Golf Flow

Tiger four hours of work! I tell my golfers to own their mornings and not squander them.
    No one would expect you to put in the hours on the course that are required to be an elite PGA Tour player. But it is worthwhile to consider the pattern of behavior that makes dedicated golfers successful. Throughout history the best in all walks of life have factored time management into the equation. Ben Franklin might have said it best: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
    As a college professor, I strive to help my students develop time management skills, because I have seen what a huge difference having such skills can make not only in their academic careers but also in their professional success. As a practicing mental game consultant, I bring these same lessons to my work with golfers because the fact is that it is difficult enough to master anything without also feeling rushed or pressed for time. In fact, trying to master anything while being pressed for time is explicitly counterproductive. It is the nature of habit development that the habits we are working on are often accompanied by other habits that are unintended and undesirable. Imagine that I am trying to habituate an effective preshot routine. Day after day I show up late to the golf course as daylight begins to fade. I am forced to rush through my preshot routine. As a result I have ingrained the habit of a preshot routine, but I have also habituated the habits of being late and rushing through my practice. Consequently, on the golf course my routine feels anxious and rushed—all the result of careless practice and the mismanagement of time.
    The more you come to understand the philosophy of what I teach, the more you will understand the critical importance of time and time management because they have a direct effect on one of the single greatest psychological fundamentals in golf—rhythm. As you’ve previously read, the “lights and music” that surround golfers affect both tension levels and the rhythm at which they play golf. We talk more about this in detail in other chapters, so for now I’ll just say that rhythm is part of flow. The golfer who is chronically late for practice and late to the golf course is habituating a mind-set that is rushed and that interferes with developing a good rhythm. This habit is therefore antithetical to generating flow.
    Rushing to the first tee is the quickest way to ensure that your round will begin badly, send you sideways, and kill any chance of flow. I’ve repeatedly seen golfers arrive late to the course and have to rush through their warm-up. The rushing tampers with their rhythm, their timing, and their confidence. Their thoughts become scattered and fragmented, and they spiral into an unproductive, cluttered mind-set. Many of them ingrain the habit on the driving range and bring the rushing mind-set with them onto the golf course. Even at the PGA Tour level, hurrying can make a golf swing come apart. If mismanagement of time can undo the golf swings of men who spend a lifetime crafting those swings, imagine what it can do to the golf swing of an amateur!
    Do you want to know how important time management is to great golf? Just ask Justin Rose. One of the first skills that Justin and I tried to implement into his processes was that of time management. After Justin came to understand the significance of time management and the way in which it can bleed into his golf game, he began to take it more seriously. I can’t say that this was the main factor in his going from zero wins in 9 years to three wins in 18 months on the PGA Tour, but I can say that after he began to emphasize this habit, his body of work improved and the wins followed.
    Arriving early and being punctual set the pace and internal rhythm that pervades all aspects of a golfer’s life and game. The process of changing someone’s time management is predicated on the fact that most people are not accurate when it comes to understanding time. “I’ll be there in 5 minutes” typically means that the person will arrive in 15 minutes. People who think that it takes a half hour to drive to the golf course are surprised that when they include unanticipated factors (buy gas, stop signs, heavy traffic, parking), it usually looks more like 45 minutes. So beginning with this fundamental assumption, I try to recalibrate people to becoming good at managing time.
Rule 1: Always assume that something