you’re laying a piece of yourself on the line with each one you capture.
Thanks for the reminder Mark. I think good tools are critical for good work, but when the focus moves to the tool, it’s easy to lose sight of the person behind the tool.
Like my dad always says:
“A great photographer can take amazing photos with a pinhole camera. It’s not about the camera, it’s about the eye of the photographer.”
Amen.
Mike,
Great perspective! This also brings me back to the speed-sketching exercise we did back at Drawcamp. No time to think and polish, just capture. The shorter the amount of time, the more I liked what I captured since it seemed to a better representation of the energy of the subject matter. You can learn a lot from that.
To echo your dad, I think Clement Mok said in reference to the computer “The notes—they don’t live in the piano.” {^_^}
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