If you play this game, I imagine you fall into one of two categories when it comes to this type of slump: either you’ve had one (at least one), or you’re going to have one (at least one).
Intellectually, I’m confident I can get through it, but despite what I’ve found myself saying on TV dozens of times, there is absolutely no cerebral component to success in this game.
It’s all voodoo.
And just as we all stand on the range looking into each other’s bags to see what type of equipment the next guy is using, I want to know what kind of voodoo others have summoned in their darkest hours.
I didn’t have that same “step on your head and rip your heart out” edge. I lost that.
Confidence is something that when you have it, you never think you’re going to lose it, and when you lose it, you never think you’re going to get it back. The best thing you can do in your “self-talk” is to remind yourself what you’ve done in the past. You’ve done this before.
He also thinks that people don’t think enough about visualization or shot trajectory. “If you become a trajectory-conscious player, you’re less likely to hit it off line.”
Of all his legendary golfing attributes — length, clutch putting, course management — it is often noted that Nicklaus’s supreme confidence might have been the most important. “He knew he was going to beat you. You knew he was going to beat you, and he knew that you knew that he was going to beat you.”
I always felt like slumps were usually self-induced. They came about from playing too much, not working hard enough. Not thinking about what you’re doing.
Tiger Woods has maybe over 100 different short game shots. Jack didn’t have a lot of variety.
You have to believe in yourself, and you have to believe in your ability to turn things around.
It was horrific. A lot of times when you’re going through a stretch like that, people don’t even want to sit with you in the lunch room. They think it’s contagious or something.
Verplank became an introvert, the better to keep people away and discourage them from asking “messy” questions.
His reticence and aloof demeanor made the perfect suit of armor to keep him protected and immersed in his own little world. As challenging as it was, the diabetes served him well as a golfer. “It made me tougher mentally than almost everybody else that I was playing against. Because I had to be.”
By year’s end, the bottom line was ugly: 26 events, and only once did he play on the weekend.
“I learned to not really say a whole lot when he was done on Fridays,” says his wife.
It was brutal, but I never felt embarrassed. Maybe I’m a jerk, but I don’t rally care that much about what other people think. I’m in my own little world. I remember being really angry and sad and confused.
The thing I feel like I learned the most through anything is that the most precious commodity in golf that needs to be guarded is your confidence. By far, you’ve got to protect it at all costs. Losing friends, losing whatever — you’ve got to protect your confidence.
He had poured himself relentlessly into the game for as long as he could remember, and though he didn’t realize it at the time, there was a tremendous cost.
“I think the sacrifices have to come from somewhere. The time has to come from somewhere, and for me I was in a bad spot personally for several years, so maybe that’s also what helped me focus golf-wise so much.”
But he is unmistakably happy. “Yeah, I found my place, if you will. I think that for a long, long time I sought greatness — you know, identity through golf.”
You know, it’s kind of a catch-22 of American society. They love their studs and heroes, but they hate cocky people.
Get this golf ball right here, right now with all my energy. Usually, when I hit a bad one, I know right away that somewhere, my mind was wandering. I wasn’t all in.
Jansen’s problem is that he’s haunted. Once he was “the best” at something, and what came with that was an awareness.
“I know what the gap is. I know what the gap is between the best and mediocrity, and it’s huge. The best golfers out there — the pros — no matter what my level is, I’m a complete hack to them, and I have trouble getting that out of my mind.”
You have to invest in your mind. It’s a muscle and it needs to be trained. You don’t just become mentally strong. It doesn’t just happen.
There was nowhere to hide. Everyone wanted to see him, and when he couldn’t produce, it started to affect the way he looked at the task. Instead of doing what had made him successful — thinking only about the most important shot, the one he was about to play — he started thinking about making cuts.
“You know, momentum can work both directions really. And the momentum started to snowball in the wrong direction, and before you know it, how the hell do you ever make a cut?”
Rose had gone 11 months without playing on the weekend, and when his moment of triumph finally came, it was hardly worth celebrating. He made the cut “on the number” and eventually finished 75th. “I thought: making the cut isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know?”
That Ken Rose should pass away at almost the same time as his son ascended to the most elite level of the professional game is a powerful lesson for Justin Rose, and it’s not just a coincidence. De-emphasizing the importance of golf is sometimes the most effective way to get better.
The pair have created an effective and unusual strategy for positive visualization. Rose sometimes creates stories he’ll tell himself on the golf course. He’ll pretend he’s playing an event where he had a good result. The cardinal rule is that it has to avoid anything negative.
