Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

community that pays attention to wins, losses, rankings, and scores). Because he was so talented, and on full ego-approach mode, Mike was able to perform at high levels. He felt invincible.
    The accident changed all that. On returning to golf, Mike was no longer the center of everyone’s attention. People no longer watched him practice, and not many people saw him as a threat in tournaments. He was rarely interviewed.
    As I mentioned, Mike had a powerful desire to make a comeback, but in thinking back on that time, Mike realized that his comeback was fueled by his desire to prove himself to others, to regain the spotlight, and to show everyone that he was a great golfer. Mike had fantasies of stunning the golf world, of the interviews he would give detailing his comeback, and of accepting trophies.
    All the work he had done—the running, the lifting weights, and rehabilitation—was connected in his mind to an extremely dominant ego mentality. Day after day, mile after mile, and weight after weight, Mike thought he was making strides toward greatness, when in fact, he was deepening bad mental habits of ego-oriented golf that would influence him in the future. Mike was trying to improve at golf for other people, not for himself. And when he returned to competition, he was playing to an audience that didn’t really care.
    Because Mike had spent so much time deepening the creases of bad mental habits, the process of reorienting his perspective to a mastery approach took time and patience, the way that replacing bad habits always does. Developing a mastery approach became a day-to-day process of monitoring those cues to which he reacted so powerfully. Mike had to now be careful how he reacted to compliments and recognition. It was difficult for him to not let himself feel good when he hit a good shot in front of people. After all, it was that very recognition that he had worked so hard to regain during the comeback, and it was, after all, a deeply ingrained habit.
    In time he realized the importance of making golf a personal endeavor, and playing to achieve self-set goals and personal expectations. Mike began to understand that giving someone the power to elevate your confidence through their praise also gives them the power to sting you with their criticism. He also realized that the one person who really understood his game better than anyone was himself. Thus,
he
was the best judge of how good or bad a shot was. He was still polite when people complimented a good shot, but by and large, he listened more to himself and his swing coach than to casual observers.
    Mike also had to begin thinking about rankings, cuts, and competition differently. Playing golf with the mindset of beating another golfer meant that he would essentially be aiming at a moving target, because he had no way of predicting what a golfer was going to shoot on any given hole. By trying to play against other players, golfers actually build uncertainty right into their golf game. So Mike had to learn to play his own game again, which meant he had to develop a strategy ahead of time of how he would play each hole and each shot. This kept his mind focused on the course, not on the competition.
    I helped Mike better understand how mastery-oriented golfers think about practice and how he could build mastery right into his practice sessions. We discussed how to compartmentalize (mentally separate the tournament from the golf course where the tournament is held). We discussed strategies to remain fully involved in each shot regardless of leaderboard, stature of the field, or consequences of the shot. I gave Mike interviews that I’d collected with mastery golfers so he could begin seeing the thinking patterns of Hogan, Nicklaus, and Woods for himself.
    One of the things that Mike had to understand, and that all golfers have to understand, is that golf is a game of
irony
. To shoot low scores, you cannot remain squarely focused on shooting low scores. To beat other players, you cannot remain squarely focused on beating other players. To win tournaments, you cannot remain squarely focused on winning tournaments. And to gain the admiration and respect of other golfers, you cannot play golf for the reason of gaining respect and admiration of other golfers. Golf must be played the right way and for the right reasons. Awards, recognition, and prizes, if they are to be had, must follow as natural consequences of hitting great shots. The ability to hit great