How You Can Learn From The US Open…
What does the US Open have to do with your game? Well if you want to execute well in your own club championship it could have a lot to do with your success. When you go to the driving range to work on your swing and pound ball after ball it’s only one small part of practise. This is what is called the practise makes perfect method. Yet if you’ve golfed for any length of time you know this simply isn’t true: practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practise makes perfect. So practice what is really necessary to play at your peak. Your mental game training requires the same attention .
In order to play well with the anxiety of pressure you need to practise under the same conditions. When the chips are down and you need to hit the shot of your life, the self imposed pressure experienced increases 10 fold for most golfers. The trial by fire approach to improving your mental game of golf toughness and performing under pressure is a haphazard method. Yet it’s the only method that most amateur players know.
They enter more tournaments and matches with the hopes that by being in more events they will acquire the mental game toughness and concentration skills to deal with the pressure. It just doesn’t work that way. What do you see happen most of the time with this typical approach ? Yes you guessed it; the vast majority of players never perform up to their own potential because they lack mental game preparedness.
Inevitably when they fail it’s chalked up to experience and they simply hope to be in a position to win again. This strategy , if you can call it one, is the “natural” way. Simply get in contention enough times and you’re bound to win. It’s a very haphazard mental game approach. Although the odds are if you are in position enough times sooner or later you are going to win.
I want to submit to you that the more times you are in contention and don’t win that what you are doing is increasing the likelihood of losing again, not of making winning easier. Why is this, lack of mental game training? You have built a mindset of losing in your unconscious mind around not performing well under pressure. It will drive your behaviour (your thought processes and the swings you make under stress). You will without thinking reproduce the experience of losing that you are accustomed to.
It certainly is a hard pill to swallow but if you ever want to become more than just a mediocre golfer then mental game preparation can save you months, and even years for some players , of needless inner turmoil around pressure, performance anxiety, competitive stress and its influence on your golf game. Now what if you could reconstruct the pressure of the US Open in your practice sessions and then go and play with this mindset?
What if your preparation included a mental game imagery method that mirrored any and every pressure filled setting you might face and included it into your practice routine? Do you think it would be safe to say that you are a few steps ahead of your competition? I believe you most certainly would be!
By feeling with your mind’s eye, not simply seeing, you can undergo the exact pressure you’ll face in a tournament . Your subconscious mind will absorb these sessions and add them to your mental game library and integrate them into your golfing self image. These become real events to your mind. With this approach you are providing your mind and body with sensory specific information about what pressure is to you and how to play when it’s there.
You are, in very real terms, preparing your mind and body to act and perform in a desired way when under pressure. When you are at the range hitting golf balls pretend you are in the US Open. Try to make every shot count, give yourself only one chance to hit your desired target. Create a scoring structure to monitor how well you do when practising this way. Increase the pressure by taking only one drive, then one iron, then a chip shot if you miss your imagined green with your approach shot. Try to pay very close attention to how your perform when using this technique.
If you want to speed up your mental game improvement and begin to play well under pressure then it’s critical you simulate pressure in your practice sessions . How else are you going to prepare for the inevitable? Do you honestly want to rely on the time worn method of entering more and more tournaments and matches just hoping to get use to the pressure? How much time money are you prepared to lose before you make the changes necessary ?
Grab a hold of your potential and start to develop a dependable mental game. Your overall mindset on the course, your mental game of golf, your sense of clarity and inner confidence under the gun, and a list of other benefits will enter your game. Not just occasionally but for a lifetime. You will be absolutely amazed at how all the little distractions and rubs of the green that used to get under your skin and derail you don’t even enter your mind anymore.