Golf Flow

all his wins by stating, “I did come along fast in golf, and did not fully learn how difficult the game is until after I turned professional” (Nicklaus 1997).
    I don’t begin this chapter by asking you to consider the difficulty of the game to intimidate you or because I want you to think negatively. Quite the opposite is true. My point in arming you with this understanding is that after you truly understand how difficult it is to play consistently at a high level, you are more likely to be nice to yourself when the going gets tough. I want you to let yourself off the hook when things are not going your way. I have watched golfers really berate themselves and beat themselves up in this game. I have witnessed tantrums and torrents, seen flying putters and fisticuffs, and watched this game make grown men cry. More often than not, golfers blame themselves for things that are not under their control at all, but rather are part of the curious makeup of a complex game. Rather than berate themselves, they should let themselves off the hook and chalk it up to the fact that playing consistently good golf is difficult and some features of the game cannot be controlled.
    Now that we’ve established that golf can be difficult, we must decide on the best approach to take to a game that has such a fickle, complex, unpredictable nature. One thing that many of the great golfers throughout history have done is precisely what I allude to in the title of this chapter: They respond positively to negativity. As Gary Player observed during an interview with
Forbes
magazine (Burke 2010),
Letting negative thoughts enter your mind will guarantee failure. I remember when the weather was rough I'd hear others in the locker room say how horrible it was and how they hated playing in the rain and wind. Right then and there they had lost the tournament, because they set themselves up for failure. I told myself that I loved playing in the wind and rain and went out and played with a positive mind-set.

Make Gary Player your role model for using mental discipline and psychological strategies to deal with difficult situations. These techniques helped him rack up 134 world-wide wins.

    Colorsport/Icon SMI
    Player offers a clear example of responding positively to negativity, but having a positive attitude in bad weather is just the tip of the iceberg. More commonly, the negative whispers come not from Mother Nature, but from our internal dialogue. Reflecting on your career to date, have you ever found yourself on the course thinking thoughts such as “I can’t believe I blew that last shot—I am so stupid,” “I’m terrible at this kind of shot,” or “I’m never going to catch him now!” Alternatively, have you ever had positive thoughts such as “I nailed this one—I am back on track,” “I’m getting better at this type of shot,” and “I can do this!”
    The empowering message of this chapter and one of the great things about golf is that we do have control over one important thing—we have total choice over how we react to situations. Every round of golf provides many opportunities to respond positively to negative whispers.
    Matt Kuchar is a modern-day example of a golfer who responds positively to negative whispers. At the 2007 AT&T National, he told reporters,
On the golf course, it’s easy to beat yourself up. You just have so many more bad things happen than good things happen it seems. Just to get a win, win every 100 tournaments, would be great. Your winning percentage, you just don’t get that much success out here. It’s hard; it beats you up. But if you do stay positive, good things do happen.
    As I spent time with Matt recently, his commitment to staying positive was evident on the golf course. During a stretch of golf where he couldn’t get anything going, he felt himself becoming impatient. Then, as his impatience was whispering to him, the game did what it often does to golfers: It gave him a bad break in the form of a perfectly struck shot that kicked off the green and into a hazard. Matt was able to recognize what was happening inside him, so he told himself, “You have a great short game, and this is why you practice it, for moments like this.” He hit a fantastic shot and saved par. He then recognized that he was still a little off-kilter, so he coached himself, “Settle down, Matt. Stay patient. You are playing well, and if you stay patient, good things will happen.” And so they did. Matt went