Golf

As a sports psychology and mental toughness consultant, Dr. Alan Goldberg works with golfers at every level from professionals right on down. A popular presenter at the Olympic Training Center, coaches' clinics, high schools and colleges around the US, Dr. G specializes in helping individual athletes overcome blocks and perform to their potential. He is the author of Sports Slump Busting - 10 Steps to Mental Toughness and Peak Performance, The Sports Mind, (4-CD & workbook mental training set) and 14 Steps To Mental Toughness, his newest 7-CD mental toughness training program for all sport athletes.

 

---

Golf is probably one of the most fragile sports psychologically. It doesn't take much of a negative thought to tighten up the wrong muscles enough to send your ball into a different zip code rather than the one your were aiming for. It's no wonder that so many of the players on both the men's and women's tours have been regularly consulting sports psychologists to work on their mental game.

I don't know how serious a golfer you are, but if you want to consistently knock strokes off your game, you can't leave the mental part of your sport to chance. Maybe you don't need convincing. Perhaps you've had the heart-warming experience of choking before. Maybe you pulled a Greg Norman and self-destructed at the last minute to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Maybe you were shooting out of your mind until you got to the 14th hole only to have one of your "friends" inform you that if you keep it up you might break 80, 90 or 100 for the very first time. Isn't it interesting that for the rest of those rounds your ball finds every sand trap, water hazard and out of bounds lie possible?

I'm sure you have your own examples of the power of the mind to sabotage your golf game. The good news is that you can learn to turn this awesome power around and constructively harness it to lower your score. With the techniques of applied sports psychology even you can learn to play mentally tough golf! So if the sound of the grass growing tends to distract you don't despair. You can learn to concentrate, better handle pressure, leave those bad shots behind you and think like a winner with a little sports psychology training. You can even learn to trade in those negative images that tend to
dance in your head pre-shot and replace them with performance enhancing ones. Does this sound too good to be true? Frank sure thought so!

Frank was a 4-handicap golfer before the "yips" took over his mind and putting. The "yips", if you're not sure, are one of golf's special versions of choking. Your hands and arms tighten significantly and you end up jerking or muscling the stroke. Most frequently the "yips" refer to putting problems and Frank had these in spades! As Frank brought his stroke forward in the putting motion both of his wrists would break (bend) so badly that he'd frequently double hit the ball. Good putting demands that you keep your wrists locked so that you can control the club-face and angle of the putter.

In Frank's case, his stroke was so "wristy" that he's always end up steering or pulling the ball way off target.

Playing championship golf, regardless of your skill level requires that you put yourself on automatic and hit without thinking. In sports psychology terms you want to be "unconscious." Thinking is hazardous to your athletic health and is the golfer's biggest enemy. Thinking distracts you from the proper focus, tightens your muscles and undercuts your confidence. In sum, thinking will kill your golf game. Herein lies golf's biggest problem. Golf is the kind of game where it takes only a second or so to hit the ball and then you get to spend 5-10 minutes thinking about what you just did and what you're going to do on the next shot. It's during this "dead time" that far too many golfers plan their next mistake.

Speaking of over-thinking, Frank was a Zen master of this. As he approached the green to put he'd begin to worry about his wrists breaking again and missing his shot. In addition he'd worry about what his playing partners would say if he screwed another putt up. He'd think about his "yips" and how many similar putts that he'd already missed.

I don't have to tell you that you can't putt well with the wrong focus of concentration. One concentration trap that ensnares a lot of golfers is the "outcome" trap. You can't play good golf if you're too caught up with your score or the outcome of the round. These thoughts distract you from focusing of the ball and maintaining "soft hands" (a prerequisite for good putting) and a "just right" feel from the practice swing. Furthermore, good concentration means that you keep your mind in the "now" of the performance, i.e. on just this shot and nothing else! Golfers who mentally "time travel" from past to the future while they are lining up and/or standing over the ball, (i.e."that's the 4th easy putt that you've missed today" or "I've got to sink this or I'll fall 3 strokes back.") end up messing up big time.

In the waning moments of the 1989 Masters Scott Hoch stood over a 23 inch putt for the championship. Professional golfers make this putt around 94% of the time. Hoch's final thoughts before he pulled the trigger were future based, "this is for all the marbles!" he missed the putt and later lost a sure title!

Frank, as you might expect was a master time traveler. By the time he went looking for a sports psychologist his 4 handicap had ballooned to 18. He was frustrated and one baby step away from hanging up his clubs for good. He had unsuccessfully tried to solve his "yips" by taking lessons from 6 different teaching pros, changing his putter 5 times and even switching to putting left handed! On top of this he thought sports psychology was for the birds! "I don't believe in it or what you sports psychology guys do…no offense! But Frank was desperate and it was either sports psychologist or quit!

If you're like Frank and your head is getting in the way of your game, then your very first step is awareness. You must figure out what you are doing wrong! You can't correct any problem in your game unless you first become aware of exactly what you're doing wrong. For Frank, it was learning that his concentration was so far off when he was putting that he actually couldn't even feel his wrists breaking! While he knew intellectually what he was doing wrong and how to correct it, he couldn't feel the mistake happening. Why? Because he was too distracted by what was going on in his head. Very simply, his thoughts were getting in his way of developing the correct feeling of putting.

What Frank was able to learn from sports psychology was how to focus his attention in the "now" and how to quickly recognize when he was drifting. We used several concentration exercises on and off the course to teach him this. In addition we taught Frank how to better monitor his muscle tension in his body and then how to calm himself down as needed. We packaged his new mental skills in his pre-shot ritual so that every time he went through addressing the ball and lining up his shot he was also beginning to narrow his focus of concentration to the correct things.

The result? Frank conquered his "yips" and didn't have to give up the game. His score started to steadily drop and he left me with this parting thought, "Y'know you sports psychology guys aren't as weird and off the wall as I thought!"

So what kind of head do you have on your shoulders? Are you mentally tough or a mental midget? Start playing smart and begin to add some sports psychology and mental toughness tools to your golf bag. With a little bit of the right kind of practice you can begin to take your golf game to the next level.