Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [37]
I had him put an image of himself making that past, satin-smooth swing on the back of my left hand. I said this was his “criterion” or model I wanted him to reproduce. After Billy went through the process of first watching the movie of his past shot and then watching himself hit the past shot, I had him hit a few balls on the practice tee.
Then I asked him, “Is that what you want?”
“That’s not quite it,” he replied. “It’s a bit too fast at the top and not enough clubhead speed at impact.”
“Well, let’s take one of those at a time,” I said. “Project a movie of what you just did here on the palm of my right hand and compare it to your criterion picture—the way you used to swing—on the back of my left hand. As you study those two pictures or movies, what one, and only one, thing do you want to correct in your last shot that you think will get your swing back to where you want it?”
Billy glanced back and forth between my two hands and said, “The top. I want a slight pause at the top of my backswing before I go into the downswing. ”
“Just go through that movement now, the take-away to the top, without striking a ball,” I said. “And as you do it, let a metaphorical image flash into your mind right at the top of the swing. ”
Billy took the club back several times, smiled, and said, “I see a swinging traffic light. It’s red as it swings in the wind in one direction and then it changes to green as it begins to swing back in the other direction. ”
“Fine. Test that image in your mind as you swing a club here on the tee without a ball. See if it works.”
Billy tested it in his mind and then hit a few balls. Again I asked him, “How’d it go?”
“It’s still not right,” he replied. “The pause at the top is great. The traffic-light image works, but—”
I interrupted him, believing that he was going to reinforce the negative stuff, something I didn’t want him to do. “Make another movie of what you just did with your swing on my right hand and compare it to your criterion on my left. As before, identify one part of your swing that you want to correct that’ll bring it up to snuff, the way it used to be.”
Billy looked at my two hands and said, “I want more clubhead speed down at the ball. ”
“What can you do to get that?” I asked.
“Just think about whipping the club at the bottom of the downswing and pinching the ball between the face of the club and the turf,” he answered.
“Can you think of another metaphorical image related to the traffic light that you could use to generate clubhead speed?”
Billy thought for a moment and, being a sports-car buff, came up with an image of a racing car accelerating out of a curve at the Indianapolis 500, and gunning it an instant before it reached the straightaway.
“Now,” I said, “see that metaphorical image in your mind as you swing the club without a ball to find out if it gets what you want in the way of clubhead speed.”
He said it did, so I told him to “chunk” the two images—the traffic light and the race car—so they became combined into one metaphorical image. He chuckled a bit and said, “I see the red traffic light swinging; it changes to green as it begins to swing back, and then I see a race car down by my right leg come into view, gunning it into the straightaway, past the golf ball. I’m pretty sure it’ll work.”
Billy made the new, chunked image in his mind as he swung at a ball; it jumped off the club with an audible click. He grinned from ear to ear and said, “That’s it. That’s perfect.”
I had him hit several more balls to make sure he had his swing tempo back. He got it back, and now he uses that visual anchor to regulate his swing when it’s off; he thinks of nothing when his swing is okay.
Below you will find the steps for the Get-It Process. They are the same for the Get-It-Back Process except for the criterion image or model that you want to get or get back. The criterion for the Get-It is an image of someone else; the criterion for the Get-It-Back is an image of you hitting a golf ball at an earlier time.
Although it’s preferable