We’re really fragile mentally, and you need to protect yourself. You need to protect yourself from yourself, really.
Show me a path with no obstacles and that path will lead you nowhere.
Sometimes it’s easy to see the perverse humor in a slump — unless, of course, it’s your slump.
Norman also had another mental trick. He would put his head down so that his wide-brimmed straw hat obscured any view of his face, and while cloistered in his own private world he would jam his thumb into his stomach just below his rib cage with such force that the pain would bring tears. It was his way of bringing — demanding — focus.
I’ve learned how to deal with things on such a tough level in a lot of way. I’m a very resilient person.
She talks about her struggles against Navratilova, to whom he once lost 13 consecutive times, and Tracy Austin, who beat Evert 5 straight.
I went on the court with Navratilova 13 times in a row knowing I was going to lose, so I lost. Then the 14th time, the 1st thing I did was to get back to basics, which for me was my ground stroke game. Then in a sense, I puffed out my chest and kind of bluffed myself and said, “I’m going to win this match.” I didn’t fully believe it, but I still went through the body language of “Chrissie, just show her, and show yourself some confidence.” I almost played games with my mind: “C’mon, you’re going to do it,” even though deep down I was confused, like, “I think I can do it, but I might not.”
Whoever it was that said “protect your confidence at all costs,” that was just brilliant.
It got to the point that week, and it’s kind of representative of the whole year, that he couldn’t fix what he was doing, so he would sit in the room where he was staying and imagine himself hitting good shots because he couldn’t actually hit good shots.
He called Smith and Dave Pelz and asked the 2 instructors to come up with a game plan. “What do I have to do to win majors? I need to start winning some of these bigger events, and not just winning in the desert and out in California.”
The most frustrating is not knowing what needs to be done, because it feels like every time you practice, it’s just a waste of time. When I saw improvement in my practice sessions, I was much more confident on the golf course, and there was a carryover effect.
When I stood up on the tee boxes, I just knew the ball was going to go in the middle of the fairway. The hours that I spent with Dave Pelz, getting the yardages down with the wedges, those hours of work and having that proper direction, I ultimately knew or did not ever lack belief that I would ultimately win.
Mickelson’s double bogey at the last hole had lost him the title he craved above all others in the game. “I’m such an idiot. It’s one of the toughest things I’ve ever gone through.”
We’re not the kind of people who hold on to our stuff. I think you find people who, their trials in their lives can become their identities. They take it on, and it becomes them. We don’t live our lives that way.
Despite all technical adjustments, Mickelson, like many players, believes that to play good golf you have to feel good about your golf, so he developed a drill to work on his confidence.
“I believe you start at the hole and work out. I don’t believe you start practice or preparation from the tee and work in. I think the majority of the game revolves around the hole.”
Mickelson finds a spot where he feels bulletproof, say 3ft. To reinforce the feeling, he putts 100 balls from that distance. Now, if you’ve missed the green or need to lag a putt, you have a 6ft comfort zone as a target.
“I believe most people’s struggles with their golf games have to do with their short games. You’ve got to see the ball go in the hole, and it just builds confidence.”
Whenever Mickelson feels the rhythm on his driving go awry, he immediately heads to a greenside bunker.
“You wouldn’t think there’d be a correlation, but when you hit a bunker shot, there’s no ‘hit.’ You have to swing the club and let the club do the work through the sand. You have to swing it fluid. You can’t try to power it, or give it a little extra hit at impact, because you won’t hit it well. So you keep this rhythm, this rhythmic swing from the bunker. It carries over to your driving.”
He goes on his own path whether it’s right or wrong. I love that about him, because he’s not going to go with the grain. Right or wrong, he’s an independent thinker.
In golf, a bad memory — or no memory at all — can be very handy, if not essential.
At that point in his life, Crenshaw knew exactly what a slump was: something that happened to someone else.
I was gone 20 times. I’m not kidding you. Just lost, no confidence at all. You just have to claw your way back. It happens to most of us.
All of a sudden, it wasn’t so easy. What he didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t the end of the world; it was just how the world actually works… in golf.
I was extremely wild off the tee. I just couldn’t keep the ball in the ballpark. It was subject to go anywhere. I mean, it’s a helpless feeling.
He remembers reading that Sam Snead claimed to look away when he was playing Ben Hogan. Snead didn’t like to watch the Hawk hit because his swing was so much faster than his own. “That’s a wonderful way to think on the golf course. Your swing has to be yours.”
