Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

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    “I’ve always had a tremendous belief in my abilities,” Woods said at Pebble Beach. “I’ve proven it in tournaments, but more so, I’ve proven it in practice sessions when no one’s been around. As a kid pretending to play against some of the best players, trying to imitate their golf swings. And those are the times that you’ve proved to yourself you can do it. Then you go ahead and do it in competition, and then it feeds from there.”
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    For example, hall-of-famer Nick Price has won forty tournaments in his career on five continents, he has won three major titles and been ranked number one in the world. Now, in his late forties, he still is striving to make his golf swing better.

    Part of the reason I have been able to compete for so long is because every year I have refined my golf swing. I have all the same moves I had when I was 19 years old but every year I have just refined it. I have worked diligently to improve my swing that little fraction more because the fact is, it is imperfectible. To me the swing is like a square block of wood, and your goal is to shape that block into the most perfect circle you can. You can get it to a circle pretty quickly, but after you get the general shape right, you then have to refine constantly and perpetually, and go from a hammer and a chisel, to 50 grit sandpaper, to 100 grit sandpaper, to 1000 grit sandpaper, to steel wool, to polish. And every year you refine, regardless of how good your previous year was, you try to get better. And that is what I have tried to do. Better and better every year regardless of where I am. Excellence, it’s like a process, you know? No matter where you are, you just keep trying to refine.

    Mastery golfers who demonstrate
kaizen
get lost in the details, puzzles, and mysteries of the game, and they see their task as mastering those details and understanding the game’s mysteries. Because they view mastering golf as a constant challenge, they find it easy to become fully involved in what they are doing, whether practicing chip shots or putting in competition. Their motivation for playing golf is not prize money, not trophies, not awards, and not accolades or approval from others. For mastery-oriented golfers, the shot matters much more than its consequences. Awards, trophies, and public recognition are seen as natural consequences to excellence, not the primary motive for achieving that excellence.

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    david duval: mastery orientation

    David Duval is one of the most remarkable athletes I’ve ever met, both for the abundance of his talent and the strength of his character. He eloquently spoke about the competing orientations that arise from being a private individual on a public stage. Here is a portion of one of our talks.

    DR. VALIANTE: When you’re playing competitive golf, against whom are you competing? The course, other players, a score, yourself?

    DAVID DUVAL: Typically you’re fighting yourself. You can say you’re playing the field or the golf course, or the situation. But truth is you’re playing yourself, and that’s really how it goes. You’re just competing against yourself.

    DR. VALIANTE: What part of yourself?

    DAVID DUVAL: I think what you’re competing against is the part of you that wants to see how you’re doing compared to others, wants to see how you’re doing in relation to par, wants to analyze whether you’re hitting fairways and greens and making birdies. It goes to scoreboard watching sometimes. When all is right, when your head is right, it is easy to remember that golf is a series of eighteen scores that you add up when you’re done. That it is an accumulation of shots. There’s really no excuse not to do that, but that’s not always the easiest thing to do. So you’re competing against yourself. You should be executing what you’re trying to do relative to the golf course and your game.
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    Mastery golfers enjoy everything that golf throws at them. The greater the challenge, the more fun they have. For them, the golf swing becomes an automatic process. Because they focus on improvement relative to their own current capabilities, their standards and goals are self-set rather than set by others. Mastery golfers do not care who their competitors are, because they don’t view golf as a competition between players. Rather, they see golf as the process of playing a golf course as well as they can with the skills that they possess. They know that golf is at times