Another way it works is psychological. Justin Rose once told me, “My wedge play has to get better. I’m not happy with it, we have to work more on it.” I said, “That’s funny, because Mark has you as No.1 on the PGA Tour in wedge play.” As soon as he saw that, he played with more confidence, standing over a shot thinking, “Man, I’m the best, this is a great opportunity,” rather than, “I’m not really comfortable with this.”
There’s not a psychologist in the world who could do a better job convincing a guy that he’s good than those numbers. They are just too reasonable, there’s too much logic.
You feel the panic setting in. Your hands get clammy, and your knees shake. Your throat goes dry, and you feel as if you’re going to throw up. Golf is the ultimate pressure-situation sport, and it pays to remember the first (and only) rule for relaxing: Slow down and concentrate on your breathing. Take a few deep breaths as you prepare for that big shot.
We spend very little time learning how to deal with the mental side of the game. What do we do on the first tee with 20 people watching? What do we do going to the last hole when we’re in the lead? Let’s start by doing all the thinking before we start our pre-shot routine. This includes how you want to play the shot, the conditions, and any swing thoughts. Once this is done, you start your routine, which should be the same every time. Think about nothing when you swing.
It is easy to do too much thinking, standing over the ball at address. A good way to correct that is to stand behind the ball, looking at the target. Do all your planning and thinking there. Draw an imaginary line behind the ball. After you have done all your planning and thinking behind the ball, cross the line and just do it.
Pressure is self-induced. No one cares about your game except you. Other golfers are too worried about their own games and swings.
If you need any more motivation about managing your anger on the golf course, use this quote that Tiger Woods told his son. “Son, I don’t care how mad you get. Your head could blow off for all I care, just as long as you’re 100% committed to the next shot. That next shot should be the most important shot in your life. It should be more important than breathing.”
Under pressure, I do use one simple swing thought: I pick a spot a foot in front of the ball and hit over it — hard. That takes my mind off the outcome of the shot and keeps me in the process.
- Concentrate on visualizing the shot — it frees the mind from mechanics.
- Commit absolutely to the swing; waver and errors creep in.
- View difficult shots as adventures to promote success and restore confidence.
Try to shut out everything around you. Develop your ability to think only of how and where you want to hit the shot you are playing. If something disturbs my concentration while I am lining up a shot I start all over again.
An ability to concentrate for long periods of time while exposed to all sort of distractions is invaluable in golf. Adopt the habit of concentrating to the exclusion of everything else while you are on the practice tee, and you will find that you are automatically following the same routine while playing a round in competition.
The only way to cut down on errors made under stress is to concentrate. Isolate each step of your golf game so that every shot becomes a separate unit within itself. Then devote your entire mental process to the proper execution of that particular shot, with no thought of what the result may be. If you are utterly oblivious of what goes on about you, then you are concentrating correctly.
Once you address the golf ball, hitting it has to be the most important thing in your life at that moment. Shut out all thoughts other than picking out a target and taking dead aim at it.
This is a good way to calm a case of nerves.
A high handicapper will be surprised at how often the mind will make the muscles hit the ball to the target, even with a far less than perfect swing.
The expert player won’t be surprised. The expert expects to hit the target. The only surprise here is that the expert sometimes allows disorganized thinking to make him become distracted from the primary object of the shot, which is to hit the target.
I can’t say it too many times. It’s the most important advice in this book.
Take dead aim.
Make a point to do it every time on every shot. Don’t just do it from time to time, when you happen to remember.
Take dead aim.
When you are hitting a golf shot, a negative thought is pure poison.
I want you to believe with all your heart that the shot you are about to hit will be a good one. I want you to have total confidence.
Playing golf you learn a form of meditation. For the 4 hours you are on the course, you learn to focus on the game and clean your mind of worrisome thoughts.
Visiting with basketball coaches, I ask what they tell their players before a crucial free throw with the game on the line. Most coaches say they tell the player, “Be yourself.”
You must understand that it is your mind that will have the most to do with how you play in the big match.
That’s why you should avoid new or different things that will distract your mind from your normal routine.
Moments like that stay fresh in my mind, providing a positive image for future reference. Those images are critical when the game is on.
No doubt about it, many of my best performances have come at crucial times in big tournaments. I’ve played well in the clutch often enough to give the impression that I can play my best golf simply by willing myself to do so. I only wish that were the case. Unfortunately, there are times when my touch isn’t sharp, my swing isn’t where I like it or the putts just don’t seem to fall. At those moments, no amount of concentration, positive thinking or inspiration can make me play my best. I guess it’s part of the normal cycle of peaks and valleys that every athlete experiences. The trick is being able to score well when my game isn’t firing on all cylinders.
Nothing in golf is harder than playing a shot you haven’t practiced, or one you otherwise feel you aren’t capable of.
I have at least a half-dozen gloves available so I can change as often as necessary.
I focus only what I can control — my next shot — not things I can’t, like the heat.
I try to play to my normal pace and rhythm. I don’t let the inclement weather make me rush a shot.
Great players operate “in the moment.” In other words, they never get ahead of themselves. And they never, ever appear overwhelmed by any situation. One of the reasons I’m able to hit good shots is because I go through the same routine. My preshot routine doesn’t vary and it is uniquely mine. It helps me remain calm and in the present, prepared to execute a shot to the best of my ability.
Knowing how and when to jack yourself up and calm yourself down are 2 of those things. For example, if I need to hit a big drive and I’ve been a little lethargic, I can get the adrenaline going immediately. On the other hand, I can throttle back on a shot simple by composing myself and inducing calm. No one can do it for you. You have to do it yourself. It’s a matter of being in touch with yourself mentally, physically and emotionally.
The true essence of golf is capitalizing on opportunities and minimizing mistakes. It is a thinking man’s game to a great degree. I believe that my creative minds is my greatest weapon. The best way to describe it is a kind of inner vision that enables me to see things others might not, like a certain way to play a shot or a slight opening in a thicket. And I’ve been blessed with the physical ability to execute whatever shot my mind dictates. While managing your game, you should be constantly assessing situations, factoring in variables like changing course conditions and deciding on whether or not to play the percentages. The psychology of golf a step further than course management. It entails mental toughness, self-confidence, intimidation, gamesmanship, conquering inner demons, instant recall of past successes and being able to quickly purge failures. It is the game within the game.
I’m sure he felt the game was on but I was concentrating on what I had to do, realizing that was the only thing I could control.
As I walked to the 14th tee I felt something I never had in competition. All of a sudden the crowd, which had been so gracious and supportive all week, seemed to switch its allegiance to Sergio. Perhaps they were naturally rooting for the underdog or wanted a close finish. I don’t know, but I could feel the negative energy directed toward me.
Confidence is easier to define than it is to measure. It is an assuredness in one’s ability to accomplish a task even under the most stressful circumstances. Success breeds confidence. It’s similar to when you’re on a roll with the putter. Seems like the hole is as big as a basketball hoop. You can’t miss nor can you wait to get to the next green. Your confidence builds with each putt you hole. Pretty soon you’re on autopilot, playing by instinct and feel. That’s as close to finding your own game as you can get.