I remember one of the great things Jackie said to me when I was very young. He said, “Ben, what’s going to happen out there on Tour is you’re going to see a successful player. He might have won the week before. He’ll go out on the practice tee and he’ll have a little crowd around him, and players will be kind of looking over their shoulders at him. Looking and seeing how he’s doing what he’s doing, and they’ll say: “Maybe I need to do that.” Jackie said that’s when you need to take your shag bag and go to the other end of the range.
Harvey taught all of us to know that a different position at the ball will make you swing differently. A ball that’s up in your stance will delay your hip. A ball that’s back in your stance, you’ll cover that ball quickly. It’s very much how you set up. The fundamentals are right there in front of you.
I remember almost every slump I had, I felt like a basket case. It’s not a good feeling. You’re out in front of everybody, and they’re looking at you implode. It’s embarrassing.
This, after all, is a man who owns 500 golf books.
I hate to say this, but I see a lot of poor grips. It’s the start of very instruction book. Every history book says something about the grip because it’s vital. It’s one of the few things all teachers seem to agree on.
And no single element of the game is more basic than the grip. In this age of flash and dazzle, the answer for Crenshaw lies in golf’s primary fundamental: the grip.
His titanic struggle and utter helplessness at one point may be just as history.
During that period, he hit nothing but good shot sand a lot of great shots. He used to say that confidence is knowing that even your worst shot is going to be good. For him back then, it was just like degrees of good.
So now, the player who had dominated the game over the past 2 years not only couldn’t hit a fairway but was miserable.
“It’s not so important what you accomplish in life that matters but what you overcome that proves who you are or what kind of man you are.” And I was thinking, my word, I’ve never overcome anything. How can I quit now? What are my kids going to think?
If you’re hitting it bad or choking, just hit it low. It doesn’t have time to get off line.
At his best, if Miller had a calling card, it was how deadly accurate he was with his irons. They used to say he wanted his distances in half yards instead of yards, because he was so dialed in.
There’s no game that’s ever been invented that exposes someone’s choke point like golf. It highlights all your weaknesses, mental and physical, and choking can really be part of a slump. It’s the most interesting thing about the game.
So Dad started hitting 5i, and he had to hit them real smooth and really easy, and he said it just hit him. That’s how you get your rhythm back is hitting them real slow.
Drew, what you’ve gotten yourself into the last month, I can’t fix in one day. Your grandpa would have told your dad to swing a 6i 30%, and then 50%, and then 75%. And then he’d make him hit a driver 100y, and then 125y, and then 150y. I want you to do that for a month.
Love was coasting. He had gotten sloppy with his swing and his practice habits, and he needed to get back to work.
It always seems to boil down to some fundamentals and then putting in the time. Tiger always used to say it a lot: “I just have to go out and get some reps.” Like he was lifting weights.
The general public should be amazed at what Tiger Woods does. But they shouldn’t try and use his clubs or his swing. They should try to figure out how to concentrate like that.
Try less hard. That brings into focus one of golf’s great paradoxes. If you’re going to break out of a slump, you actually have to apply yourself and try very hard, but it must be in the right place: on the range, not the golf course itself. It’s necessary to be able to think technically — until you get to the 1st tee.
The same golfer who a decade earlier had fearlessly shot 65 in the final round to win the British Open found he had become a totally different player without even realizing it. Instead of playing to win, he was playing not to lose. When you’re playing your best, he says, “You don’t think about any consequences.” But Leonard’s slump had tuned him timid and cautious.
Bassham also had Leonard not only analyze the state of his game, but write down his observations.
“Nothing negative. All in solutions and answers, meaning ’Tomorrow I need to putt a little better. I need to work on this.’ Not ‘I didn’t putt any good.’ Just no negative thoughts whatsoever.”
Had he encountered this career turbulence earlier in life, he doesn’t think he would have been able to find his way out as efficiently as he now had.
How much do you learn from winning a golf tournament? I mean, you build confidence, and maybe there are shots here and there, but you really learn when your back is up against the wall.
What do you think it says about a person how they deal with their struggles on a golf course?
That’s pretty much the way you deal with your struggles in life, I think. There’s always going to be problems, but the quest is excellence. You stay with it and try to do what you can to improve.
The interesting thing about adversity on the golf course is that you can’t hide. You have to confront it. If you get the yips, there’s only one way to deal with it, and that’s to keep hitting golf balls until you get rid of the yips.
