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"Panicking is when a novice is in a situation that requires expertise and they don't have the expertise. John F. Kennedy Jr. was over his head at dusk. He couldn't do intrument flying. He wasn't an experienced pilot.

"Choking is the disease of an expert. It is when an expert is in a situation where they lose control of their access to their expertise. And I did Greg Norman's famous meltdown at the '96 Masters.

[...]

"What happens to -- when you choke is that you -- things that were unconscious and automatic become conscious and deliberate. So his expertise is entirely unconscious. When he hits a beautiful golf shot, he's not thinking about it anymore. He's done it so many times that he's in this rarefied world.

"But now all of a sudden when the pressure's on he starts to think about things and to deliberate about things that he's never deliberated about for 25 years on the golf course. And he becomes a novice again.

"So what happens when you look at him in the final day on round four in the back nine when he just completely falls apart, what you're seeing is Greg Norman as a 12-year-old again. He's playing golf the way he did when he was learning the game."

-- Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963-09-03), on the PBS television program Charlie Rose, 2009-11-11