10
Mental Principles for Solid Golf
by Chuck Quinton
1) Fearlessness
Fear in golf is simply considering the consequences. Nothing more, nothing
less. When you are afraid of hitting a shot into the water, you are no longer
in the moment, you are considering the negatives of hitting a ball into the
water.
a.) Your subconscious mind does not understand “not” or “don’t”.
So as you tell yourself “Don’t hit it in the water” your
subconscious only understands “Hit it into the water.” When
elite golfers play their best, their mental focus is simply where they want
to hit it, not where they don’t. They often times won’t even
notice the other hazards as they are only concerned with where the ball
is going, not where it is not going.
b.) Worrying about the consequences is like paying interest only on a loan.
You have no control over the outcome of the golf shot. It can take a bad
bounce, the wind can gust or any other outside force can influence where
your ball ends up. In golf, you simply must take the good with the bad and
learn that it is not a game of perfect.
A fearless golfer is not a reckless golfer; he is simply one who is not concerned
with things outside his control. He is wrapped up in the moment of hitting
the ball where he wants it to go.
2) Confidence
Confidence is the antithesis of fear. They cannot coexist. If you are confident
in your ability, you will have no fear of sending the ball where you want
it to go. Confidence is simply knowing the ball is going at its target.
3) Focus
Focus in golf is critical to successfully executing a golf shot to your ability.
The mind works best when a golfer narrows his focus to the smallest point
possible. For instance, when putting elite golfers will often focus on only
a small blade of grass around the cup where they want the ball to roll over.
This is their focal point. If the putt is struck well, often it will hit the
exact target. However, by narrowing his focus to such a small point, the hole
all of a sudden becomes huge. If you are simply trying to putt a large hole
you may miss that large target, but if you are trying to putt to a blade of
grass and miss that target, it still has a great chance in hitting the much
bigger target—the hole.
Often times people will freeze up and get tense when trying to narrow their
focus to such a specific point and say they can’t do it. I then simply
hold up my finger in front of their face and say “Focus on my finger.”
Immediately, they realize that they’re simply trying too hard to concentrate
and must simply allow the mind to lock on to it’s target.
4) Trust
Trusting in your swing and your ability is one of the most important principles
in golf. Without trust, their can be no confidence and fear is the first thing
to replace trust. Trust is believing in your ability to hit the shot. Trusting
in yourself requires that you block out the past negative thoughts of swings
that had poor results and believe in yourself now, in this moment. If you’ve
ever hit one good shot with the club in your hands, you are capable of hitting
a thousand more.
Trust is something that must be built and nurtured through both mental and
physical practice in golf.
5) Positive Attitude
Your attitude will have more to determine your experience that day than any
other single factor. Attitude is like your golf bag, it holds everything together.
You could carry all your clubs and balls in your hands without it, but it’s
much easier to use the bag. Your attitude is a filter that can allow both
good and bad in. A positive attitude looks at a bad shot and says that was
an anomaly. A bad attitude sees a bad shot and says that “I am a horrible
golfer”, “I can never get off this tee”, and “I can’t
hit this club.” A positive attitude will allow you to enjoy the game
and have fun again.
A positive attitude creates emotional stability. Golf is one of the few sports
where an unstable athlete can go from pure joy to absolute destitution with
one swing. A golfer with a positive attitude living in the moment takes the
great shots with the bad, knowing that everyone hits horrible and great shots
everyday. PGA Tour pros will only hit 12 or 13 greens per round on average,
and of those their on average 7% off their mark. On a 200 yard shot with a
5 iron, this means that on average the best in the world will be 14 yards
away from the pin, or 42 feet away facing a long putt. So the next time you
shoot at a tough pin from 200 yards and miss the green, remember that the
best are going to be 14 yards offline too. In other words, cut yourself some
slack.
6) Present
A golfer must stay in the present moment at all times. He must never get ahead
of himself, adding up his score or thinking about the next shot. How many
times have you seen a golfer add up his score after 9 holes and say well,
I shot 39 on the front so I’m looking at a 78? The score you shot on
the front has absolutely nothing to do with what you can or will shoot on
the back. Staying in the moment keeps the golfer from fearing the consequences
of this shot or the next or remembering the last time he double bogeyed this
hole. He is only concerned with what he control in this very instant, freeing
his mind from doubt and fear.
