Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

distractions and fear that mastery golfers are immune to. For every question that leads to bad thoughts, there is an equally uncomfortable answer that produces the type of fear that ensures those bad thoughts result in bad swings.
    Bad questions focused on future uncertainties or past difficulties produce a cycle of fear that feeds on itself. The way to stop that cycle is to redirect that focus with good, mastery-oriented questions.
“How am I going to win this golf tournament?”
is how Jack Nicklaus approached every event he ever entered. It is heroic in its simplicity. Its directness is the hallmark of a mastery-oriented, fearless golfer.
    In literature and film, the goal of many authors and filmmakers is to use their medium as a vehicle to discover the perfect hero. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have that sort of freedom as a psychologist, to take a golfer and mold him into the perfect model of mastery golf. Such a golfer would have aspects of Hogan, Nicklaus, Woods, certainly, but there’d be the passion of a survivor like Chris DiMarco, the innocent tenacity of a Heath Slocum or Jonathan Byrd, and the quiet resolve of David Toms, too. No doubt, he would be an interesting mix of Luke Skywalker and Peter Parker and James Bond and Harry Callahan and so many of my favorite film and book heroes growing up: unassuming, uncomplicated, and pure in their motivations.

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    jack’s two favorite questions

    Fear-filled golfers tend to ask themselves negative questions focused on future uncertainties. Questions like: What if I slice or How am I losing to him or Why can’t I play well when it counts? Golfers who learn to control the questions they program into their minds are at a distinct advantage compared to those who wait passively for the situation to determine the question. Jack Nicklaus once said that he had two favorite questions that he forced himself to focus on throughout every round:

    How am I going to win this golf tournament?

    How do I want to play this shot?

    It’s natural to think of silly questions, but it’s not productive to focus on these questions with uncertain negative potential. Instead, focus on the job of hitting quality shots at specific targets. Questions that focus the mind on details relevant to hitting great shots at precise targets are the key component to mastery golf.
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    The real world of golf, however, is different from the scripted world of novels or films. Real people are complex and motivated by various, often conflicting drives. Mastery golf is always a matter of degree, and real golfers in real life playing in front of real galleries (or real golfers simply trying to play their best in a match with their friends, coworkers, or business associates) often need help remaining focused on the things that count. As we’ve seen from the preceding chapters, this is what happens when fear and fear-based questions interrupt the potential for success. It is why Frank Gasaway played golf with two different personalities. It is a large part of the explanation for why you seem to play effortlessly on some rounds or even some holes, only to struggle like a beginner at other times.
    But I think there is hope for a recovery and that hope is going to begin with an analysis of the questions we ask ourselves when we play. Those questions make everything possible.
    For instance, recall how Davis Love III was able to shift his focus on the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach from an ego mode to a mastery mode simply by changing his question about the status of his opponents to “What is my target?” While ego-oriented golfers are asking themselves questions that have to do with outcomes and personal emotional status (such as, “How will I look if I miss this shot?” or “How much is this shot worth?”), I have found that mastery golfers typically ask themselves the same few questions over and over again:

    What is my target?

    What is the best way to play this hole?

    What sort of shot does this hole require?

    How do I want to hit this shot?

    Because the mind often returns answers in visual form to the questions we ask ourselves, it is no wonder that mastery golfers are able to stay more focused and composed. The questions they ask themselves keep them focused on hitting shots at targets, a process which negates the fear that often accompanies performing in front of a crowd.
    In fact, asking questions is a core part of the self-dialogues we all conduct (what William James