How to Design a Useful Yardstick

Instant proverb of the day:

You are what you count.

Many of the talent hotbeds I visited for the book don't rely on conventional performance yardsticks. Instead, they design their own.

The other day I met Graham Walker and Steve Robinson, who coach many of England's fast-rising crop of junior golfers. Their most important teaching tool? A long piece of rope, which they use to mark off distances for accuracy-improving games they've designed. For instance, players make a series of wedge shots...