Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

thinking you can just ain’t enough.” Even “luck” can play havoc with our mind. Clearly, the beliefs that we hold about ourselves can never be expected to be ends in themselves. Belief and reality must always be in concert, and so the confidence we have in our abilities must always be a reasonable reflection of the abilities we actually possess, regarding the task at hand.
    Psychologists believe that successful functioning is typically best served by reasonably accurate efficacy appraisals. In other words, I make a lot of two-foot putts because I attempt two-foot putts knowing I can make two-foot putts. They also believe that the most functional efficacy beliefs are those that slightly exceed what one can actually accomplish, for this overestimation serves to increase effort and persistence. In school, most students are overconfident about their academic capabilities. This means that we should expect that a reasonable amount of overconfidence about one’s golf game is rather a healthy thing. After all, the more confidence you have that you can succeed, the harder you’re likely to try when obstacles rear their ugly head.

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    survival stories from the pga tour

    • As a junior, Scott McCarron was kicked off the UCLA golf team, lost his scholarship, and returned the following year as a walk-on putting left-handed as an attempt to cure the yips. After graduation, he joined a business venture with his father that failed and broke them both. After taking out an $8,000 loan, he failed to get through Qualifying School the next two years. In 1996, in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, he won a tournament (and $270k) in New Orleans. Through 2004, he had earned over $7 million on the PGA Tour, had secured three victories, and contended in several of golf’s majors.

    • When Bob Jones first came out to watch Jack Nicklaus play the twelfth at Augusta, the notoriously cool, calm Jack was so nervous that he proceeded to shank his shot right over Bob Jones’s head. Of course, Jack rebounded quickly and went on to win seventy tournaments including eighteen major championships, six of them Masters.

    • After being struck by lightning as an amateur golfer in South Africa, Retief Goosen had to overcome an array of ongoing health hazards. If that weren’t enough, he suffered a broken left arm in a skiing accident in Switzerland prior to the 1999 golf season. That year he went on to beat Sergio Garcia in the World Matchplay Championships, had eleven successive wins in the Dunhill Cup, and captured the Novotel Perrier Open. He also won the 2001 U.S. Open.

    • At the Milwaukee Open, Tiger Woods’s first tournament as a professional, he recalled being “so scared I couldn’t breathe.” He parred the subsequent hole, finished tied for fortieth, and went on to win two tournaments in the next two months and earn his tour card quicker than any first-year pro in history.

    • After three lukewarm seasons on the PGA Tour, 1983–85, Tom Lehman spent the rest of the decade trying to grind out a living golfing in Asia, South Africa, and elsewhere. He finally won his first PGA victory in 1994 and has since been a regular contender on Tour who has won five championships including the 1996 British Open and Tour Championship.

    • After a stellar 1994 season in which he won the Masters, Jose Maria Olazabal was forced to withdraw from the Ryder Cup due to severe foot pain, after which he was diagnosed with rheumatoid polyarthritis. He was unable to walk for eighteen months without excruciating pain and was forced to miss the entire 1996 golf season. He would not give up. He returned to golf after persevering through treatment and subsequently won the 1999 Masters and 2002 Buick Invitational.

    • After emerging in the mid-1980s as one of golf’s brightest stars, Hal Sutton went winless for eight years after 1986, with his low point coming in 1992, when his earnings fell to a mere $39,324. He did not give up. Despite dismal success for over a decade, his belief in his ability led him to work even harder. Finally in 1995 he broke through with a win at the B.C. Open and went on to win seven tournaments including a showdown with Tiger Woods in the 2000 Players Championship.

    • At the 1990 U.S. Open, eighteen-year-old David Duval had shot three straight even-par rounds and then birdied the first three holes on Sunday to get onto the leaderboard. Upon seeing his name on the leaderboard he was so scared that he admittedly