Use Your Mind to Improve Your Golf

Our brains are designed to race from one thought to the next especially if we have time and space on our hands. Golf is certainly a game that gives us plenty of that; walking between golf shots, hanging around for playing partners to find their ball and for others to clear the tee. The mind likes to fill in the gaps and getting it to stay in the present can be a real challenge, but it can be done. In this article I want to stress how important learning this skill is and what a difference it will make to how you play your game of golf.

Some of you may have come to my newsletter via my article about ‘Tommy the Golfer’ – Tommy is a truly amazing golfer because he has a problem which allows him only to play in the moment. He has a ten minute memory capacity which is just perfect for the game of golf, but obviously very irritating for use in everyday life. Fortunately for the rest of us we have the gift of memory to enable us to function in a world that requires past, present and future knowledge to create the life we seek.

Unfortunately, however, having a long term memory can often work against us especially when it comes to the game of golf. I am in the process of writing Tommy’s story and how it can help you to learn the skills that come naturally to Tommy. For now I am going to give you a couple of tips for you to work on straight away.

BE AWARE OF WHAT YOUR MIND IS TELLING YOU

Your actions follow what you visualise. So if your mind is stood on the tee imagining how you will birdie the hole you will be racing ahead with your thoughts and not be doing what you need to. The player who is truly in the moment thinks only about the shot they are playing and not about the one before or the one after.

The golfer who is truly in the moment uses the following process:

 Hits the ball
 Let’s go of the outcome whatever that maybe
 Finds the ball
 Thinks only about the next shot
 Continues this process until he or she runs out of holes!

The big mistake that Spoony made was to keep a running total of his score – immediately he had placed himself in a position where he was now focused on the PAST (the great score so far) and the FUTURE – what was needed to keep that score to the end of the round.

In summary if you are going to play great golf you need to be IN THE PROCESS and not in the outcome. If you play each and every shot in the moment then you are ruling out letting in the mix of emotions that will accompany the thoughts that go with playing either really well or really badly.

You will not get ahead of yourself and get so excited that the pressure to succeed starts to outweigh the enjoyment of getting there. Equally neither will you be concerned with what has gone previously if you have not played too well. Golfers are very adept at beating themselves up over missed opportunities. So much so that playing in the moment when your mind is in this negative state is almost an impossible task.

TIP: Play your next round without keeping a mental running total. If you have to keep a score card then write down each individual score but try not to add it up until play has finished. Ask your playing partner not to tell you your score at any point and that you do not want to know until the end.

If they ask why point them to my web-site!

The reason why playing in the moment is so important is that golfers need a very narrow focus in order to play each shot well. Remember your actions follow what you last think about or visualise. So if you are dwelling on a poor previous shot your mind is not free to FOCUS on what is important – where the BALL needs to go NOW!

One of the reasons I talk so much about your self-esteem and being at peace with yourself is that it is so much easier to stay in the moment if you are not worrying about the past or what is coming up in your future; off the golf course – as much as on it.

It is not easy to keep reminding yourself to stay focused and in the present with your golf - even top professional golfers struggle and spend a lifetime mastering this most simple yet most challenging of skills. But if you are aware of what a difference this new skill will make to your game and you also choose to work on the bigger picture; creating a more confident and calmer you, then not only will your golf benefit but so will the quality of your life.