Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [2]
While this is not a workbook, it nonetheless should be a learning companion when practicing the skills taught to you by your golf pro. For quite a while don’t leave home for the driving range without it. Treat it as a learning manual to help you use your mind and emotions to get what you want. Read Part 1 carefully and do the exercises presented there. This will make the rest of the book more meaningful. After doing the Sherlock Holmes Exercise and learning how to “anchor” your internal resources, read Part 2 casually. Then study and use the appropriate techniques in Part 2 when something in your game, or temperament, needs to be retuned or cleared up.
Not every lesson is for you. The final chapter, “The 19th Hole,” contains information about how to identify your outcomes and guides you in selecting appropriate metaskills techniques to achieve them. However, I encourage you only to pay attention to the crucial elements of your swing you want to improve. I’m a firm believer in the notion, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. ”
Setting aside mental-practice time is essential for learning my metaskills techniques. Merely reading this book is not enough to determine its effectiveness. Do only one exercise at a time. Learn how it works and determine if it fits your mental style. Judge for yourself the validity of a technique in relation to the quality of your performance and the degree to which you achieve each specific outcome.
My writing partner, whose love of golf once compelled him to play nine holes in Scotland while waiting for a rental car, experienced brainlock trying to use too many of my exercises at once. He learned, the hard way, the importance of exploring one technique at a time. The less you think about while swinging, the better your performance.
What eventually became useful for Ken was the concept of effort control described in Chapter 8. He applies that concept to lag-putting and those short putts which, when missed, can result in putters flying through the air like helicopter blades. The most valuable parts of the book for him were the ones that dealt with performance expectations and mood changes.
Which ones will be most useful for you? Happy exploring.
Learning how your mind works, how to make it work more efficiently, and how to tap your internal resources are the first steps to master in the golfer’s mind game. The initial part of this book is as fundamental as learning how to set your stance, grip the club, and swing it. Not until the fundamentals are learned will you be able to swing your mind so that you swing the club with effortless effort and mindless concentration.
Settle back into an easy chair now and put your point of view about hitting a golf ball aside. In this first part of the book I’ll tee up some basic ideas about the mind and about how to run your brain. Then I’ll have you become your own investigator to explore how your mind actually swings your club. After exploring how the pros use their minds while playing, I’ll provide you with special exercises to expand your mental capacities. Finally, you’ll learn a special way to uncover and anchor internal resources that are useful for playing golf.
Ted Jackson was an eighty-two-year-old golfer with a problem as common—and frustrating—as a cold. He would maneuver his shots well enough until the cup was about the length of a football field away. From ninety-plus yards his ball was an unguided missile, skittering into deep rough, thwacking off trees, flying every which way but straight.
A few years ago Ted uttered two words familiar to me and to everyone else for whom sport has gone sour: “What’s wrong?”
Answering a question like that isn’t very useful because it can reinforce his mistakes. So I focused on the