A player can become mentally tougher by learning from his experiences. The mind is like a computer with thousands of megabytes of memory. Store your experiences for when you will need them again because the game is a constant learning process. You should learn from failures as well as successes. Ask yourself what you did or didn’t do right in a situation. A lot of times you’ll find it’s the same thing over and over again.
Never beat yourself up because there are plenty of people who will do it for you. I am my own worst critic, but I will never do anything to undermine my confidence. Nor will I be influenced by anyone’s criticism or scrutiny of me. You have to be tough enough mentally to handle all potential distractions.
You can’t let those failures get to you, because they will erode your confidence and chip away at your psyche. Pretty soon those inner demons will have you second-guessing everything from your swing to your putting stroke to the color of socks you’re wearing.
I love being in contention and everything that entails, even the pressure. That’s what it’s all about — knowing that you have to execute and doing it. That’s why we play. If you don’t enjoy it, then maybe competitive golf is not for you.
Don’t complain About anything Not even to yourself.
While playing well in a tournament, we might think to ourselves, “Well, you’ve gotten away with it so far, but you’ll screw up before too long.” Believing in this thought gives it power. It creates feelings of doubt and anxiety, which interfere with our swing and produce errant shots. That makes us believe the thought even more, amplifying it in our mind.
Ask yourself how many shots you would have saved if you always developed a strategy before you hit, always played within your capabilities, never lost your temper, and never got down on yourself.
Bobby Jones considered this his most serious weakness. He found that when he was comfortably ahead in a tournament, he began to fear the embarrassment of not holding his lead. He would try to control his swing to avoid making a mistake. Instead of picking a target, he focused on avoiding hazards.
Commitment involves believing without a doubt that the plan you’ve made — the image you have, the club you’ve picked — is the best one. If you have any doubt whatsoever, you’re not really committed.
To be able to commit to a plan, you need to feel that you can handle whatever the outcome is — you need to be willing to pre-accept whatever the results might be. Prepare for your shot as best you can. Have as vivid an image as you can and settle yourself as much as you can.
Every golfer has had the experience of setting up to a shot and not feeling completely comfortable with some aspect of it. We might have a vague feeling that something is not quite right, or we might know what’s wrong but not bother to do anything about it. In either case, when we “go ahead and hit it anyway,” the result is usually terrible. I call that kind of shot an “anyway.” Anytime we can reflect on a shot and say, “You know, I knew better,” that was an anyway.
Here’s a thought that will help you to slow yourself down in that type of situation: Taking an extra few seconds over a putt takes less time than a second for third putt. And taking an extra few seconds to properly prepare for a tee shot takes a lot less time than looking for your ball in the woods.
This is usually mistaken thinking — rarely do others think of us as critically as we think they do.
Don’t count your money while you’re sitting at the table.
You may take a seemingly easy hole for granted and start worrying about a difficult one coming up later. Then you get angry at yourself for messing up the so-called easy hole.
The reverse assumption, that you’ve “got it in the bag,” can be even more dangerous. In football or basketball, leading teams get in trouble when they start to play a “prevent defense” too early in the game. If the other team catches up, the first team has a hard time rousing the energy to go on the offensive again. In the same way, if you think you’ve got the match or the tournament won, that image of the future gives a message to your body that you’re finished. All your systems start to shift into low gear.
When there is little emotional intensity, the level of performance is very low. This reflects not caring at all, so no effort or energy goes into performance. That is the quality of “too loose.”
- Staying in the present and not being distracted by thoughts of outcome, neither of his own nor his opponents’.
- Establishing composure and focus. This meant feeling settled and having a clear image in mind of the shot he wanted to produce before addressing the ball.
- Trusting his swing and shot-making ability, and staying free from the self-sabotaging tendency of expecting to mess up after things are going well for a while.
- Not being so hard on himself when he makes a mistake, and managing strong feelings like anger, excitement, and frustration.
Instead, as you walk between shots, whether good or bad, maintain a good posture, shoulders back, taking full breaths. Humming or whistling softly can make you feel more relaxed and positive. Directing your eyes up and out creates a feeling of spaciousness and larger perspective that makes it easier to let go of the past and focus on the next shot.
No matter how you’ve been playing, maintaining a confident posture will make you feel more positive.
Even the greatest golfers have felt nervous in big tournaments. But they use the energy, like surfers use the energy of the waves. They thrive on the feeling, because it means they are where they want to be — playing well with a chance to win. If you weren’t playing well, what would you have to be nervous about? Taking nervousness as a sign that things are going well, instead of a harbinger of disaster, makes all the difference in the world.
There’s a twist. What looks like self-sabotage is actually self-protection. What we are protecting ourselves from? Stress, anxiety, discomfort. We’re protecting ourselves from leaving our comfort levels.
One way we protect ourselves from failure is by not trying. Linking our self-worth to how well we play golf is the problem. If our best game isn’t good enough, our self-esteem will take a beating. To avoid that, when the going gets tough, we quit, don’t give it our all, get careless. The subconscious logic is this: If I didn’t really try, I didn’t really fail. We might feel bad about losing a match, but it’s far less painful than feeling bad about ourselves.
Another way we sabotage ourselves in a stressful situation is trying a much harder shot than necessary, such as trying to carry a hazard that would require the best shot we ever hit. If we fail, we can blame the fact that it was next-to-impossible shot. We can rationalize that we didn’t really fail; we just made a bad decision.
Mental game: fear, confidence, anxiety, aggression, determination, focus, concentration, emotional control.
Like the other yips, these are caused by fear, an understandable reaction after witnessing a long spell of bad results.
Neglecting the mental aspect of the game can impact performance. Lack of focus, negative self-talk, or excessive pressure can affect your ability to execute shots effectively. Developing mental strategies, such as positive visualization and maintaining a calm mindset, can improve your overall performance.
Maintaining a positive attitude and using positive self-talk can greatly impact your performance. Positive thoughts and affirmations can help build confidence and improve resilience, especially in challenging situations. Replace negative thoughts with constructive and encouraging ones.
Golf can be an emotionally demanding game, and managing emotions is vital. Learning to control frustration, anger, or disappointment can help you stay composed and make better decisions. Take deep breaths, visualize success, and develop strategies to regain composure during difficult moments.
Visualization involves mentally picturing successful shots before executing them. Use imagery to envision the trajectory, distance, and outcome of each shot. This technique helps build confidence, reinforces positive mental patterns, and improves focus and execution.
Establishing a consistent pre-shot routine can enhance your mental game. A routine helps create a sense of familiarity, reduces anxiety, and prepares you mentally and physically for each shot. Include elements like visualization, breathing exercises, and focusing on a specific target.
Just as important as your pre-shot routine is your post-shot routine. After hitting a shot, take a moment to analyze it, accept the result, and then refocus on the next shot. This can help you stay in the present and avoid letting one bad shot affect the rest of your round.
You can hit 3 bad golf shots onto a par-4, and if you hole a 10ft for par, you forget about the 3 bad shots. If you hit 2 good shots and you 3-putt it, all of a sudden you lose your confidence in your swing for some reason.
The hardest thing about golf for me is you have to practice like it is the most important thing in the world and then you have to play like you don’t care at all. You have to show up and practice every single day and put 100% in, and you can’t do that unless you really really care. But then also when you tee up on Thursday you have to swing free and how to do that when you really really care? So you have to convince yourself that the shot doesn’t matter.
