How Important Is The Golfing Mindset When Trying To Improve Golf Swing?

January 26, 2010 by Parshooters

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Golf is a game made up of rules and standards. It’s more than that however! Golf is a mindset and self-confidence game. It’s made for those golfers who want to take on challenges away from the everyday grind and problems that we must endure in our lives.

That is why for an average golf round of 4+ hours we can forget about everything else in our lives and just focus on one’s own self interest in improving our own golf swing or scores. You can call it arrogance and self-absorption but, the original inventor of this game did come from royalty.

There are many composites that are built into the psychology of a golfer’s mindset: Confidence Consistency Fearlessness Focus Positive Mental Attitude Trust Visualization

If you are confident enough in your own ability to swing a golf club, then you will have no fear of sending that golf ball where ever you want it to go. Confidence is simply knowing that the golf ball will fly towards its intended target.

The opposite of confidence is fear. Lack of self- confidence in golf is knowing before hitting the golf ball what the consequences of the end result is going to be. Nothing more, nothing less. When you are afraid of hitting your golf ball into trouble, you are no longer in the present moment. You are now thinking about all of the negatives of hitting the golf ball and what the final consequences is going to be. Loss of pride, loss of strokes, loss of match, loss of money and tournament.

A fearless golfer is not a reckless golfer. He is simply one who is not concerned about things outside of his control. He is wrapped up in the present moment of hitting the golf ball where he wants it to go. Most professional golfers have one shot that they hit more or less religiously, whether it be a fade, draw, straight, whatever. While some work the ball on most shots, very few will try and work the ball in a different direction for each shot, and this includes the best golfers in the world.

Vijay Singh is known as the hardest worker in golf, he has grooved the cut or fade into each of his shots he plays. How often does he waiver from this? Hardly ever!

So what is the biggest difference between an amateur and a professional? The golf swing is built on belief, self-confidence and trust. They own their shots and feel most comfortable when they stay consistent with their grooved golf swing. It becomes instinctive, second nature and they feel most comfortable with it, and they don’t ever veer from their money making golf swing. They can’t! It would cost them thousands of dollars.

They don’t cut into the quality of their practices by trying to maintain three different ball flights. They don’t try and hit a golf shot that they haven’t practiced for thousands of hours. They stick with one and that gets all their attention and focus. Why reinvent the wheel, when your golf swing has held up under pressure.

In other words, these top professional golfers religiously practice one shot and stick with it. They know they can count on it because it gets the vast majority of their practice time and they’ve built their game around that one shot rather than hitting several shots they are less comfortable with in order to fit a particular hole.

Many of the greats, from Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus have had one ball flight that they preferred to hit over any other and they have stuck with it. Always being the majority of their golf shots, and not trying to hit something on a consistent basis that was against their behavioral instinct.

Focus in golf is critical to successfully executing a golf shot to the best of your ability. The mind works best when a golfer narrows his focus to the smallest task possible. Often times amateurs will freeze up and get tense when trying to narrow their focus to such a specific task and say “they can’t do it!” Immediately, they realize that they’re simply trying way too hard to concentrate and must simply allow the mind to wander away from its intended target to a safer target.

For a weekend golfer it’s very difficult to put your everyday life on hold while playing and only think about golfing. During play many thoughts do run across your mind and it only results in bad swing flaws. This can creep into your mind at any point on the golf course, and the end results normally is bad scores. For trained elite golfers they will often focus on only the small tasks at hand. This is their prime focal point. For them every shot counts and any mishits can lead them to failure and loss of money.

A positive mental attitude creates emotional stability. Golf is one of the very few sports where you can go from pure joy to absolute devastation with one golf swing. A golfer with a positive mental attitude living in the very moment takes the great shots with the bad, knowing that full well everyone hits horrible and great shots everyday. P.G.A. Tour pros will only hit 12 or 13 greens per round on the average. So cut yourself some slack.

A golfer must stay in the present moment at all times. He must never deviate and get way ahead of himself, adding up his score or thinking about the next shot. How many times have you seen a golfer add up his score after 9 holes and say well, “I shot 39 on the front so I’m looking too shoot a 78?” The score you shot on the front has absolutely nothing to do with what you can or will shoot on the back side. Staying in the present moment keeps the golfer from fearing the consequences of this shot or the next, or remembering the last time he double bogeyed a particular hole.

