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Abstract
Perceptual- cognitive expertise has been studied within sport showing experts better attend to stimuli and make judgements upon on it in a variety of sports. Within golf making decisions about the pace and line of a putt is of vital importance when reading greens which effects putting success. However, little research examines PCE within green reading in golf. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine PCE within green reading in golf. 12 professional tour golfers took part in a green reading and putting task and their visual gaze behaviour and Think Aloud were analysed. Key findings suggested that experts fixated more on the contours of the green than other parts of the green and that their gaze behaviour was consistent with experts across other sports. Additionally, they verbalised more about planning and gathering information whilst reading greens.
Keywords: Long Term Working Memory (LTWM), perceptual-cognitive expertise (PCE), Visual-gaze behaviour (VGB), Think aloud (TA)