Advanced players, having had years to refine their timing and synchronization, generally start their downswing with a balanced mixture of arms, shoulders, and body. But when they start hitting the ball particularly well, what often happens is greedy thoughts creep in: “Hey, my swing is in such a groove, I bet if I swing harder the ball will go even farther.” This is simply human nature and a product of how the mind works. Again, confusing force with speed, advanced players try to swing harder and unknowingly get off the track fundamentally. They swing harder, put more body thrust into it, and suddenly, their fine-line balance of arms, shoulders, and body is out of sync.
I recommend that you continue to hit off of tees until you become comfortable and consistent with all of your clubs. You have worked so hard to improve your execution and knowledge while raising your confidence and comfort levels that attempting to hit balls off the ground too soon can be counterproductive, both fundamentally and psychologically.
The golfers become consumed with what the course presents - they become nervous. They become so engulfed by what is in front of them that they completely forget that they’ve been working on and what has gotten them that far. This is natural reaction, especially for those relatively new to the game. But if you carry that type of apprehension onto the course, you have lost the battle and the war.
Rather than allowing your head to fill with thoughts like, “Gosh, I hope I don’t go into the water,” or “Keep it away from that bunker,” or “I have to get it onto the green,” concentrate on the process.
I’ve since learned a very important lesson: In golf, the subconscious always wins. Golfers do many things they are not aware of. They don’t swing the way they think they swing (watch someone’s face the first time he sees his swing on video), and they don’t play anywhere near the same break they think they’re playing when they putt.
The purpose of the ritual is to get your mind and body into the automatic (subconscious control) mode. It removes the necessity for any thinking or decision-making before or during the execution of your stroke.
The ritual can be simple, but it cannot be mental. Your mind races when you’re excited. Your heart beats faster, your brain tends to run faster, and time seems to fly when you’re in the heat of competition.
But Nicklaus still felt sure he would win at Turnberry. He felt sure because he had a symbiotic relationship with pressure: the bigger the moment, the better he played, and the better he played, the bigger the next moment. And Watson? The sportswriters called him a choker. His swing could get erratic at inopportune moments. He had folded under pressure on numerous occasions. He simply did not know the things Nicklaus had learned about winning, about finishing off a tournament, about how to deal with the turbulent feelings a golfer feels when close to victory.
Very few guys love to be in contention. Yes, you hear all the time people say, “You’ve got to like the pressure. You’re got to like being in that position.” But I think most of them were fibbing. There have been only a few guys who really liked that moment of intense pressure; for the rest of us, it was just something we had to get through.
Jack though… Jack really enjoyed it. I never saw anyone else who was quite like that.
Here’s a question Watson has asked himself repeatedly: What is pressure? The answer seems obvious: pressure is a stressful urgency caused by the weight of a moment or the difficulty of a task. But because handling pressure is such a part of Watson’s profession, he has spent a lot of time breaking down what pressure means.
“Pressure,” he says with some finality, “happens when you are attempting to achieve something you are not sure you can achieve.”
Every step away from the familiar takes you a step away from comfort. Each step adds pressure as you become less and less certain you can achieve the objective because you’ve never done it before.
Perhaps more than any other sport, golf focuses pressure on the player. There are no time constraints, as there are in other sports. Your competitors are not allowed to hinder you. The pressure originates in yourself; it builds from doubts.
“If you don’t feel pressure, you won’t feel the pressure” is Watson’s way of saying that the best way to handle and overcome pressure is to not let it build in the first place. One way is to think positively. Harvey Penick used to demand that his students speak positively at all times. He put it like this: “Never say never and don’t say don’t.”
Another way is to “never hit a shot under pressure that you are not capable of executing.” In other words, you will feel doubts; you will feel uncertain. The best way to deal with this is to go back to the things you know. Follow the same routine you always follow. Return to the familiar. Do what you know how to do.
Watson is among many who believe that visualizing a shot is one of the most important parts of playing good golf. But for most of us, it’s a hard thing to do. For one thing, we don’t have Watson’s imagination. For another, the shot we hit often bears no resemblance at all to the shot we saw in our minds. After visualizing a high cut that dances around the cup and then hitting a low screamer that plugs into a bunker, how can you help but wonder, What’s the point?
The point, Watson says, is that positive energy fuels the golf swing. No golfer needs to be told that many more bad things than good things can happen when you hit a golf ball. Golf’s a hard game. At the same time, thinking about how hard a game golf is has never helped anyone play the game better, just as thinking about the intimidating length of a marathon will not help anyone get to the finish line.
One of the things Watson takes great pride in is that, with rare exceptions, he did not think negative thoughts when hitting the ball. He walked fast and he played fast, and that was because he had no interest in lingering on the challenges or the potential calamities.
I see golfers hit a poor shot, and I’ll say to them, “What were you thinking before you hit the shot?” More often than not, they weren’t thinking anything. They just hit and hope. It’s hard to hit good shots that way.
One of his favorite things to do during major championship weeks was open up the newspaper and see which of his competitors was complaining about the weather or the course conditions or anything else. He would then smile and mentally cross that player off the list of contenders. Those golfers who complained about stuff they couldn’t control had already lost.
I guess it comes down to this: When Greg hits a bad shot, he takes it very hard. He will say, “Why didn’t I get a kick left?” or “Oh, that’s the worst place I could have hit it,” or “Ok, there goes the tournament.” He’s very hard on himself. And when Tom hits a bad shot, he will look at me, wink, and say: “Just watch how I get out of this one.”
If you think yourself unlucky, you’ll have bad luck. There’s no scientific explanation for it, but it’s a cold, hard truth in golf. That’s one reason why bad bounces never bothered me as much as they did some people. The second you start thinking of yourself as a victim, you’ve had it.
He just believes that unlucky golfers, those who see themselves that way, are inevitably poor golfers. They rage at the bad breaks. They lose focus when things go wrong. They feel sorry for themselves when a well-struck shot does not yield the right result. They play negatively.
“I do tend to think too much,” Watson admits. “The funny thing is that when I’m playing well, I would say I play 90% by feel. You have to feel the shot. When I’m not playing well, it’s usually because I’m not playing by feel.”
Nicklaus agrees: “If I had known how to win, I would have won. But you don’t know how to win when you start. You have to learn how to lose before you learn how to win.”
He explains: There are intense emotions that people go through when they are under pressure. There is nervousness. There is fear. There is something like giddiness. There is also adrenaline. The mind races and jumps to memories and images that may or, more likely, may not be helpful. Making sense of these emotions take experience.
But the biggest lesson Nicklaus picked up from Cherry Hills was not how to control his emotions but instead to remember that everyone else was feeling the same pressure.
Awareness of death, mortality, the afterlife makes us fearful, tainting our natural resolve.
Watson talks a lot about fear in golf. He thinks it deadens the nerves. It makes a golfer lose feeling in his hands and weakens his sense of moderation. That is when pressure is at its highest and your adrenaline is pumping, you should take a little bit less club and swing fully.
When the pressure is hottest, touch is the first thing to go.
When a high-handicap golfer hits a wonderful shot exactly as planned, the feeling tends not to be ”Wow, it’s strange that a golfer of my meager ability would hit such a good shot.” It leans instead toward “Yes, that’s my game. That is who I am.” The next 20 terrible shots are mere illusions until, finally, another good shot reminds the golfer of his true self.
