Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [59]
Expectations
Just how realistic are you about your golf game? When you miss the fairway, dub a shot, come up short of the green, or miss a birdie putt, are you upset? As I watch a lot of whimpering golfers trudge off a green, or see them pound their clubs into the ground with rage, it looks and sounds as though they expect a whole lot more than what is possible at the moment. It’s as if they should be perfect and win every match.
My deceased brother, Ken, taught me that golf is a humbling game and that our performance is reflected in how we think about ourselves and the meaning of the game. To this day, more than ten years after he died, I play my best golf when I reflect on my many good times with him. I am blessed with my life and the remembrance of his. Golf is a privilege for me. Consequently, bad shots have no ill meaning. At least I’m alive to make them.
Many athletes in many different sports have repeatedly told me the best frame of mind for competing is the attitude of going out to have a good time. This is true for Olympic figure skaters, Grand Prix horseback riders, national-caliber fencers, racketball players, you name the sport.
Peter Jacobsen, after completing two mediocre rounds out of three in the 1988 U.S. Open, said to a New York Times reporter, “I felt like an old lawn mower that wouldn’t turn over. I just couldn’t get started.… After two 76’s I said to myself this morning, ‘What the heck, let’s go out and have some fun,’ and I felt real loose.” Loose and fun, indeed. Peter recorded seven consecutive 3’s on his card, made birdie putts on five of the first six holes, turned in a record-breaking score of 64, and went home with more than ten thousand dollars in prize money to boot. When fun, not score, is the desired outcome, then it doesn’t matter what the score is; and more than likely the score will be a good one.
Be aware that ninety percent of tour golfers miss the fairway on the average of six out of eighteen holes; only ten percent of them can consistently hit twelve out of eighteen greens in regulation; and the very best of them break par only twenty-one to twenty-five percent of the time. And those people play golf and practice just about every day of the week practically all year long.
Pressure
Do you feel under pressure to shoot a lower score? If you do, don’t tell me it’s pressure put on by competitors, or spectators, or the media, or family and friends. It’s certainly a fact that some sportscasters think that any exceptional tour golfer who doesn’t win a tour championship has a “monkey on his back.” That is, they think that the golfer feels pressure to win and can’t because of the common expectation in our society that he should win. In actuality they are projecting what they themselves might feel if they were in the golfer’s shoes.
The fact of the matter is that you, and only you, generate the pressure you feel. You put the monkey on your own back by accepting the common value of having to win. In effect you let yourself become brainwashed. You don’t have to win.
Let’s consider a simple example to illustrate what I mean. A two-foot putt is routine when you practice, but it can become a “pressure putt” and turn into a bogey on the 18th hole when you’re one up. How is that pressure generated? From inside of you by virtue of how you think. It could spring from a number of thoughts—your desire, if not compulsion, to shoot a lower score and feel satisfied, to please someone else, to get recognition, or just to win. If winning or doing well aren’t important, then making the putt doesn’t matter; the pressure is removed.
Winning
Many golfers heap enormous pressure on themselves to win. Having to win, feeling compelled to win, is bad because it generates muscle tension that interferes with making a smooth swing. Wanting to win out of genuine desire, on the other hand, serves as motivation to excel. When you excel, you give your opponents something to shoot at. I don’t know anybody who wants to compete with someone who doesn’t give a damn about