He just has this tremendous sense of optimism. “The next one is going to be a good one.”
He’s fearless. I just marvel at it.
Seeing the water and changing to an old ball. Seeing the OB that’s left and trying to hit it right. We never see the flag. We never see the middle of the fairway; we never see the target because we’re so afraid of failure.
I could only give you advice I haven’t followed. “Never, never give up.” Things can be horrible one day, and, just miraculously, you can hit the ball the next. Don’t give up when things are really bad for you.
Slow down. What’s your hurry?
He won 7 major championships. But it wasn’t just that he won tournaments; it was how he won them. And how he lost them, too. Palmer was a swashbuckling, go-for-broke package of charisma with the forearms of Popeye and a thousand-watt smile. Jack Nicklaus was the machine whose performances were as dependable as a Swiss clock. When he had a lead, he rarely let it go. Palmer was, in a way, much more entertaining. His foot never left the accelerator. People seemed to like him because he was what we secretly hoped we could be: fearless. He had “balls.”
The 1st thing he ever taught me was a good grip, getting a good grip on the club.
He had a temperament and a way of talking to me about my game where it really wasn’t an instructional thing. It was more like, “What are you doing; why aren’t you confident?”
The thing I always did that was very bad was I got too quick. I got anxious, and when I was talking to my father, that was the 1st thing he always made me think about: getting my rhythm. Slowing down and being deliberate when I was hitting the shots, particularly in stress situations where the pressure was on and I needed to pull off a good shot.
I think the most important thing is that people get anxious, and they think the faster they hit balls and the more they go out and hit golf balls, the sooner they’re going to get it back — and that’s just the opposite. What they should do is go back and practice, yes, but think about it. Do it more deliberately than they ever have in their life, and I feel that they will recover much faster in the game than they would any other way.
Slow down your personality. Walk slower. Slow down everything you do.
From the safe distance of 20-plus years, Pepper thinks back to the 1st time she realized a golf swing could be slippery and mean, as easy to figure out as calculus with a hangover.
He was very much into simplicity and not over-analyzing. It was 110% fundamentals, and he never let me read the instructional articles in golf magazines. You cannot read the stuff about how you’re “supposed” to swing the golf club, because he thought that too much input was a disaster.
I stood there, and my last thought was “I can’t hit this. I don’t know how to get this ball in play.”
The effortless game of her youth had suddenly and cruelly turned into work. She was terrified.
If you think you’re good here — let’s see — you’re 1 of 50 states. There’s 50 of you.
The game seemed easy until she realized that was just a child’s fantasy. During those 2 days in the rain at Furman, Dottie Pepper learned a world about adversity and what to do with it.
That was the mental part of the lesson, but there was a physical corollary: you need to develop a “go-to”shot. When things are going badly, you need to have a parachute. “For me, that was a soft draw. And to do that, I had to make sure my legs drove first.”
Yet these titans of golf past and present had more:
They had repeating swings.
The will to win.
Enormous concentration, under a thousand eyes.
And finally — the most important shot in golf is the one being played.
Learn to set the clubface with both hands as you step to the ball. This is superior and more natural than setting with either hand, and preserves and aligns your shoulder line at the same time.
Every time you practice, hit a few casual 5i. Then pick up your power clubs and try to capture the same pace. The power will come from the longer shaft and arc and not from additional effort.
Teachers of golf spend their lives and their energies sorting out theories. Great players play by feel, not by theories. Do not get too cerebral.
I worked till my hands bled. I’d hit balls, I’d chip, I’d putt, go home for lunch, go play 9, and then go back and hit more. It was an all-sayer.
It’s usually something very basic and something that repeats quite often, too. You fall into the same bad mistakes: bad setup, bad grip. Just bad fundamentals.
I think the average Joes probably take whatever the golf magazine tell them they should know and then over-apply it.
The golf swing can be a complicated thing, but for more than a few people who play this game well, the key to success isn’t about loading the mind with swing thoughts, but rather emptying it of almost everything except fundamentals, confidence, and determination.
Most of us were just trying to figure out a way to make some cash, and if we could win a tournament, great. But I truly think he was thinking, “I could be the best player in the world.” He wasn’t unbelievably talented, like some players. He worked his tail off to figure it out. He had an unbelievable will to get it done. This man used to get up and go to the golf course at 7 in the morning and not come hom until 6 at night.