He was always good at handling difficult conditions. He had a toughness that other golfers lacked. Watson — and Nicklaus and Tiger Woods and pretty much every great golfer through the years — wants to face difficult conditions because he believes in his ability to overcome them.
The best part of playing golf is hitting great shots. And what gives you the opportunity to hit your greatest shots? Getting in some trouble.
Garcia had wondrous talent; when he first came on tour his touch around the greens and ability to hit brilliant shots when in trouble reminded observers of the young Tom Watson. But he felt jinxed. Every missed putt was a sign of doom. Every bad bounce convinced him that the golfing gods were against him. “This doesn’t happen to other golfers,” he moaned in those moments when things went bad. Watson, who liked Garcia, wished he could convince the young man that he was talented and blessed.
The leaderboard was turning and twisting but it did not matter. All of the other golfers would have to face a kind of turbulence that they had never felt before; there is nothing quite like being in contention for the 1st time at a major championship.
The worst thing that can happen to any golfer is to lose hope. One lousy round follows another, shots hook into the woods or slice into the water time after time, putts from 3ft away skid short of the hole or roll 5ft by. At some point the golfer starts to think that it will never get better. The promise of a new golf club or the next lesson fades. This is the time many golfers quit.
Every shot requires a different line of thinking. But it’s as you mull over these questions that you must make all your shot and swing decisions and — this is most important — commit to them. You can’t have any doubts when you’re standing over the ball ready to make your swing.
Here’s what happens when someone attempts a shot with less than 90% confidence. I call it golf’s version of the anxiety attack:
The player is worried as he thinks about the shot; worried a little more as he addresses the ball; takes extra time to think and make sure he’s not going to do whatever it is he’s worried about doing. But then the subconscious anxiety attack occurs at the top of the backswing. The player thinks, “OMG, don’t let this happen,” which is the worst possible thought any golfer can have as he moves down toward impact.
Here’s a saying I use with my players: “Trust is a must, because to bail is to fail.” If your subconscious doesn’t trust you, it will “bail out” in the middle of your downswing, guaranteeing a poor shot. You can’t change your motion in the middle of the downswing; there isn’t enough time and you don’t have enough hand strength to override the centrifugal forces that have built up. If your subconscious bails out on you in the middle of a swing, you will fail!
Steve is the best caddie I’d ever seen. His greatest gift is that he stays completely calm and retains a commanding presence under the greatest tournament pressure. His former boss Raymond Floyd once said that Steve is the only caddie he ever had who didn’t choke. He proved it many times with Tiger, either by saying the right thing at a nervous moment, staying solidly silent in a moment of crisis, or calling Tiger off a shot if he believed it was the wrong one. Steve prided himself on being able to read Tiger’s mind, and Tiger respected Steve’s guts, judgment, and instinct. He also relied on Steve’s ability to be gruff and intimidating so that fans and media would give him a wider berth.
All his winning since junior golf had taught him the way he had to think for the winning to continue. When everybody around him wanted him to look at past glories or look ahead to his assault on Jack Nicklaus’s major championship record, Tiger stubbornly stayed in the present. He ran his career the same way a golfer shoots a low round: one shot at a time.
One of Tiger’s gifts was the ability, when he needed to, to turn off emotion. It was why after a tantrum he could still be serene over the next shot. No doubt he’d learned early on that strong emotions unchecked adversely affect coordination and focus and generally impede winning. His knack for shutting down emotion was a big reason he closed out victories better than anyone else in history, and why he was so incredibly good at making the last putt. It was also why he could win half a dozen tournaments in a row and seem just as focused and collected coming up the 72nd hole in all of them.
The converse of this was Tiger’s ability to flash intense anger after a bad shot. He did this a lot and was always criticized, but he was expert at getting rid of all negative emotion by the time he’d arrived at his next shot. He told me that he often got angry on purpose because it allowed him to get rid of frustration, and also served to motivate him and improve his focus.
“I make all the hard ones but miss all the easy ones.” He responded, “Hank, that’s because there are no easy shots. There are just shots.”
Usually the aggression would occur after he hadn’t converted a few good iron shots, leading to impatience that would result in a missed 6ft comebacker and a bogey. When he was just trying to 2-putt from a greater distance, he was one of the best lag putters ever. It was one of the big reasons he was so good at holding leads. When all Tiger needed was solid pars, he knew he didn’t have to try to hit the ball close to the flag. He was confident he could 2-putt from distance, not a given for many players under pressure. I believe one of the reasons Phil Mickelson has been prone to making mistakes with a lead is that he doesn’t trust himself to make 4- and 5-foot part putts, so he takes chances from the fairway to get his approaches into an easier 2-putt range.
I want you to believe with all your heart that the shot you are about to hit will be a good one. I want you to have total confidence.
Anyone who plays championship golf will tell you that at least half the battle occurs inside the golfer’s mind.
Many times I have had fans tell me how cool I looked on the course, when all I could remember was how scared or nervous I had been.
As we talked, it became apparent that Nick had a problem shared by a lot of professionals. His thinking depended on how he played the first few holes. If they went well, he fell into a relaxed, confident and focused frame of mind. Not coincidentally, he shot an excellent round. But if the first few holes went poorly, his concentration was shattered. He might start trying to fix his swing in the middle of the round and become increasingly erratic.
If you’re going to be a victim of the first few holes, you don’t have a prayer. You’re like a puppet. You let the first few holes jerk your strings and tell you how you’re going to feel and how you’re going to think.
You’re going to have to learn to think consistently if you want to score consistently. You wouldn’t be foolish enough to try a different swing on every shot, would you?
It’s the same way with your mind. You’re going to have to decide before the round starts how you’re going to think, and do it on every shot. You have to choose to think well.
This suggests a most important principle:
You cannot hit a golf ball consistently well if you think about the mechanics of your swing as you play.
But the time to worry about swing mechanics must be limited, and the place to worry about them is the practice tee and only the practice tee. If you step onto the course with the intention of shooting your best possible score, you cannot think about mechanics. You have to believe that you’ve practiced the golf swing enough to have faith in it. To put it concisely:
A golfer must train his swing and then trust it.
This was the way Tom Watson played in his prime. The worse he hit it, the more he ripped it. He knew that if he reacted to a bad shot by getting more careful, it would not make his swing better. It would make it tentative — and worse. I’ve seen him hit it 70y left, then 70y right and then hit the 3rd one screaming on line to the pin.
Stuart had revealed something very basic about the way good athletes think. They create their own realities. They think however they have to think to maintain their confidence and get the job done. In basketball, this is called the shooter’s mentality. A golfer has to learn to put aside all thought of past failures and to trust that his next swing will send his shot where he aims it.
This may seem, to an outsider, to be absolutely irrational. How can a kid who’s just missed 20 shots in a row be confident he’s going to make the next one?
The answer is that whether it’s rational or not, it’s more effective than the alternative.
I’ve asked many golfers to recall and describe their state of mind during their hot streaks. I have yet to hear one respond that he was thinking of swing mechanics. Most would say that the hot streak enabled them to stop thinking about swing mechanics. That’s another way of saying they were able to trust their swings.
