Golf Flow

don’t like hearing from me that the road to excellence has to pass first through acceptance of poor shots and bad feelings. These supercompetitive people spend most of their lives fine-tuning habits to prevent themselves from hitting bad shots. Selling them on the idea that they need to accept the very thing—bad shots—that they strive to prevent isn’t easy!
    When I try to convince golfers of the virtue of acceptance, my argument isn’t for acceptance for its own sake, but because acceptance often leads to the physiological and mechanical patterns that set the stage for great golf. Think about the other possible reactions—anger, embarrassment, frustration, rage. What path do those emotions typically lead a golfer down? Typically they take the golfer on a path of bad physiology, poor focus, negative thoughts, and terrible rhythm. Conversely, acceptance, humor, curiosity, and other positive emotions allow the mind and body to stay in relative composure. Physiologically, your tension levels, blood pressure, and heart rate don’t spike when you are walking around a golf course practicing acceptance, feeling free, and staying in touch with your sense of humor. Research shows that humor releases the adaptive chemicals beta-endorphins and HGH while reducing the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine, and DOPAC. Essentially, how we react to our golf shots can make our bodies either toxic or healthy.
    When I explain it that way, golfers are typically more likely to buy in to the power of positive reactions.
    Bryce went forward and began actively accepting that golf is a flawed game and that we are flawed beings. Rather than resist mistakes, he learned from them. His humor on the course improved, as did his freedom, relaxation, and ultimately his scores.
    Bryce was soon tested by being in contention on a Sunday. He went into Sunday’s round playing in the final group. All his acceptance had made him mentally and physically free, and going into the Sunday round he felt ready to get the job done. But the game gave him exactly what he needed, if not what he wanted. As free and fearless as he was, he simply didn’t win the tournament. But rather than be depressed or fuel his self-doubt, he simply acknowledged that he controlled everything he could, that he played well enough to win, and that it simply wasn’t his day. No sulking, no funerals, no self-defeating remarks. Just good, healthy acceptance and a rededication to maintain a positive attitude and keep learning.
    Going forward, Bryce had an up-and-down season during which he faced times when he hit the ball well but didn’t make putts, or made putts but didn’t hit the ball well; hit the ball poorly but got a lot out of his rounds, and hit the ball well but didn’t score. Virtually all the experiences the game
can
deliver it
did
deliver. Through it all, Bryce kept accepting and focusing on using each week to (1) learn a simple lesson and (2) be more mentally free. What I found inspiring was that he didn’t let results cloud his clarity. He began making clear, accurate attributions, and he always seemed upbeat and optimistic that the path he was on would lead to good things.
    Bryce was so clear about this point that negativity didn’t even enter the equation anymore. He was setting the stage for flow.

Scripting the Process
    Those who study football know that some football coaches often predetermine the first 10 plays of the game, even before the game begins. Known in sport as scripting, the point is to take control of processes, evaluate what is happening, and then make adjustments. One of the upsides of scripting plays is that it buffers people from changes or swings in momentum. In golf the purpose of scripting is to ignore the score and get into the process over the course of four days. Although we do not script the actual shots that we will hit (because those choices are affected by, among other things, weather), we do script routines, reactions, and process goals. A common script that helps us ignore the score is to lay down the goal of kaizen, incremental improvement, throughout a tournament. When we do this, we aim to ignore the score and be a little better each day—a little more disciplined in our routines, a little more committed to our shots, a little more in rhythm so that our best swings should happen on the final nine holes of a tournament.
    For the week of the Frys.com open, Bryce’s scorecards read like an ideal script. His scores perfectly