Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

Chapter 2) when he first came to me, and our time together had been spent working on how to best prepare him and his mind to focus on the golf course rather than on other golfers. To play better, John had to learn to focus properly, and to focus properly John had to commit to understanding the golf course and keeping that concern foremost in his mind, eliminating all other thoughts. By knowing the course and knowing his ideal targets in advance, John was able to better ignore other players and leaderboards. It was his best way to prepare for tournament golf. Soon after he adopted this strategy, John began to experience success.
    On the day of this particular phone call, however, John had had an awful round, shooting his highest score in a competitive tournament in five years.
    “Why do you think you played so badly, John?” I asked, attempting to get at how he was thinking after the round. In other words, I was asking, “To what do you attribute such a bad round of golf?” Psychologists use the term
attributions
to describe the reasons that people provide for their successes and failures in the things they attempt. It’s this kind of post-round talk that reveals great things about how strong our sense of self-efficacy is and whether we have adopted a mastery approach to the game so we are more likely to play fearless golf.
    John’s response to my question was initially not ideal. He began telling me hole by hole about the shots he had hit. He told me of errant drives, mishit irons, and missed putts. He told me about incorrect distances and wrong clubs as well as about his futile attempt to quiet his mind. At one point he questioned whether he really had the ability to compete at that level. (Do you see a pattern here?) In all, he told me that the reason he had played badly was a combination of mechanical and equipment factors. The ironic thing is that he had shot 67 the day before at a more difficult course with those very same mechanics and the very same clubs.
    After he finished pouring his heart out, I sat quietly, letting the weight of the silence work on him.
    “Are you there?” he asked after a moment.
    “I’m here,” I replied.
    “Well . . . what do you think, Doc?” he inquired.
    I repeated to him the most foundational phrase I use with golfers. “John,” I said, “I think that battles are won before they are ever fought.”
    He didn’t respond at first, but then he said, “But I’ve been working hard on my swing and on picking targets and being fearless like we worked on.” His voice gave him away.
    “What did you do in your practice rounds before the tournament?” I asked, knowing the answer.
    “I didn’t play a practice round.”
    I said nothing, waiting for him to finish my unspoken thought. “I know what you are going to say: I didn’t know the course and the yardage, and that caused me to hesitate and to be indecisive in my golf swing. And I know you can’t play good golf being indecisive.”
    I corrected him. “No, you cannot play good competitive golf being indecisive. You can accidentally hit shots with good results. But playing well by accident is not how you want to attempt to groove success. You want to establish a method and an approach that fuel success, that set you up to succeed. To play your best, and especially to play well in a competitive atmosphere, being decisive and having a plan are crucial.”
    He admitted as much. “My hesitation and indecision caused me to miss a couple of shots early, which made me more tentative. So my poor play is really rooted in the fact that I didn’t prepare.”
    “So when,” I asked, “did you really blow this tournament? Rethink what you said earlier, and tell me why you played badly.”
    “I blew it the week before the tournament,” he replied, “because battles are won before they are fought. I played badly because I was unsure about the course . . . and that was because I didn’t play a practice round the day before. I didn’t prepare to play the golf course and my old, bad habits came back.”
    After first providing reasons that had little to do with his lack of success, John finally was able to identify the proper attribution. That kind of unqualified self-assessment is what we should strive for. Anything less than the brutal truth holds us back from the possibility of our potential.

    Let’s be clear: Making it possible to play your best golf—whether you’re trying to win a major championship, earn your Tour