Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

hours and days with [his instructors] Rick Smith and Dave Pelz to give me the direction. When I stood up on tee boxes, I just knew the ball was going to go in the middle of the fairway. Those hours of work and having that proper direction, I ultimately knew or did not ever lack belief that I would ultimately win.

    I had a different feeling playing this week. I had a different feeling entering this tournament. I just had a real belief that I was going to come through this week. I didn’t want to get too excited because I had had that belief a number of times before and it never happened. I felt very calm, though, and last night when Amy and I would talk, we were just very calm. We just felt like things were different. When I was out on the course, I didn’t feel the anxiety of “Is it slipping away?” or “How is the tournament going?” or who is doing what. It was more like, “Hey, let’s hit some shots.”

    I was very confident today that good things would happen.

----

    creating self-efficacy

    So Brian’s frustrated question seems in retrospect more the problem itself than a step toward a solution. Simply by wondering why he lacks confidence, a golfer inhibits the development of that confidence he so desperately needs. Is there a solution around this psychological conundrum?
    Of course. What we have to do as golfers committed to improvement is believe in the possibility of our potential. Instead of lamenting our lack of confidence, instead of believing the ball will go either left or right, instead of (in essence) accepting defeat, we must learn to challenge ourselves to be better. We must learn to narrow our focus to the specifics of the task at hand. We must learn to emphasize the results that foster this sense of confidence, the self-efficacy of a mastery golfer. Moreover, we must approach the playing of the game as a highly controlled enterprise. Instead of bombarding our minds with uncertain future results, we must learn to stay with the specific requirements of each shot, to see the shots exclusively and independent of all other circumstances. The tighter the focus, the greater the likelihood that we have set in place the foundation for successful shot-making. If we learn to emphasize the things that build this sense of self-efficacy and eliminate those things that detract from it, we begin to move forward.
    Instead of wondering where this ephemeral sense of confidence might be, we do all the things we possibly can to create it ourselves. We control it instead of having it dictated to us by circumstances. The opportunity then to be a fearless golfer isn’t dependent on anything other than our will to do everything possible to execute golf swings at precise targets. Certainly, a healthy respect for honing the skills of the game is a requirement. But along with all the practice time is a commitment to believe in the possibility that by controlling our interpretation of events and our approach to hitting a particular shot we have the opportunity to maximize our potential. Playing with confidence ultimately is not an aftereffect; it is a choice. The power lies solely with us. The key to tapping into that power resides in the questions we ask ourselves when we compete, whether it’s on the PGA Tour or in our usual Saturday morning game. That’s something we’ll get into next.

F rank Gasaway was a thirty-one-year-old professional golfer widely known around Atlanta as an excellent money player. Whether the match was for $50 a hole or $5,000 a hole, Frank was always up for the challenge of playing for money. As the stakes and the level of competition increased, so did the quality of Frank’s play. With money on the line, he made birdies when it counted. His scores for money matches were often incredibly low. Whenever I went to a tournament, I would hear stories of how Frank birdied this or that hole to close out a match and win the kind of money that would make most of us blush and some of us break into a cold sweat. Despite his clearly demonstrated ability to consistently compete with the best pros in the state, Frank had one problem. He could not replicate that high quality of play in professional golf tournaments. He would routinely take money from the top golfers in the state, and then he wouldn’t even qualify for the events that those same golfers were winning.
    Practice rounds in the low to mid-60s typically and illogically were followed by competitive rounds in the mid- to high 70s. If he