Golf Flow

potential. These searching phases often become turning points in a golfer’s development.
    As with most great golfers (Matt Kuchar, Justin Rose, Bryce Molder, Hunter Mahan, Ben Hogan), Camilo’s career has been marked by long periods of solid play interspersed with growth or building phases that have functioned as turning points to propel his game up a notch. Reviewing a few of these will help you understand the nature of his difficult 2011-2012 stretch of play.
    For his first five years on tour, Camilo was on a roll. The numbers provide a pretty accurate picture that, as he matured and improved as a golfer, he progressed up the money list and entrenched himself as one of the game’s top talents ( table 13.1 ).



Lessons on Putting and Perfection
    One of the early shifts in Camilo’s thinking came in March of 2006 at the Doral tournament in Miami. It was in his rookie year, when he finished second to Tiger Woods (who had won 8 out of the 14 PGA Tour events in which he played that year), that Camilo learned two powerful lessons:
Great putters miss putts.
Winning golf tournaments doesn’t require you to play perfectly. It requires that you react well, stay free, and have fun.
    These may seem like obvious statements to many golfers, but by the time you’ve mastered the game at the level that Camilo has, sometimes the obvious things are not quite as obvious as they once were. When you have been great at golf since age 7, as Camilo has, it is natural that your expectations get and stay high. But Camilo’s particular set of gifts had created a situation that was bound to land him in a pickle. The situation is a simple, common, but often-overlooked aspect of the game: For many great ball strikers, putting confidence takes more of a hit over time than it does for worse ball strikers simply because great strikers (Ben Hogan, Fred Couples, Chad Campbell, Vijay Singh) have more opportunities to miss. The poor ball striker usually misses 7 greens per round, chips it to 3 feet, and thus faces fewer long putts. As a result, he has more short putts and makes more putts in a given day. That is why you often see the poor ball strikers on tour leading the putting statistics (Brad Faxon did so for the better part of 10 years). Conversely, great ball strikers like Camilo hit about 15 or 16 greens per round, and their putts are usually farther away than those by golfers who chip the ball close to the hole. Think of the average distance a 5-iron ends up from the hole as opposed to the average chip from off the green.
    Camilo is in the category of a great ball striker and has been since he was young. As a result, Camilo missed more putts than the average golfer, even the average PGA Tour player, because he historically gets the chance to putt more often from a greater distance. And missing putts has a way of chipping at your confidence, no matter who you are.
    But watching Tiger softened the way Camilo interpreted missed putts, and the effect on his confidence became less severe. You see, in 2006, Tiger was 137th in putting average
because
he was 1st in greens in regulation! Tiger won 8 times, and he did it while
missing a lot of putts
. . . but he missed a lot of putts because he had so many chances! Witnessing this firsthand allowed for the type of mental shift that can really open up the floodgates of a golfer’s potential. Though he didn’t win, the lessons Camilo learned were part of what propelled an exceptional five-year run from 2006 to 2010 and is a lesson that I think every golfer should have handy at all times.

Accepting Outcomes
    Camilo had begun the 2010 season on a hot streak, with good finishes overseas and a record-breaking scoring average the first half of the PGA Tour season (through six tournaments, he had established the lowest scoring average
ever
). While playing great, he hadn’t secured a victory. Something he said in February rang a familiar tone: “I should be winning these tournaments. I am hitting the ball so good!” After a couple of PGA Tour wins and consistently good play, Camilo quite reasonably began expecting good play literally every time he teed it up. Although high expectations can be a good thing, they also have a down side: They don’t allow golfers to accept outcomes that conflict with their expectations.
    Remember, golf requires that your game evolve as you evolve as a person. This is true for everyone and is another reason why a mastery approach that focuses on learning and growth is