Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

acknowledgments

    I t has been a genuine privilege to work with Jason Kaufman, Bob Carney, Mike Stachura, Jenny Choi, and all the folks at
Golf Digest
and Doubleday. They are models of dedication and professional excellence.
    I’d like to give thanks to a number of people who helped make this book possible. To the golfers who were so generous with their time during the early days of this study: Buddy Alexander, Joan Alexander, Jonathan Byrd, Chad Campbell, Stewart Cink, Chris DiMarco, David Duval, Luke Donald, Ernie Els, Steve Flesch, Matt Kuchar, Justin Leonard, Davis Love III, Josh McCumber, Bryce Molder, Gary Nicklaus, Jack Nicklaus, Mark Omeara, Gary Player, Nick Price, Heath Slocum, Curtis Strange, and Scott Verplank. You didn’t need to help, and you did anyway. That speaks volumes.
    Tom Fazio believed in me and my ideas, and gave me the break I needed in order to do this study. He is an exemplary professional, philanthropist, human being, and father.
    Wendy Brandon, Roger Casey, Linda Deture, Scott Hewit, Madeline Kovarik, Al Moe, Deb Wellman, and all my colleagues at Rollins College encourage and model excellence every single day. Hogan advised that we should all “dine with good putters.” That’s what I do with you!
    Personal experience is as great a teacher as research. I’ve learned many lessons on being a fearless winner from Fran Hoxie, John Bartell, Brian Cleary, Mike Bison, Jen Crane, Beth Cranston and her father General Steward Cranston, Professor Jack McDowell, Dino Doyle, Brian Froehling, Mike Grieder, Scott Hayward, Jocelyn Hoffman, Chris Aden, Dave and Mary Houle, Brian Kaineg, Steve Losardo, John and Beth Lynn, Bob Mezzo, Jeremy Moore, Adam Sehnert, John Mudry, Cory Nichols, Matt Orrell, Shane and Katie Perkey, Rick Plasky, Joe Sora, Tyrus Underwood, and Walt Rivenbark.
    Some relationships transcend words. The friends who shape me and fashion my mind, and who model ethics, character, and excellence every day, are Christian Hoffman, Eric Mudry, and John Black. Gentlemen, thank you!
    Golf is a human game. We all play together.

T hink of the great moments in golf.
    Think of Ben Hogan at Merion in 1950, just sixteen months from a horrific car crash that nearly took his life and left his legs too weak to resume a full tournament schedule. On the final 36-hole day of the U.S. Open that year, Hogan faced a stunningly difficult 1-iron shot from the fairway uphill to the green on the long par 4 finishing hole. The great champion, whose weary legs barely held him up through the final 18 holes, made as majestically precise a swing as the game has ever seen at that crucial moment, and his textbook par propelled him into a playoff he would win the next day. At the moment of truth, Hogan was determined, resolute, and unfazed. He was, in a word, fearless. “The view I take of this shot is markedly different from the view most spectators seem to have formed,” Hogan later wrote in his definitive instruction book,
The Modern Fundamentals of Golf
:

    They are inclined to glamorize the actual shot since it was hit in a pressureful situation. They tend to think of it as something unique in itself, something almost inspired, you might say, since the shot was just what the occasion called for. I don’t see it that way at all. I didn’t hit that shot then—that late afternoon at Merion. I’d been practicing that shot since I was 12 years old. After all, the point of tournament golf is to get command of a swing which, the more pressure you put on it, the better it works.

    Think of Jack Nicklaus, seemingly well past his prime at age forty-six, striding the fairways of Augusta National on the final day of the 1986 Masters with a renewed vigor and focus and passion. With others around him doubting his chances, Nicklaus was driven by a consuming belief in his potential, and he would not be denied. He rallied from 5 strokes off the lead to win his sixth green jacket, fearlessly charging to the lead with a back nine 30 while other, younger players faded in the final-round pressure. In the heat of that great moment, Nicklaus was relentless, sure, and focused. He, too, was fearless. “This was Sunday at the Masters,” Nicklaus said that victorious evening. “There’s a lot of pressure. The other guys feel it, too. They can make mistakes. I knew if I kept my composure down the stretch, as long as I kept making birdies, I’d be OK. I kept that right at the front of my mind. . . . I told my son Jackie, my