Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

golf was passionate and intense, and he literally launched himself into rehabilitation and exercise.
    Six months out of his last cast, and two full years after the accident, Mike finally found himself once again leading a golf tournament. But though he had prepared for the
physical
challenges of tournament golf, he found himself facing something for which he had
not
prepared. For the first time in his life, Mike felt
anxious
on the golf course. Standing on the tenth tee, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach, his mind was overcome by dreadful thoughts, his body tightened, his hands shook, and he ended up shooting 79 on a day when the scores were generally low. He’d lost by five strokes in front of a hometown crowd to players he used to beat routinely. He felt humiliated and foolish. “Like a choking dog,” he said. From that day forward, Mike was unable to play well. Competition sent him into a panic, and instead of looking forward to tournaments, he dreaded them. His approach to golf was total ego avoid. That was when, at the recommendation of a mutual friend, he came to visit me.
    As I spent more time with Mike and I came to better understand his story, it became clear that as a youngster, Mike had taken a mastery approach to the game of golf (as most children do). He practiced and played whenever he could. He had unbridled enthusiasm for learning and improvement. After school he would ride his bike to the club and hit balls until it was dark. In the summertime he would arrive early in the morning, and he would play golf all day until the late summer sun would set and cast tall shadows across the greens. He loved to practice and he loved to play. He would try out new shots, invent games for himself, and get lost in hours of experimentation and mastery. Growing up, the reward for playing golf was playing golf. His motivation was learning and improvement, and he was never satisfied. He had
kaizen
built into his bones. If he had improved at something from one day to the next, he was happy that he was moving in the right direction. If he got stuck on specific skills, he didn’t get mad, he got curious. So he would visit the pro and ask question after question. And when he first began to enter competitions, he did so for the love of the game. The excitement of competing in junior events was playing a new course, meeting new players, and testing his skills to hit different shots. His satisfaction was measured against the goals that he had set for himself. If he could do something better today than he did yesterday, he felt like he was growing. And so he was happy.
    As you can imagine, such unbridled enthusiasm for learning and improvement, coupled with a good degree of natural talent, made Mike a pretty good golfer. He entered the junior club championship and won. People applauded. His parents took his picture. He entered the regular club championship and won. More people applauded. Newspapers took his picture. He entered the state Junior Open and won. Galleries applauded. Magazines took his picture. The newspaper put his face on the sports page with the heading “Hometown Hero.” In town and at the club people would ask his parents about him and his golf game. Without even being aware of what was happening, Mike was beginning to relish the attention that golf brought him. It wasn’t long before the first thing that he would do after executing a great golf shot was look around to see who was watching. If no one saw it, he was disappointed. After good rounds he would quickly head into the clubhouse for a soda, waiting for someone to ask how he played. He would talk endlessly after good rounds of golf, and be silent after poor rounds.
    Competitive golf outside the club also began to take on a new meaning. The amount of preparation he did for a tournament was directly correlated to the prestige of the tournament. How excited he got depended on the attention that the tournament got. More prestigious tournaments got more practice time, and he paid more attention to detail. He looked forward to tournaments as much for the opportunity to give an interview as for the chance to play a new golf course. He also gave more effort for bigger tournaments and got more upset if he didn’t perform well in them. In short, Mike got caught in a cycle of detrimental ego-oriented thinking that was triggered by everything around him. As his achievement orientation strengthened, the admiration of the golf community took precedence (a