I was a ball-beater. I hit more balls than anybody. I’d hit 400-500 a day.
If he sets his mind to something, it’s going to happen. No matter how long it takes, he’s going to do it. He will not take no for an answer. He won’t give in to anything.
I always figured I could practice myself into playing well. And after a period of time in 1984, it wasn’t working. I got more and more frustrated, actually to the point where I gave up on myself and gave up on the game.
His swing change made him realize it wasn’t just the swing, as is often the case; it was the setup, too.
When you’re playing badly and you don’t win, you have an excuse. But when you’re playing well and you’re missing too many putts, that’s when things get frustrating.
What is perfect? Perfect is whatever you can repeat. Nobody swings it perfect. Nobody.
I used to hit bad shots — I mean everybody does — but I get up to the tee now and I’m clueless.
That thing is nasty. I would never want to go there.
It was humbling, you know. Three-time winner on Tour, and I’m going back to Q-School final stage and don’t make it, and now I’m in a position where I have to beg for spots at tournaments.
So after wandering aimlessly in golf’s desert for 3 long years before finally kneeling to take a drink, Steve Stricker’s take on the lost years is that they weren’t lost at all. Maybe his prescription shouldn’t be such a surprise: keep it simple, work hard, rely mostly on yourself.
But the list of “next Nicklauses” became like UFO sightings: frequent and never confirmed.
And then, as quickly as it had arrived, the magic was gone. Sutton says he was seduced by the twin Sirens of success: complacency and distraction.
He was panicked and says he went to see “every major teacher there was to see.” In 1992, the man many were touting a decade before as the “next Nicklaus” finished 185th on the money list and missed 21 of 29 cuts. “The whole thing was a blur. Probably every week was an abomination. It got so bad that I was afraid for the spectators. I didn’t have any clue where the ball was going off the tee.”
It would be like me trying to take over your job. It would be offensive to you for me to act like I could — and even be an authority on it. But I’m letting that sort of thing influence what I’m fixing to do.
We’re living in a world right now where people think distance is a big deal. I’m telling you right now, distance is not a big deal. You do not sacrifice accuracy for distance. You get as much distance as you can with accuracy.
I think the older you get and you have lived more life, you have a tendency to look both ways, and I think that’s one of the things that causes slumps. You look back too much. You’re comparing yourself to what you’ve already done. As you mature and you’re more successful, you know what the consequences are of not performing. That’s a scary thing.
There’s a generation between Ashley and me, and it didn’t seem monumental until I go to be 50 and she got to be 35. As I got into my later 40s it became apparent, there were something I didn’t want to relive, and there were some things she didn’t want to miss.
All I could tell anybody that was trying to be successful in anything is: don’t take your eye off your ball. Your ball. That’s the most important part, because we can start juggling a lot of balls, and we don’t know which one we’re fixing to hit. There’s only one that you’re playing. Keep your eye on your ball.
I think the most important thing is that people get anxious. Just slow down.
The central and operative culprit in a slump: the tempo of your golf swing.
Why so hard? No one ever hit the ball with their backswing. It’s just foreplay. Slow down your backswing.
You should be able to feel the weight of the clubhead throughout your entire swing. There’s no way you can do it if you swing too fast.
Tempo is the place where the discussion needs to start. In other words, no matter how slowly and deliberately you are swinging, you’re not swinging anywhere near as slowly and deliberately as you think you’re swinging.
A slump is a frightening thing, but as player after player told me: don’t panic.
That might seem like reasonable advice where you’re sitting in an easy chair reading a book, but considerably harder while standing in the middle of the 8th fairway, just having shanked a 7i.
I look at a lot of the golf swings on Tour and I actually don’t know how they function. There are some clubs in some very bad positions. But I guess they’re repeatable, and guys believe in themselves and create that type of mental freedom that gives them the ability for that swing to be repeatable and reliable.
At the heart of the panic that often accompanies a slump is perhaps the most terrifying thought any golfer might ever conjure: What if I never get it back?
Despite our worst fears, that — according to almost everyone I spoke with — is unlikely.
Be in the moment. Most of my bad shots I can trace back to being distracted in some way, not giving the matter at hand total attention.
My position would be: here we go again. I had this shit cured. I thought I was over this. Every golfer has to battle through that sense that he’s inadequate.
You try and simplify the game as much as you can.
As a 10 handicap, there’s no reason you can’t be as good chipping the ball as me. All you have to do is move the club about this far.