Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

fundamentally undermine the self-efficacy all golfers need if they’re going to maximize their potential. But how you respond to a stretch of less than successful putting is more the problem than any physical flaw. Since putting problems can easily have an overstated effect on scoring, it is not unusual for a golfer to begin to think he is scoring badly when he is putting badly, and it is not too far from that point that a sense of putting badly leads a player to believe he is playing badly.
    The mind comes back with a response something to the effect of, “I am scoring badly because I am not making enough putts, and I am not making enough putts because I can’t feel the ball coming off this putter.” In the fraction of an instant it takes the mind to process those thoughts, a golfer has made a more important decision than he or she may even know. After all, the golfer has just attributed poor putting performance to the putter, an equipment attribution. The solution for this is usually to go out and try new putters until one is found that feels just right. Quite naturally, golfers who make equipment attributions involving their putters will switch to a putter with which they feel comfortable in the belief, alas, that this will be the ultimate solution to their putting problem.
    But let’s go back for a minute. Let’s say that in this case, the actual reason this particular golfer was putting badly was because his setup was off (which is the single most common reason why good golfers stop making putts). In short, focusing on the putter as the source of frustration is like believing you were caught speeding because your car is red. Truth is, painting your car white won’t deter a patrolman from pulling you over if you’re going eighty-five miles per hour. What’s the real reason you’re not holing putts? Misplaced blame can cause a player months of frustration because though he now has a new putter, he putts with the same poor setup he had before he changed putters. Because poor alignment invariably gets worse, he will soon be putting badly with the new putter.
    The downward spiral continues. In time this golfer will become frustrated and lose his patience and his confidence in his putting, a trend which will bleed into the rest of his game. This is usually about the time that golfers will call me. When I ask why they believe they are playing badly, they will answer, “Because I have no confidence.” What’s worse, they are completely baffled as to how, when, or why they lost their confidence, where it went, or how to get it back. What they do know is that they desperately need it.
    Almost always, their loss of confidence (self-efficacy) was the
result
of poor play before it was the
cause
of poor play. Just as confidence is first a
producer
and then a
product
of great golf, lack of confidence is first a product and then a producer of poor play. After all, their low self-efficacy was justified—they aren’t making any putts with their current approach. They first believed their poor putting was the result of their equipment. It was, in fact, probably a function of a personal factor, such as being misaligned. Their belief that the putter was the source of their difficulties caused them to fix something that wasn’t broken—the putter. From that moment, they began their trek down a slippery slope. They continued to miss putts, which ate away at their self-efficacy. Once golfers lose their self-efficacy, their swing begins to change. Grip pressure increases, the backswing shortens, head and eyes tend to “flinch” just before impact, trying to see the result because they are so unsure of themselves. Focusing on their equipment as the source of the problem made them change putters, made lining up incorrectly a “habit,” and altered their putting stroke from smooth and decisive to short, quick, and uncertain.
    Clearly, these golfers do not need a new putter. In many cases they merely needed to move their foot back an inch and get their eyes over the ball. As the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The more that golfers can make accurate attributions, the less time they spend climbing out of holes they themselves dig.
    Attribution at its worst is the sort of Monday-morning quarterbacking that makes for good sports talk radio but rarely does anything constructive. More likely, it corrupts or destroys our confidence. However, attribution at its best is the sort of