Nicklaus helped reemphasize the importance of the right mental approach to the game. He was a strategist and thinker on the golf course. He was among the first golfers to talk about visualizing the shot he desired before he swung the club. He insisted on waiting until his mind was relaxed and focused before hitting a shot.
The brain and nervous system respond best when the eyes focus on the smallest possible target. The smaller the target, the sharper the athlete’s focus, the better his concentration, and the better the results.
But it has another benefit. A golfer needs to have something on his mind if he does not want thoughts about swing mechanics to intrude on his consciousness just as he is preparing to play his shot. The target helps to fill that void. It helps prevent distractions.
And experience, that false friend, tells you that you can’t hit a driver precisely enough to bother with a specific target. So golfers are tempted to be sloppy about targets. If they fall prey to the temptation, they tend to hit, not surprisingly, sloppy shots.
The brain, at some level, cannot seem to understand the word “don’t.”
If your last thought before striking the ball is “don’t hit it in the pond,” the brain is likely to react by telling your muscles to hit it in the pond.
Good players feel that when their routines start, they are stepping into a bubble, a small, private world in which nothing can distract them. Tom Watson once said it feels like going into a room where everything is dim and quiet.
The important thing about club selection is decisiveness. If you step up to the ball still uncertain whether you have the right club, your routine is not sound. You have to start over, rethinking the shot until you are convinced you have the right club for it.
This is often the hardest part of the routine to execute. It’s not enough to go through the motions that set up the body properly. You have to set up the mind as well.
Even the best players, the ones who have learned this principle, understand it, and have practiced it, have to work constantly at it. The game is always tempting them, as it tempted Val Skinner, to hit a shot before their minds are set. Everyone succumbs to the temptation once in a while and strays from the proper routine.
She told me that, in her mind, missing a green didn’t matter. She was just as intent on, and confident about, holing chips and pitches as she was on long putts. That’s how solid her short game was.
There’s no small amount of machismo involved in this. The long drives connotes strength, power, virility. The short game has connotations of delicacy and femininity. Part of my job as a sports psychologist is to help players get past this.
All I can say is that if you want to score well, attach your ego to how well you think, how well you manage your game, how well you hit your wedges, how well you putt.
He didn’t want to dwell on the putts that he missed, because that would only make it harder to be certain that the next one was going in. And that was one thing Locke insisted on. Putting was about confidence. “Hitting a putt in doubt is fatal in most cases.” Locke has to be certain that the putt was going in.
The great players usually start out as confident putters, even bold putters. But over the years, even the great ones have trouble maintaining this attitude. Maybe playing for years with major championship on the line inevitably produces memories of missed putts in crucial situations. After a while, those memories become so burdensome that the golfer can’t keep them out of his mind as he stands on the green. Then he loses the instinct to look at the hole, look at the ball, let the putt go, and know that it’s going in.
The difference is that when you guys get in tournaments, the likelihood is that you’ll lose your concentration on 4 or 5 shots every round. Over a 4-day tournament, even if every lapse costs you just 1 stroke, that’s 16-20 shots a week, and that’s the difference between the leading money winner and losing your card. If one of these lapses costs you 2 or 3 strokes, or you get upset and lose concentration on a 2nd shot, you can be talking about 25-30 strokes a week, and you won’t even make the college golf team. Over a career, losing concentration once in a while can mean lots of strokes.
One of the things Tom, or any successful pro, does best is to accept his bad shots, shrug them off, and concentrate completely on the next one. He has accepted the fact that, as he puts it, “Golf is not a game of perfect.”
No matter what happens with any shot you hit, accept it. Acceptance is the last step in a sound routine.
Good golfers, I think, have to get over the notion that they only want to win by hitting perfect shots. They have to learn to enjoy winning ugly. And that entails acceptance of all the shots they hit, not just the good ones.
But the question is, does it do any good to get angry?
Getting angry is one of your options. But if you choose to get angry, you are likely to get tighter. That’s going to hurt your rhythm and your flow. It will upset you and distract you. It will switch on your analytical mind and your tendency to criticize and analyze anything you do that falls short of perfection. It will start you thinking about the mechanical flaws in your swing and trying to correct them.
You will very likely play worse.
Chip Beck has one of the best attitudes toward bad shots. When he hits it into the woods, he walks toward the ball and all he say is, “You gotta love it. This is what golf is all about.”
In our culture, people, particularly high achievers, are taught to judge themselves harshly. They’re taught that being compassionate toward oneself is weak and indulgent. There is a kernel of truth in this. There is a time and place for tough self-evaluation, and you will not improve as a golfer unless you honestly examine your game and work on its weaknesses.
But don’t do it on the golf course.
Being confident doesn’t mean that I don’t know that 2% is a good average on 40ft putts. It means that when I’m standing over a 40ft putt, no one is asking me to bet my house, and I’m not thinking about average. I’m thinking about putting the ball in the hole. And that’s all I’m thinking about.
Standing on the tee and thinking about your drive going to the target doesn’t guarantee that it will go there. It only enhances the chances. If it guaranteed success, people would more readily get the idea. But they try thinking confidently, and as soon as a shot doesn’t succeed, they think, “Well, that doesn’t work.”
But look at it another way. If you’re not thinking about your drive going to the target, what are you thinking about?
Negative thinking is almost 100% effective.
Nowadays, he tells me, the only thoughts that enter his mind on a golf course are thoughts about what he wants to do. The prospect of hitting a drive into the woods or running a putt way past the hole simply does not occur to him.
It can sound a little bit like self-deception. But it isn’t. It is simply the way that great athletes, or successful people in any field, have trained themselves to think.
“Well, you know, when I come up to a shot, I just pull up my sleeves and shrug my shoulders to try to get them relax,” Fred said. “And then I try to remember the best shot I ever hit in my life with whatever club I have in my hands. Is that okay?”
A golfer chokes when he lets anger, doubt, fear or some other extraneous factor distract him before a shot.
Distracted, the golfer then fails to do one or more of the things he normally does. He fails to follow his routine, particularly his mental routine. He forgets his game plan. He fails to accept his shots. Quite often under pressure, a distracting doubt or fear turns on the conscious mind. The golfer stops trusting his swing. He starts going through a checklist of errors to avoid. He gets tight and careful. When he’s tight and careful, his body must work against gravity, rhythm and flow. His muscles get spastic, his feel get stiff, and he loses his natural grace and tempo. He hits a bad shot, relative to his ability.
In a young golfer, or an older golfer who hasn’t learned how to handle it, this gush of adrenaline can be devastating. He stands over a shot or a putt and feels the trembling hands and the furiously beating heart. He doesn’t understand that this is simply a natural reaction to the situation. It’s the way the body is wired. He begins to think, “What the heck is wrong with me?”
And that thought introduces doubt and fear, which, as we have seen, are the termites that destroy the foundation of the successful stroke. He may try to still the heart and hands, which makes the body stiff. He forgets to trust. He blames the ensuring bad shot or putt on shaking hands, not on being distracted by shaking hands.
Palmer had already committed, in retrospect, 2 of the common mental mistakes a golfer makes under pressure. He had let his thoughts drift into the future. He had started to dwell on the score he was shooting and the Open record. Then, he compounded the error by introducing a new, mechanical thought, about swing tempo.
One of the most common mental errors committed by golfers under pressure is letting the score distract them from what they ought to be thinking about.
