We spent a lot of time over the last week talking about the mental game and the psychology of golf. I went through what I felt were my biggest flaws in that area and laid out my plan for addressing them. Well, I had a chance to take what I’ve been working on to the course on Sunday for a nine hole round. Before I went out, I had a specific plan that stated what I wanted to accomplish. Here are the basics: Play with discipline. The round was to be a scoring round, and I was planning on keeping stats. There would be no quitting or switching to practice mode. Live in each moment and play each shot without worrying about the previous shot. Do not fixate on the score. For each and every shot, devise a plan, absolutely commit to it, and execute. Resist the temptation to bring range-oriented swing thoughts to the course. No working on technical details. Keep the swing thoughts simple. I have to say that being honest with myself
Using a Shorter Club for Precision
This is another bit of wisdom from the Dave Pelz school of thought that I got to try first hand recently. According to Pelz, the best way to control wedge distances within 100 yards is to groove a set of three pre-defined swing lengths: 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30, where you imagine swinging within the face of a giant imaginary clock and where the player’s left shoulder is at the center of the dial, and the position of the left arm at the end of the back swing gives the “time” reading (left arm parallel to the ground is 9:00). Couple those three swings with four different wedges and you have 12 different shot lengths that are easily repeatable from around 100 yards down to about 30. This is the basis of his 3×4 system. But what happens when you’re between wedges or within 30 yards? One option is to “take a little off” of one of your standard distances by varying the back back swing length slightly. While this is doable, it’s a little more
Defeating Old Man Par
While we’re on the subject of the mental game, I encountered an interesting bit of information. I hate bringing up things where I can’t cite a specific source, but I saw this recently, I think on Playing Lessons from the Pros on The Golf Channel. The problem lies in the fact that for too many people, par is an impenetrable barrier. We look at par as the standard to be judged against. Like par is the goal, and anything better is gravy. When we look at things like that, we will tend to make sure (maybe subconsciously) that our outcome meets that expectation. For Tour players, that’s the kind of thing that will end a career because except for the U.S. Open and sometimes The Masters, shooting par at the end of the day is not going to be good enough. This idea got me thinking about myself, and I realized that I’m guilty of this kind of thinking. I plan my actions and judge my outcomes against par. For instance, if I make a
Talk is Cheap: Achieving Goals
In my recent post about what separates the best from the rest, HappyRock asked me what I’m doing to achieve my goals. I addressed it in a follow-up comment, but it really deserves a post of its own. The stock answer is that I’m working on my fitness, weight loss, and practicing the various aspects of the game. But that’s not enough. If I lose all the weight I want to lose, get reasonably fit, and play to scratch, I’m still not going to be good enough. My basic premise in what separates the best from the rest is that mental game is the biggest factor once a player gets to a certain point. I listed out a bunch of aspects of the mental game that I feel are factors. The question is, what am I doing to develop those things? Right now, this blog is my biggest vessel for mental development. It sounds strange, but when you find a way to be totally honest with yourself and expose your deepest, darkest, inner flaws in
What Separates the Best from the Rest?
This is something I’ve thought about a lot recently. I know it’s been discussed forever, but this is my take. I’ve been reading Paper Tiger, the quest of writer Tom Coyne to go from weekend duffer to PGA Tour pro in a little over a year (review coming along shortly). I’ve been closely following Luke Swilor’s Road to the Tour. And I’ve obviously been thinking about myself. My goals, my dreams, and my (golf) fantasies. Several times each day, I ask myself, “what separates the best from the rest?” By that, I’m asking what separates Tour pros from talented amateurs or from those who don’t make it on Tour. Really. What is it? The way I see it, I’d wager that if you found a talented scratch golfer and put him on the driving range at a PGA Tour event, it would be hard to tell he didn’t belong. He’d probably fool most people. Most likely, he couldn’t make the cut, and probably wouldn’t have a shot at getting through Q-School. Chances are, on the
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