Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

skulled chip, so you look up and chunk it. Again, the focus is on the result (thanks to the power of fear), when the focus should be on the process.

    Problem 4: Coming Out of the Shot

    The final way that nervousness translates into the golf swing is that golfers often pull out of shots early. They jerk or flinch and do not stay down through the golf ball. If you are someone who plays a lot of golf, then you are aware that the most common error when golfers lose their confidence and begin playing frightened golf is to block the ball out to the right. Think about it. If you grip the club too tightly, get quick at the top, decelerate into the ball, and then pull out of the shot early, then of course the club face will have the tendency to arrive at the ball in an open position.

    Now, how do we go about solving these fear-induced physiological difficulties? Well, there are physical things that you can put into your process of playing golf that may help. First, when it comes to your grip getting too tight, learn to be aware of grip pressure. Let me be clear: The culprit that accounts for the lion’s share of those high ballooning blocked shots you see when golfers get nervous is their grip pressure. Most PGA Tour professionals would tell you that, on a scale ranging from 1 (very loose) to 10 (very tight), the ideal grip pressure is between a 3 and a 6. When battling fear, a golfer who usually grips at a 3 will typically grip at a 7 because he is trying to feel the club the way he does when he is confident. However, he will often believe that he is gripping at his normal 3 because that is what registers in his mind. Because we lose feeling in our hands when we are frightened, in the golfer’s mind, the only way to feel the club appears to be to grip it more tightly. The result, as I’ve explained, is to not only get quick at the top but also to interfere with the release of the golf club. Golfers who have too much tension in their hands very often block the ball out to the right because the club does not fully release until it is too late. Once they do release, it is often a quick snap, resulting in just the opposite, the low hook. This is why fear makes cowards of us all in golf. Because you cannot play this game very long if you don’t know whether a high fade or a low hook is coming next.
    Honestly, it can be as simple as making checking grip pressure a part of your preshot routine. Ben Hogan said that, while he is practicing, he is also cultivating the habit of concentration. Jack Nicklaus suggested that he always practiced how he wanted to play. That said, it is important for golfers to learn their ideal grip pressure. The “swing thought” I give to golfers, which I learned from noted teaching professional Fran Hoxie, is “soft hands,” a thought that golfers intuitively understand. During times when pressure overrides thoughts that you cannot control, work to control your grip pressure to ensure proper release of the club. If you’re getting too quick, again, the fundamental flaw may lie with grip pressure. If you go to the driving range and experiment with grip pressure, you’ll see how difficult it becomes to get quick at the top when one has soft hands. Soft hands, usually the equivalent of a 3 or 4 in grip pressure, often ensure that one sets the club properly at the top.
    If fear manifests itself with weak, decelerating, “hold on” type swings, the solution is as simple as training yourself to get to a full finish and then holding that finish position. The golf swing is an emergent, fluid action. Seldom will one thing fix it completely. However, when the mind starts playing tricks on us, it translates into very real, observable, predictable consequences in the golf swing. Our thoughts should always be guided by the question, What is my target? When our body tightens and our mind races, however, as they often will in this game, it takes a little more than a good thought to allow us to hit the ball. If we can soften our grip, accelerate through the ball, and, as Butch Harmon likes to say, “shake hands with the target,” then we are by default trusting our swing and giving ourselves a better chance to play fearless golf.
    But as crucial as these physical efforts to fight our fears might be, the vital and much more fundamental area of our games that we need to attack is the entire mental approach. Fixing the physical flaws requires time on the range, building a repeatable swing you can trust.