Finally, the play of your opponents can be a nervous distraction. Many a player has been cruising along in a match until his opponent suddenly and unexpectedly sinks a long chip or comes out of the woods to make par. Surprised, he loses his focus, starts to feel pressured, and fouls up his own game.
A golfer should always assume that his opponent will hit the best possible shot.
I recommend getting your mind off of golf between shots. It’s easier for most people to concentrate for a minute or so at a time, as they execute their shotmaking routines. Trying to stay that focused between shots can be too taxing.
Golfers must learn to love the challenge when they hit a ball into the rough, trees, or sand. The alternatives — anger, fear, whining, and cheating — do no good.
The best advice I can give you is to take the game slowly, make prudent decisions, and never hit a shot while contemplating other matters. Golf should be played with total concentration and a complete disregard for your ego. Try a monastic existence, at least for the duration of the round.
Golf is all about dealing with adversity. If you can keep your head and make a good swing despite the jerk, you’ll be a tougher, better golfer tomorrow.
In golfing terms, getting into the zone means clearing your mind so that your body can do its job. The mind is a powerful asset, but it can hurt you, too. Negative thoughts about where you ball might go are not going to help you make your best swing.
Hagen stood on the 1st tee knowing that he’d probably hit at least 6 terrible shots that day. So when he did hit terrible shots, he didn’t get upset. Hagen simply relied on his superior short game to get him out of trouble. That combination of attitude and dexterity made him a feared match player. His apparent nonchalance and his ability to get up and down “from the garbage” put a lot of pressure on his opponent.
Because golf is a game of mistake management, you’re going to get into trouble at least a few times in every round. How you cope with those moments and shots determines your score for the day and, ultimately, your ability to play well. Never forget that even the greatest rounds have moments of crisis.
How a player reacts to 1st-tee jitters is an individual thing. You just have to get out there and do it and see what happens. Common symptoms: Blurred vision. A desire to get this over and done with as soon as possible. Loss of reason.
Even the best players hit sloppy shots into tight spots or confront bad lies more frequently than you’d imagine. And for the average golfer, shots from remote, impossible-to-get-out-of places are much too often the norm. One mistake can sink a hole. A few blunders, and you’ve just scuttled the entire round.
The catch-22 is that, to master golf, you can’t be afraid of hitting from tough lies (the rough) or difficult places (sand bunkers). You need to master your fear, and to do that, you need to prepare for the inevitable, next-to-impossible shots that can sidetrack even the best golfers.
To play any golf shot correctly requires an unwavering concentration. The most perfect swing in the world needs direction, and plenty of it, and when its possessor begins to do a little mental daisy picking, something always goes wrong. The concentration must not be occasional, but extends to every single shot no matter how simply it may appear.
I don’t think about where the club should be; I just picture the shot and try to hit that shot.
I’ve never missed a putt in my mind.
On every shot I played this week, I had my mind where it needed to be. I was in the present, focused on that shot. I had a clear picture in my mind of what I wanted each ball to do. I know now I can quiet my mind and emotions and let my body do what it knows how to do under major tournament pressure.
The opposite of this sort of situational optimism is an attitude of fear, concern, and doubt. In a word, pessimism. Pessimism tends to rouse the conscious brain and get it engaged. Our minds are programmed to work that way. In certain kinds of difficult situations, it helps to think things out calmly and rationally. The conscious mind is good for higher-level thinking, but the conscious mind isn’t good for shooting or putting.
He would get into bed at night after a tournament round and replay every shot in his imagination. But when his replay came to a shot he hadn’t played well, he edited it. He erased the memory of the poor shot and instead visualized himself playing the shot correctly. And Sam would awake the next day feeling refreshed and optimistic.
I told the players to relax, close their eyes, and focus on my voice. I then described scenarios for the upcoming game. In some of them, I described Virginia hitting the floor hot and commanding the game. In others, I described Virginia staying cool under pressure and winning a close one at the buzzer. In one, I described Virginia falling behind early, staying cool, and catching up. All of these scenarios, though, ended in triumph. They were all intended to help the team feel optimistic and confident.
Misfortune happens to everyone. Champions just refuse to let it push them into doubtful, fearful thinking. If they miss a fairway, they think about how good they will feel if they make birdie from the woods. If they miss a green, they think about how much they enjoy showing off their chipping, pitching, and bunker play. If they have a bad round, they decide the odds will be in their favor the next time.
Jack sincerely believed what he said. Jack has that sort of mind. He forgets mistakes. He remembers good shots. He refused to feed his subconscious mind with a lot of thoughts about mistakes. He understood that there’s absolutely no reason to relive and remember a missed putt.
That’s a champion’s mind. A champion understands that it’s fine to savor an experience when it’s positive, to remember it, to celebrate it. When an experience is negative, he understands that he can’t let himself get stuck in it. He can see no benefit from ingraining a bad experience by reliving it.
The champion doesn’t care about keeping an accurate record in his own mind. He thinks and remembers in ways that will help him achieve and maintain a confident self-image.
Rory McIlroy is a personable, modest young man at the dinner table and in the locker room. But he’s learned not to feel that way in tournament competitions. “I just try and have a bit of an attitude, you know? I needed to be a little more cocky, a little more arrogant on the golf course — but just on the golf course.”
He told me he had listened to a tape made by a friend for months prior to the tournament, particularly on his flight to the US. The tape was a fictional broadcast by a reporter describing how Save won the tournament. He listened to it, closed his eyes, and visualized it. He did it over and over. His subconscious believed in it. He told me he got to the golf course Thursday already sure he would win the Masters.
If they’re golfer, I sometimes suggest to them that they imagine that God appeared to them and said, “You’re going to have a great career. You’re going to win dozens of tournaments. You’re going to win several major championships. Don’t worry about it. You just keep working hard on your game. I’ve taken care of the results.”
Greg adapted it to “keep on swinging, don’t stop swinging, you’re going to be a star someday.” He played that song in his mind for hour after hour of practice. He sang it under his breath over a decade in which he averaged about 500 practice shots a day.
He talked about his attitude. He said he’d learned to be more patient, to be indifferent to what his competitors were doing, to zero in on a small target, and let his swing happen. He didn’t fall into the trap of thinking much about where he stood in the tournament and trying to force things.
If you’re going to play the Tour, you have to love golf all the time. It’s not going to work if you can only love it when everything’s going your way, every putt’s going in the hole, and every carom is bouncing into the fairway instead of OBs. It’s not going to work if you practice every day and only love it when the ball is going where you’re looking. You’ve got to love it when you practice day after day after day and you can’t find it. You’ve got to love it when every putt looks like it’s going in and then lips out. That’s what it’s about.
But there’s no cure for nerves.
Every one of the golfers I’ve counseled who have won major championships has been nervous during the final holes of these tournaments. But they’ve learned to perform well despite nerves and the physical symptoms that accompany them — trembling, wet hands, rapid heartbeat, a sinking feeling in the gut, and sometimes even a feeling that breathing is difficult.
These physical symptoms of nerves are the products of inevitable chemical changes that occur inside the body during moments of high stress, changes like a shot of adrenaline. They’re outside our conscious control. So it’s a waste of time trying to avoid them.
