Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

instructors agree that helping golfers develop new swings is initially about teaching them what to do. Beyond that, the challenge becomes the process of habituation. Making the swing become an automatic process that they can easily trust is not an altogether easy enterprise. The muscle memory part of the equation requires repetition and time. The mental portion requires patience and fortitude.
    It is for these reasons that golfers must be carefully on their guard in spotting habits of action and of mind that have come to play havoc with their game. It is always best, of course, to prevent a bad habit from creeping into our play or into our mind, but this is not always possible. Here is James again: “We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.” What is possible, then, is to be alert to these hobgoblins, capture them early, and not permit them to dominate our thinking. Similarly, it is possible to continually practice adaptive habits that will improve our game.

    the repeatable golf swing

    When he made it a routine to hit 5-irons to the base of a tree more than seventy years ago, Ben Hogan was the first prominent golfer to advocate the idea of the automatic and repeatable golf swing. Hogan believed that if you did something enough times the correct way, it would become automatic. Fifty years of research in psychology has proved him correct. Habits form whether we intend for them to form or not. How you perform in competition will ultimately boil down to the habits you develop in practice. For Hogan, this meant practicing each and every shot the way he wanted to play it on the course. He once said,

    While I am practicing I am also trying to develop my powers of concentration. I never just walk up and hit the ball. I am practicing and adopting habits of concentration which pay off when I play . . . Adopt a habit of concentration to the exclusion of everything else around you on the practice tee and you will find that you are automatically following the same routine while playing a round in competition. Play each shot as if it were part of an actual round.

    In fact, Hogan was such a creature of habit and slave to routine that he said his round of golf officially began the moment he pushed open the locker room door.
    Careless, sloppy practice is the primary reason why so much progress in golf is
sideways
progress and not forward progress. By grooving bad habits in practice, golfers set themselves up for failure. The reason golf is so frustrating to so many people is because you can practice and actually get worse. The sad fact is that most average golfers spend hours at the driving range perfecting
flaws
. Practice in golf should always be gauged by its quality, not its quantity. Golfers who hit thirty golf balls in an intelligent manner can improve far more rapidly than golfers who measure their practice by the clock or by the sheer number of golf balls they hit.
    Many golfers believe that hitting 300 balls a day or practicing for five straight hours should necessarily lead to improved scores. Truth be told, that approach does not guarantee improvement. An essential rule to remember about golf lies in the old adage that “practice does not make perfect; practice makes permanent.” Repetition can be the mother of success or of failure. What you do in practice will invariably be exposed in how you play. The golfer who hits 300 balls daily, but who does so carelessly, may hit 200 balls with one swing, 50 balls with another swing, and 50 more with yet a third swing. Talk about grooving inconsistency and carelessness. On the golf course he may have an equal chance of producing any one of a number of bad swings he’s rehearsed. And if he is facing a shot that means anything—which is to say that if there is any
pressure
on the shot—the body will have an even stronger tendency to fall back on automatic processes. Pressure situations are precisely when the quality of golfers’ practice is revealed.
    Great coaches are always aware of the importance of smart practice. Vince Lombardi observed that practice in fact does not make perfect. Only “perfect practice makes perfect.” On a similar note, fighter pilots understand the critical importance of habit. I recently asked a veteran pilot with extensive combat experience how he managed to keep his concentration while having