He is only concerned with what he can control in this very moment, freeing up his mind from doubts and fears. Being tense is the perfect way to ruin a great golf swing. Tension in the muscles removes their coordination, suppleness and flexibility. Tension is most often caused by fear, doubts, poor golf swing mechanics, or combination of all the above. The greatest issue with tension is that it is controlled by the conscious mind, whom happens to be a horrible golfer.

Unfortunately, your conscious mind cannot respond quickly enough to the present conditions of the moment, so your subconscious mind reacts on your behalf. If the conscious mind was responsible for dealing with controlling all aspects of your body, you’d be a pretty busy person. Your subconscious mind is responsible for controlling your heart rate, reflexes, and breathing it wouldn’t leave much time for anything else. But your subconscious mind is amazingly capable of handling the demands of such things as the mechanics of your golf swing. On average the golf swing is said to be completed in less than 2 seconds.

During that time, how many thoughts do you really think you can process and communicate to your body what to do next? Your mind must filter the following composite on average about two seconds of the full mechanics of your golf swing. This is simply an impossible task to ask of your mind and body. You’re not wired that way, no one is. Swinging the golf club is not about getting the club and body into certain positions, it’s about swinging the golf club. That’s it!

One of the most important processes in a golf shot is visualizing the golf shot. For many, this seems difficult or they don’t believe they can do it. Visualization is like programming a computer to perform a task. In this case, the computer is your subconscious mind and the most efficient programming language for this computer is imagery.

Visualizing goals gives us direction, it motivates us and creates an internal drive that gives the momentum to achieve some thing big. Visualize what it will be like when you break 70 or 80 for the first time. Whatever your goals are they must be something that drives you to achieve.

Many people say that the reasons the pros can visualize their shots is because they have such great physical control over their golf ball. The truth is they have such great physical control is because they visualize their golf shots. If you don’t have an image of what you want the golf ball to do, then what do you expect the ball to do?

You must know where you want to go and the path of how to get there. In golf, the where is the target and the path is the flight of the ball. You know where you want to end up and there are many ways to get there. You need to consider the best way possible for you to get to your intended destination given your golf abilities and the elements. On the golf course, we may be best leaving the driver in the bag and hitting a hybrid off the tee. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit a fairway wood off the tee and made birdie while watching my competitor pull out a driver and hit it into trouble costing him a stroke. The journey is just as important as the destination.

Trust is something that must be built and nurtured through both mental and physical practice in golf. Trusting in your golf swing and your ability is one of the most important principles in golf. Without trust, there can be no confidence and fear is the first thing to replace trust. Trust is believing in your ability to hit the perfect shot. Trusting in yourself requires that you block out the past negative thoughts of golf swings that had poor results and start believing in yourself now, in this very moment.

If you’ve ever hit one good shot with the golf club in your hands, then you are capable of hitting a thousand more like it every time. A bad attitude sees a bad shot and says that I am a horrible golfer, “I can never get off this tee”, and “I can’t hit this club.” Speaking positively about oneself is a method to creating your own reality. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy that we have all seen fulfilled in life and on the golf course.

Tell yourself that you are a horrible putter or you never get off this tee well and before long it will become a real truth. If you realize you have the power to create this reality through negative thinking, then you should easily see that you have the same power through positive thinking. The way to accomplish this is through self affirmations. Tell yourself you are a great putter and you are a great ball striker. These affirmations have just as much power as the negative ones and are a key to a sound golf game. A positive mental attitude will allow you to enjoy the game and have fun at the same time.

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Scott E. Kowalski
Parshooters@gmail.com

Jay Golden has been a PGA Member since 1982 and was selected for the PGA National Teaching Committee in 1988. He has taught golfers of all levels ranging from stark beginners to professionals on the PGA and LPGA Tours. He has written hundreds of instruction articles and a book with the all-time winningest golfer of official tour events, Kathy Whitworth, entitled “Kathy Whitworth’s Little Book of Golf Wisdom.” He has also made numerous appearances on TV, has lectured on the topic of “How To Teach Golf” to PGA Members, and is an accomplished golfer and long driver.

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