A good preshot routine is both mental and physical. The player clears his mind and forgets about his last shot and all previous and future shots. There is only the shot to be played. There is only the present moment. He doesn’t think about the consequences of the shot or about the way it will affect the results of the tournament.
We understood that the cure was not to think, “Don’t think about your stroke,” as he started to putt. The subconscious often doesn’t understand the word “don’t.”
Every shot needed to have the same level of importance. Holzman believed that part of his job as a coach was ensuring that the players never got too high or too low emotionally. He didn’t want the team overjoyed after victories or distraught after losses.
He decided that when he played competitive golf, he would keep score not by how many strokes he took but by how well he followed his preshot process, mentally and physically, before every shot.
Exceptional people often keep separate lists of practice goals and performance process goals, either on paper or mentally. Practice goals might be things like practicing with scoring clubs for at least an hour a day. Performance process goals involve things like staying in the present moment, accepting whatever happens as it happens, underrating to everything, being unflappable, and totally trusting in your skills during competition.
It’s a given that any player on the PGA Tour is capable of making a birdie on any hole he plays. That means that on most of the holes, most of the players do not play to their capabilities. They fail.
On the golf course, it’s best to treat failure as an accident.
I told myself I was going to go out there and play some good golf and not pay any attention to the other players or Stacy and what they were shooting. If someone plays better than me, then so be it. I can’t control what they shoot. But I can control my game and my concentration.
I’m unbelievably fragile right now. My whole game has become how well I’m driving it. I’ve started feeling like I can’t even play if I don’t start driving it better. I’m trying a different swing thought with every tee shot. I feel like I’m hearing a million different things from my swing coach and other people.
These are nothing more than signals for the mind to switch from its analytical mode into the subconscious automotive state that allows the body to focus purely on the process of hitting the ball toward the target without the intervention of cumbersome and often destructive thoughts.
Only once you have absorbed and processed all the necessary information required to help you plan your shot can you allow yourself to slip into autopilot and allow your subconscious to take over.
I believe that the purpose of the analytical part of your pre-shot routine is to “fill up your bottle of confidence.” In order to stand over the ball positively and with total faith in your ability and your choice of shot, you must ensure that this bottle is full. If there is any room at all left in the bottle, the gap will be filled with negative and potentially destructive thoughts.
If you continually tell yourself that you find a particular shot difficult or that a certain situation makes you uncomfortable, then this will very quickly become your reality. Fortunately, the opposite is also true.
One particularly effective example of positive self-talk is to describe your desired shot to yourself quietly under your breath before you start your pre-shot routine. Tell yourself where you want the ball to start, where you want it to finish and what type of trajectory you would like to achieve.
However, for some strange reason, this zone is nearly impossible to recreate on a conscious level. The more you try to enter this state the more elusive it becomes. The word “trying” is particularly relevant in this context since most of the amateur golfers who have somehow found themselves in the zone have almost always stumbled blindly into it.
However, the good news is that you can greatly increase your chances of entering and remaining in the zone simply by developing a thorough, consistent and efficient pre-shot routine. There are no guarantees, but the road that takes you there is a clear one. For this mental zone to be experienced and enjoyed, certain key elements of your game must be harmonious. You must be physically competent, you must be deeply relaxed yet focused, and the challenge facing you must grab your full attention. The general rule is that the quieter the mind, the greater the likelihood of these elements combining together.
“In ‘21 I had an amazing year, got my first major at KPMG. Just a lot of doubt crept into my mind in 2022 and especially 2023,” said Korda. “I heard some outside voices from other people saying that they don’t know if I’ll ever be able to win another major again, and I stuck to working extremely hard on and off the golf course.
“I think of all the sad times and the health scares that I have gone through have made me who I am today. I think it has matured me a lot, and I would say it’s shaped me into the person I am today, and I’m very grateful for the ups and downs.”
After all of her wins, Korda has continually talked about staying in what she refers to as her “bubble,” refusing to look forward or back at her success too closely and instead choosing to be where her feet are – focusing on the next challenge, task or shot at hand.
This morning was a totally different story. I cried like a baby this morning. I was so stressed out. I didn’t know what to do. I was sitting there telling Meredith, I don’t think I’m ready for this. I’m not ready, I don’t feel like I’m ready for this kind of stuff, and I just felt overwhelmed.
Some golfers are mentally defeated even before they’ve hit the shot; they let negative thoughts flood their mind. The self-defeating thoughts raise anxiety and exacerbate technical flaws.
Every golfer knows what it’s like to be nervous, anxious, or embarrassed on the course.
You’re not alone in those feelings - the game has a way of bringing them out sometimes.
Nothing to be ashamed of!
“You don’t win golf tournaments by hitting miraculous shots that you are not capable of hitting,” Nicklaus says. “You lose golf tournaments that way.”
“Remember, most golfers self-destruct.”
This, though, is where Watson’s greatest attribute shone through. If Nicklaus won tournaments by embracing a grand destiny, Watson won by refusing to accept a doomed fate. No golfer before or since moved on from a bad shot quite like Tom Watson.
Before hitting every shot, Watson insists that you should imagine a good shot, even a perfect shot. There should be no negativity. When Watson said to Edwards at Pebble Beach, “Get it close, hell. I’m going to make it,” he was only putting into words the image he visualized.
He once commented that he never missed a shot in his mind before he actually swung the club. He still plays this way mentally.
The walk between shots is one of the most critical parts of the game. Though this period of time is recognized by some pros as a potential mental hazard as well as a benefit, I feel its importance in most golfers’ minds is generally undervalued. It is most often in the interval between shots that both the Inner and Outer games are won or lost.
Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. Even the best golfers cannot step onto the 1st tee with any assurance as to what they are going to do. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly 1000 times he should be able to duplicate the performance almost at will. But such is certainly not the case.
The golf swing is a most complicated combination of muscular actions, too complex to be controlled by objective conscious mental effort. Consequently, we must rely a good deal upon the instinctive reactions acquired by long practice.
In playing a golf shot it always helps if the player can shut out from his mind all worry over the result of the effort, at least while he is in the act of playing the shot. After taking the stance, it is too late to worry. The only thing to do then is to hit the ball.
No matter how much pressure we may feel is riding on a given putt, we do not feel anxiety if we do not first doubt our ability to sink it. Fear increases as our sense of our competence decreases. Therefore, if we can lessen our self-doubt, our fear automatically wanes.
Most of us would not put up with someone else sowing seeds of doubt in our minds. If that person persisted, we would know he was trying gamesmanship on us and we would ignore him. But, for some reason, when the voice of doubt is coming from inside our own heads, we find it harder to ignore.
Golf is traditionally a game played in silence. Few players will tolerate another person saying a word to them once they have addressed the ball. Then why are we so tolerant of Self 1’s distracting voice chattering within our own head?
When I am looking at the hole, I can imagine that it is an easy matter to place the ball into it. I imagine that I am just reaching out to touch the hole or to take something out of it. This reduces the tension that arises from assuming that I am attempting something “hard.” With reduced fear of failure, there is also less chance of steering the ball or having a breakdown in my wrist or a dreaded yip.