7) Relax
Being tense is the perfect way to ruin a great swing. Tension in the muscles
removes their coordination, suppleness and flexibility; all of which the golf
swings places high demands on. Tension in most cases is caused by fear, doubt,
poor mechanics or all the above. But the greatest issue with tension is that
it is controlled by the conscious mind, whom happens to be a horrible golfer.
Your muscles can fire a thousand electrical signals per second to your brain
as feed back. Unfortunately, your conscious mind cannot respond quickly enough
to manage them all so your subconscious reacts on your behalf. If the conscious
mind was responsible for dealing with controlling all aspects of your body,
you’d be a pretty busy guy, controlling your heart rate, reflexes, breathing—It
wouldn’t leave much time for anything else. But your subconscious is
amazingly capable of handling the demands of such things as complicated athletic
movements, which a golf swing happens to be. On average the golf swing is
said and done with in less than 2 seconds. During that time, how many thoughts
do you really think you can process and communicate to your body what to do?
How do these sound: Take the club back low and slow, shift your weight to
the back foot, set the wrists early, toe pointing up and down the target line,
club forms a 90 degree angle with forearm at 9 o’clock, etc., etc.,
etc… And we’re only halfway back. This is simply an impossible
task to ask of your mind and body, you’re not wired that way, no one
is. Swinging the club is not about getting the club and body into certain
positions, it’s about swinging the club. That’s it, swinging the
club.
8) Visualize – Goals – Drive
One of the most important processes in a golf shot is visualizing the shot.
For many, this seems difficult or they don’t believe that it’s
necessary, but it is. Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus visualize their shots,
are you so much better than them that you don’t need to? Visualization
is like programming a computer to perform a task. In this case, the computer
is your subconscious and the most efficient programming language for this
computer is imagery.
Many people say that the reason the pros can visualize their shots is because
they have such great physical control over the ball. But the truth is that
the reason they have such great physical control is because they visualize
their shots. If you don’t have an image of what you want the ball to
do, what do you expect the ball to do? This is the same thing as being stranded
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with no map and no compass and you just
start paddling. You may want to end up in the Bahamas but may be paddling
to Antarctica. You must know where you want to go and the path of how to get
there. In golf, the where is the target and the path is the flight of the
ball or the “how” of getting there. You know where you want to
end up and there are many ways to get there. You need to consider the best
way for you to get to your destination given your abilities and the conditions.
If we were paddling to the Bahamas and there was a hurricane in our path,
we may not want to paddle straight. On the golf course, we may be best leaving
the driver in the bag and hitting a long iron off the tee. I can’t tell
you how many times I’ve hit a long or even mid iron off the tee and
made birdie while watching my competitor pull out a driver and hit into bunker,
miss the green and make bogey. The journey is just as important as the destination.
Visualizing goals gives us direction, motivates us and creates an internal
drive that gives the momentum to achieve them. A goal is just like the Bahamas,
we’re trying to get to a destination and we must visualize that destination.
Visualize what it will be like when you break 80 or 70 for the first time.
Whatever your goals are they must be something that drives us to achieve.
9) Affirmations
Speaking positively about oneself is a method to creating your own reality.
It is the self-fulfilling prophecy that we have all seen fulfilled in life
and on the course. Tell yourself you are a horrible putter or you never get
off this tee well and before long it will become a real truth. If you realize
you have the power to create this reality through negative thinking, then
you should easily see that you have the same power through positive thinking.
The way to accomplish this is through self affirmations. Tell yourself you
are a great putter and you are a great ball striker. These affirmations have
just as much power as the negative ones and are a key to a sound golf game.
10) Mental Workouts
It’s easy to see that for an athlete to excel in any sport he must continuously
train his physical body and mold it over time to perform at its peak. I can
assure you that no champion Olympic sprinter came out of the womb built like
that. Your body has an amazing ability to adapt and change by applying constant
stimulus. You can’t work out one day and expect to look like a body
builder. You can’t expect to read a book on calculus one day and be
proficient. In the same way you cannot expect to go through one mental workshop
or practice using these mental tools once and expect to be proficient. It
takes time and constant work just like any other worthwhile endeavor. You
must be as disciplined with your mental training as you would be for physical
training for any sport.
Rotation
vs. Tilting
Copyright
2005, Quinton Holdings, LLC