The Mental Game

1. The Mental Game Becoming more valued, but still under-appreciated.

2. What’s So Important About the Mental Game? When people ask you about the mental game of golf, what do you think about? Do you think about the pre-shot routine or about visualization? Do you think that having a strong mental game is important to playing golf well? In this presentation we are going to barely scratch the surface of what the mental game in golf is all about, but, ultimately, I want you to come away from this presentation understanding it’s importance. So...

3. Why Focus on the Mental Game 1. Tiger Woods 2. Seve Ballesteros 3. Jack Nicklaus 4. Gary Player 5. (insert great champion here) 6. (insert another great champion here) Notice anything yet? If you have ever followed, even loosely, the game of golf you should know that the names listed above were not only fierce competitors, but worked on their mental game just as seriously as any other aspect of their golf game. To become great at golf you HAVE to have a strong mental game. There is a reason why Bobby Jones had this to say about the mental part of golf… “Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course… the distance between your ears.”

4. Aspects of the Mental Game Without delving too deeply in the weeds, we will go over some of the most important aspects of the mental game and how to apply those aspects to your own golf game. • Visualization • Strategy • Self-Belief/Confidence

5. Visualization When talking about visualization there are two things that need to be addressed… • Seeing It- When practicing visualization you need to tap into your creative side so that you can visualize EXACTLY what you want to happen. I’m not just talking about the end result either, ie “I want to make birdie” or even “I want this shot to end up right next to the hole.” You need to see the shot from the absolute beginning to the absolute end. Just because things don’t always work out the way we visualize them doesn’t mean that we don’t always visualize exactly how we want things to go for every single shot! When visualizing, are you seeing yourself hit the shot and then are you watching it as it moves towards it’s target? Are you then seeing how it gets to it’s final destination? If not, you need to be. • Feeling It- Many tour pros keep their eyes on their intended target when taking practice swings. The reason for this is because they are visualizing the shot as they are trying to find a feeling for the shot. If you can pair what it would feel like to hit the shot and then watch it go and end up where you want while visualizing, you will be much more accurate and consistent. Feeling it is what allows us to accurately gauge what we actually need to do once it’s time to step up and hit it.

6. Strategy Jack Nicklaus will go down in history as being one of the best strategists to ever play the game. He was meticulous in his preparation for playing an event. Whenever he teed it up on day one, he had a solid game plan in place that gave him the confidence to win. There are a few things to focus on when talking about strategy… • Preparation • Creativity • Commitment

7. Preparation • When talking about preparation, it’s hard for a lot of people to appropriately understand just how important this part is. When you watch golf on tv you don’t see the hours and hours of preparation that go into a touring pro getting ready to play in an event. Usually, the players’ caddies walk the course for hours the week before plotting, measuring, and evaluating everything that the course has to offer. If you prepare for a course then you have knowledge that will allow you to be more confident when you are teeing it up for real. Would you rather play a course with the knowledge of someone like a local who has played there for half of their life or with the knowledge of someone playing it for the first time? Hopefully, it’s obvious. • There are so many factors to consider when accurately assessing what it means to be prepared for a course. We will address some in practice such as: evaluating green complexes, fairway analysis, grass composition, tee box structures, distances, course “personality”, etc. These are just a few of the important things to go over in preparation for playing a course competitively.

8. Creativity In going back to Jack Nicklaus, not only was the considered to be on of the most meticulous preparers, but he was also considered to be one of the most creative strategists of all time. What does this mean? Say for instance that you are playing a course in the winter time that has trees that line the fairways. You are evaluating a hole that is a par 5 dog-leg left to right with out of bounds all down the left hand side and a creek that hugs the dog-leg curve on the right side of the fairway. What if I told you there was another hole, a par 4, right adjacent to this hole to the right of the creek? Would you think about hitting your tee shot into that fairway so as to avoid the OB on the left and even, to some extent, the creek on the right? Also, since it’s a dog-leg left to right, chances are that if you hit it in the other fairway you might have a shorter 2nd shot into the green than if you played the hole as intended. This example is one way of how Jack would analyze a course. He would always look for loop-holes or exploits that would give him an advantage; you should do the same. Creativity does not just apply to how to hit a shot around the greens or how much you can curve the ball to achieve a desired outcome; it can also apply to how you attack a golf course.

9. Commitment When the other two steps have been completed, you need to have full confidence in what you have done. You must work hard on your preparation so that you don’t have to work hard on tournament day. Similarly, you have to stay true to what you decide in your preparation. Indecisiveness will absolutely destroy your golf game so stick to what you did in your prep! The only time you should change your game plan is if the weather or course conditions change so drastically that it’s obvious you should adapt. Ex: you played a practice round and mapped the course during a beautiful warm day with a 5mph breeze out of the South. However, on tournament day, the wind is howling out of the North, gusting upwards of 25mph and the temperature has dropped 15 degrees. This would be a time when you would need to re-evaluate your game plan.

10. Self-Belief/Self-Confidence This is the most important and hardest part of the mental game to become proficient at… • Golf in it’s nature, is a game that highlights mistakes. Whenever golfers finish a round they usually only talk about what they did wrong or the bad breaks they got. Golfers who have a strong mental game usually talk about what they did well and what went right, not what they did badly and what went wrong. • Never underestimate the power of positive self-talk. One of our expectations for you as a player will be that you implement positive self-talk. Whenever you hit a shot, your inner thoughts should always be positive in nature. Instead of, “I can’t believe I just hit it in the water,” or, “Man, that sucked,” or, “That was such a terrible putt because it lipped out, how unlucky am I?”, you should always focus on the positives, even when you don’t achieve your end goal. • Ex: You have a 5 ft putt that is a down-hill slider from left to right with grain also moving down and left to right. You roll the putt and it is headed for the heart of the cup when suddenly, at the last possible moment, it dives right and lips out hard. A positive self-talker will say, “man, I hit a great putt. I gave it every chance to go in; it just didn’t this time.” A negative self-talker will say, “Man, can you believe that??? That was the unluckiest thing ever! This course/hole/green/day sucks!” • Eventually, after your implement consistent, positive self-talk, you will notice that you will not only feel better about the round, but you will consistently play better as well. Similarly, positive self-talkers do not play golf in fear as much as negative self-talkers!

11. Self-Belief/Self-Confidence 3. Ultimately, golf is the only game that cannot be played perfectly. It is unique in that you can do EVERYTHING correct and yet still arrive at a terrible outcome. There are so many forces and factors outside of your control that having a strong mental game is essential in playing consistently well. The goal is not to have perfect outcome, but rather to have a perfect process; we can always control the process, but we can never control the outcome!