Precision in putting is as much a state of mind as it is a technical accomplishment. One of the ways I find the state of mind that produces precision is to imagine that I am threading a needle. I think of the delicacy required, the accuracy of hand and of eye required to put a thread through the narrow teardrop at the end of the needle. Immediately, my mind is focused and geared for precise movement. I notice if my left and right hand move the club at exactly the same moment, if the club is resting just above the grass so it touches it but without the slightest friction. These are simple things to notice, but they require a fine-tuning of the attention that prepares of the surgical accuracy required in putting.
As a way to quiet Self 1, I find it useful to think of the generation of power as a flowing river. I find that reminding myself before I swing to use energy not strength, often results in a more powerful drive.
Slumps don’t exist. We create them in our minds. Some people say they’re in a slump after 2 poor shots in a row; others don’t feel they’re in a slump until they’ve played poorly for 2 months. Therefore you’re in a slump when you think you are. The deeper you think it is — the more deeply you believe in it — the harder it will be to get out of it. A slump is a belief that poor past performance is going to continue, and the best thing to do is not to believe it. Stay in the present, and let each shot, good or bad, stay in the past. The past doesn’t have power over the present unless you surrender that power to it.
When you’ve got a streak going, how do you keep yourself from thinking it’s going to end?
That damned Self 1 gets us going both ways. When you’re playing badly, it tells you you’re in a slump and will never get out, but when you’re playing better than usual, it tells you that you’re in a streak that can’t last.
Putting on blinders. Hogan perfected the ability to shut out all outside interference. Hogan looked like he was playing alone. He barely knew who is his playing partners were. He played the golf course.
Hogan said that he could create in his mind huge walls down the side of each fairway that could not be penetrated by stray shots.
Everything about his appearance was as sharp as could be. When he showed up at any tournament he was the best-dressed man there. His look and body mannerisms he employed were absolutely meant to intimidate the opposition. He walked like an athlete. He walked with confidence, and he was in perfect condition. You never saw Hogan mope, whine, or make excuses.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
We’re really fragile mentally, and you need to protect yourself. You need to protect yourself from yourself, really.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are many men who play golf exceptionally well when the issues are small, but who collapse when anything of importance is at stake. What causes the detonation is fear — lack of confidence in the swing — making them unwilling to trust it with anything that really matters. In the face of such an obstacle, tension takes the place of relaxation and strain upsets rhythm.
They don’t understand that the guy who is trying to win a golf tournament out there can look so calm. The guy is not calm. He may look calm and he may have learned how to control his emotions, but I can assure you he is not calm.
No matter how many times you win, the nervousness is there — and it is great. That’s the best thing about it, to put yourself in that position and to get nervous, to really get scared. It is what it is all about.
People don’t understand how wonderful that feeling is. To absolutely be scared to death that you are not going to be able to perform. And then you do. You pull the shots off — sometimes to your own amazement. It is an incredible feeling. That being scared, that’s fun. That’s good. If you are not scared, if you don’t get that adrenaline pumping, all you can do is average things. I love that. And that is the thing that people don’t understand. If you are not scared, it means you don’t care.
In addition to the inability to concentrate, there can be body tension, loss of sensation in the hands, increased heart rate, dizziness, shortness of breath, sweating, and in extreme cases, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, muscular pain, skin afflictions, and even impotence.
Golfer who “choke” often report being unable to focus. Perception changes, so that those golfers begin to perceive normally innocuous situations as threatening. Where they used to see only fairways and greens, they now see only hazards.
You have to be there a few times to understand how to handle it. I mean, I was just as nervous today as I was last year at the US Open. My hands were shaking just as bad, my stomach was churning just as bad. But I reminded myself of what I had to do, to hit the golf ball, to make the putts and keep myself focused, and I got through it.
Anxiety usually makes its first appearance in our hands. When blood flows away from our extremities, the result is that we often lose feeling in our hands. To regain the ability to feel the club in their hands, golfers do what come naturally — they grip the club tighter.
The 3rd way that tension and fear influence the golf swing is that golfers change their rate of acceleration on the downswing. When players get nervous they often hit the ball short because they decelerate. We call this trying to “steer” the ball or “holding on” too long.
The primary motivation for some golfers is to earn recognition from others. For these golfers, what others say about them is powerfully important, sometimes more important than improving and developing their game. While preparing to hit an important shot, their minds are often divided: One side of their mind is trying to focus on executing the shot, but the other is busy worrying about what other people will think if they blow the shoot.
It sounds funny, but I never really knew exactly how many under I was. I knew obviously I was playing good, but it doesn’t really matter how many under you are. I kept trying to hit good shots and trying to keep making birdies.
I knew if I played a good round I would be in there in the end. I just tried to stay focused and play one shot at a time, not really let myself think about it. It’s hard to do, especially knowing that you have a little bit of cushion on that back 9. And I just tried my best not to think about it. I think I did well staying in the present.
Does my dad dwell on mistakes? He doesn’t even remember them. Most of the time, when it comes to golf, he doesn’t acknowledge them. In his mind, they didn’t happen.
Nicklaus once suggested that a golfer has to do everything he can to protect his confidence, which is why he has “made a lifelong habit of favoring the positive over the negative.” Indeed, failure is so prominent in golf that Jack began to explain failure as “so-called failure” as a way of illustrate how golfers should think about mistakes as opportunities rather than setbacks.
The lesson is that experiences alone do not breed confidence. Nor does success by itself result in a corresponding confidence. Rather, it is the “meaning” that we give to these experiences, and how we interpret success that ultimately undermines how we face future challenges. Does a missed putt on the 1st hole mean you are putting poorly, or does it mean you are due to make one eventually? Do consecutive bad scores mean that you are getting worse as a golfer, or that you are improving because you are learning what not to do? Most golfers who get fixated on scores will tell you that bad scores are a sign they are getting worse.
Much of the success I’ve had helping golfers has boiled down to teaching them to teach themselves to ask the right questions as they play. Asking “What is the best strategy for this hole?” and “What is my target?” focuses golfers’ attention on the course and on the shot which, in turn, means that they do not focus on other golfers and their performance.
I felt very calm. When I was out on the course, I didn’t feel the anxiety of “Is it slipping away?” or “How is the tournament going?” or who is doing what. It was more like, “Hey, let’s hit some shots.” I was very confident today that good things would happen.
The difficulty lies in the fact that golf is so very, very sensitive to psychological and mechanical fluctuation. Even subtle changes in an individual’s mood, tension levels, confidence, muscular stiffness, or swing path can result in dramatic differences in shots in subsequent scores. Thus it requires a precision and consistency that other sports do not.
It begins with missing the short putts. Pretty soon you begin to fear leaving yourself a long putt or a chip shot, which in turn puts heavy pressure on your iron play. Then, because you feel you have to hit every approach shot stone dead, you become afraid of missing fairways, and pretty soon you’re playing scared on every shot. And the noose keeps tightening until eventually all your confidence is gone and you’ve completely lost the knack of scoring.
If we have a tendency to slice the ball, we are apt to see the shot drifting from left to right; we may even see it running away from us across the green. If we take our golf seriously, we shall not feel satisfied, if we allow ourselves to yield to the inclination to play the shot in this way. We must resist and counteract the tendency by visualizing the shot as being held up firmly with even a suspicion of draw in order to strengthen our resolution. The club generally follows the inclination of the mind. We must positively see the ball flying as we wish it to, and the time will come when our technical ability will triumph over the weakness which previously would have mastered us.