Golf Flow

you get in the zone, and you even forget about how many under you are when you get that low. You kind of forget what you’re shooting. I had no idea, really, what I shot. The hole looked like a bucket today. I was just trying to make every putt I looked at. Almost did, too.
    Tim Heron, 4-time PGA Tour winner
The times when I’ve gotten into it, I forget how many under par I am, or where I am in the tournament. Like in a match play, how many up or down I might be. You lose track of all that. Again because your focus becomes so narrow, you know, consciously you know all that but it isn’t part of your thought process. And you’re not thinking about those outside things that can be detractors. Your focus goes from the size of a basketball to a pin needle and nothing that goes on around you matters. You don’t hear things that go on. Your focus gets so narrow on what you’re trying to do. Your focus is so narrow, you’re just walking up to your ball and seeing the next shot and pulling the club and doing it. And after that’s over, you’re just walking up to your ball again. You’re not fighting through thoughts like “what if I hit it here or there?” You don’t fight through any of that. It all just disappears.
    Justin Leonard, 12-time PGA Tour winner
There’s a great attention to detail about yardage, wind, club selection. All of those factors are just automatic. It isn’t lethargic, though, so that it’s a slow routine. It’s definitely not fast or rushed. When you’re not in flow, it’s a little bit more contrived. Having to try to focus. In flow my focus just happens. I am not trying. Internally there’s a knowing, a calm, relaxed knowing. Nothing can shake my focus at that point. My focus is softer. It’s softer. Like soft ice cream—soft but intense. It is hard to describe because it isn’t a “trying” focus. There’s no trying in this state. It’s all just happening and you’re sort of . . . you’re sort of rolling with it.
    Charles Howell III, 3-time PGA Tour winner

Enlightened Putting
    The opposite of unthinking simplicity is the active, chattering, indecisive mind that becomes aware of too many things, particularly things that don’t matter. We alluded to this in chapter 2 in discussing the sensation of the mind turning on itself. More information often amplifies whatever thoughts golfers have, and the amplification places a drag on automaticity, compromises perceptual channels, and interrupts the flowing sequence of mechanics. For example, Sergio Garcia’s putting woes have been well documented. When asked about the talented Spaniard, his friend Geoff Ogilvy, 2006 U.S. Open champion, made the following observation:
I like Sergio. We play together all the time, but his putting has gone a bit awry. It’s odd. He’s so analytical about his putting and not about everything else. I remember playing against him when he was a 16-year-old amateur. You could almost tell him to pick it up from 15 feet. It was a joke how good of a putter he was. He was the best I had ever seen at that stage. So somewhere along the line something has changed. It looks to me as if there’s too much thinking.

To be successful at golf’s highest levels, golfers must be able to adjust their awareness to an optimal level. Geoff Ogilvy excels at this.

    Murray Richardson/Icon SMI
    What is worth noting is that Geoff Ogilvy is one of the best putters in the modern era. Tour players regularly tell me, “I want to learn to putt like Geoff Ogilvy. Not his stroke, but just his whole attitude.” The numbers confirm what his peers see in Geoff. He is a big-time player with a big-time game. At the time of this writing he’s won seven times on the PGA Tour, including the U.S. Open, two World Golf Championships, two World Golf Championship Match Plays, and an Australian Open. Additionally, he consistently leads the Tour in important putting statistics; he regularly makes more 3- to 5-footers (1 to 1.5 m) than anyone on the Tour. My point is that people who know about putting, who are themselves good putters, are typically the best sources of information for those who don’t make putts. The reason is that more than likely they’ve already traveled the road required to get to that point. They’ve made and corrected the mistakes and have arrived at a place where they finally get it.
    One of the great putters in history, Loren Roberts (aka “The Boss of the Moss”), says that in the moment between taking his