Your preparation can have a big effect on how you feel before starting a round and how you play throughout. Whether you are a weekend golfer with little time to practice or a full-time player, you have to be mentally and physically ready to perform.
“The more prepared I feel, the more entitled I feel to hit good shots” – Adam Scott
In this module, we’re going to go through a game plan to get you feeling confident and prepared for any challenge.
Know The Course and Have A Strategy
Before you play, you’ll need to know the course and have a strategy. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What do I need to know about the golf course I’m playing?
- What shots will be required on this course and what is the optimal strategy to play it?
- What grass does the course have and what shots might I have to play around the greens?
- What is the weather forecast and wind direction?
By utilizing the course yardage book and the Google Earth measuring tool, you can define your best strategy. Things to consider are:
- Distances to the dog-legs from the tee
- What shot you feel comfortable hitting on each tee
- Whether you are better off being long or short of the greens
- The width of fairways at different distances off the tee
- The good and bad miss for tee shots and approaches
- The best strategy for the par 5’s
- Distances to the center of the green on the par 3’s
- Which holes can you take more risk and which ones are better to play conservatively?
Add notes in your yardage book. Block off zones to indicate safe and dangerous areas. Golf course designers will typically try to trick you into thinking there is less room than there actually is for your tee and approach shots. Jack Nicklaus said that he would often walk the course backwards before playing to get a better view of the landing areas.
Note where the fat parts of the greens are, and the more punishing misses. Have a clear idea of your targets and a plan for what clubs you’ll hit for every tee and approach shot. If you get to play a practice round, make some notes on the green contours and speed. You could also make assumptions on possible pin locations and see how that would affect your strategy.
Lower Your Expectations
Even at the professional level, no player has their “A game” every week. On average, Tour players make approximately 80% of their money from 5 events, meaning that they only have their “A game” in 1 in 6 tournaments. The rest of the time, they’re having to manage their B, C and even D game.
It’s such a low percentage sport, you are going to lose a lot more than you win. A big part of your success will be getting the best out of whatever game you have that day.
Over the years, I’ve seen too many players fall into the trap of having high expectations. Perhaps they’ve been playing well recently or been having great practice sessions. They go to the course thinking that a good round is inevitable.
Having confidence is different from having expectations. Expectations are about results – that you will or should play well, like it will be easy or inevitable. Just because you had a great practice session, or a good last round doesn’t mean that you should expect to do the same in upcoming round. Golf is never easy or predictable. When you expect it to be easy or that you will hit every shot well, it can make it hard to recover when you encounter the inevitable setbacks. You’re better off expecting that it won’t be perfect, and it will be challenging at all times (never easy). Confidence on the other hand, is about knowing you’ve done the preparation and that you can deal with any challenge that comes your way.
From my on-course work with Tour players, I see them hit poor shots regularly, but they accept that they are not machines and can recover quickly. The weekend golfer hits a few bad shots and thinks their swing is broken and starts to panic. After dropping shots, they start to play more aggressively to get back to where they think they should be, and then they lose even more shots.
Expect that there will be challenges, variability and adversity, such as:
- Being out of position
- Making a 3 putt or a double bogey
- Slow play
- Bad breaks
- Changeable weather and wind
When or if it happens, it won’t be such a shock and you will be able to choose your responses, instead of reacting. From the work you’ve been doing throughout this training program, you will have a plan and tools to be able to deal with it in the best way possible.
Mental Rehearsal
“Mental rehearsal is every bit as important as physical rehearsal.” – Phil Mickelson
Imagining yourself being successful on the course is not the same as expecting it to happen. It’s about creating a feeling of confidence and being prepared. Jack Nicklaus said that he attributes at least 50% of his success to having seen it in his mind before it actually happened. Muhammad Ali said he would mentally rehearse all his fights and saw himself being victorious, before the real event.
When you mentally rehearse it, your subconscious mind will believe that is has already happened and will allow you to feel more confident and comfortable.
Let’s make success more possible by visualizing it before your rounds using this process:
- Close your eyes and focus on your breathing for a few minutes to quiet your mind.
- Visualize your round in detail and make it an immersive experience. Experiment with the first- and third-person perspective (seeing it how you would as if you are playing vs. as if you are on TV). What does the course look like? What is the weather like? What are you wearing? What shot are you about to play? What club do you have in your hand? Go through the process of playing the shot, executing the actions required to play it as best you can. Pick the target, check the wind, visualize the shot, rehearse it, look confident, be focused over the ball. What will your swing feel like? What is the tempo of the swing? How will the ball fly to the target? What will the shot feel like? How will you look and feel in between shots? Play tee shots, approaches, short game shots, long and short putts.
- Imagine yourself executing your strategy successfully
- Imagine what scenarios will challenge you and how will you deal with them. See your body language and facial expressions as you do it
Preparing for adversity
Whether it’s being out of position, a double bogey or a bad bounce/lie, there will always be some form of adversity to deal with in your rounds. What will you do in those situations?
Have a plan for those times. Create “If-Then Statements” i.e. IF (this happens) – THEN (I will think or do this). Use the techniques for the Post Shot Routine we discussed in Module 3, e.g. breathing, self-talk or smiling. Practice these IF-THEN statements during your mental rehearsal and confirm that you have the tools to deal with any challenge. Could talk here about choosing who you want to be “Alter Ego”.