I saw this post earlier today and I couldn’t help thinking how much it relates to golf and the way we approach it.

http://lifehacker.com/5832020/ambition-becomes-counter+productive-when-you-expect-things-to-go-as-planned

So often, we set high expectations for ourselves, especially when we’ve been working hard on a particular aspect of our game, like chipping, putting, or driving.  Then when things don’t go as planned we stop having fun.

The problem is that this way of approaching the game, makes it harder to perform well.  It gets in the way.  Or rather, our expectations get in the way.

I want to make a distinction between this and confidence.  You can have confidence without expectations getting in the way.  Confidence is a great thing to have.  In fact it’s what we want to develop in our game.  We want to have confidence that we can hit the shot we’ve committed to hitting.  But I think the greatest confidence comes from knowing that you’ll be all right even if things don’t go as planned.

Watching tournaments on tv you’ll often hear players who are playing well talking about the way they felt during the round.  They knew that even if they missed some shots, that they’d be able to get up and down.  This kept them in the moment.

You’ll see the opposite from players who are playing poorly.  Every bad shot is an arrow through the heart of their confidence.  Every bad shot makes them more miserable.  Frustration sets in and bad shots begin to pile up.

It’s not easy to play without expectations.  But I’ve found a few techniques that help.

1) Focus on this shot right now.  Forget about what happened on the last shot, or the last hole, or the front nine.

2) Make a conscious realization that if the shot doesn’t go as planned, you’ll still be ok.  Golf isn’t life or death.  It’s a game.  It’s a maddening game, but it’s just a game.  Learning to let go of the outcome is incredibly powerful for many reasons.

Watching Morning Drive this morning, I was in total agreement with the comments that Brandel Chamblee (@BrandelChamblee) made about Rickie Fowler.

“You understand the best way to play golf, this is my opinion, is to go out there and try to hit shots…You know,it’s the big lie to me, that you can go out there and swing perfectly.  And I understand why guys do it.  I mean literally they’re trying to play this game in the most organized fashion, there’s so much money out there, and if you can stay on tour a long time, you can get ridiculously rich. So what are you gonna do? You’re gonna work out, you’re gonna get a sports psychologist And you’re going to take all these lessons ’cause you want everything to be perfect. And Rickie’s like ‘No, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna hit golf shots. I’m gonna hit it high, I’m gonna hit it low, I’m gonna draw it, fade it.’  And I know it’s because of the way he was taught the game. His teacher was very much into hitting golf shots. And that’s why he plays fast.  Because he’s not out there thinking about a pre-shot routine, and he’s not out there thinking about swing mechanics. He’s out there thinking about golf shots.”

There’s a ton of wisdom in what Brandel said this morning.  This is why Rickie is the future of golf.  And I think he is going to stun us with what he is going to accomplish in his career.

I want to contrast this style of play with Tiger Woods.  And my intention is not to bash Tiger but to look at differences.

Tiger Woods when he was dominant could hit every shot in the book and then some.  He created that famous stinger and it appears he doesn’t even have that shot any more.  Tiger said he is thinking about his swing and swing mechanics now before every shot and it looks that way.  When he gets off track, he goes into repair mode, and it’s mechanics, mechanics, mechanics.  The artfulness seems to be have left him, at least for now.

On the other hand, Rickie Fowler (and several other players, most notably Bubba Watson), look like golf artists.  They see shots, and they hit shots.  They use the golf course as their canvas and they create masterpieces of golf.  Plus they’re really fun to watch.

So where does this leave us (the amateur golfer)?  Well, for one, I know when I’m playing my best it’s when I’m seeing and hitting shots and when I’m not thinking about mechanics.  There are times when golf seems so much easier.  Conversely, when I’m playing poorly, it’s all about mechanics.  The swing ends up feeling like it’s separate from me. And it feels forced.

If you’ve read this blog for a while you know that I’ve moved away from mechanics to a feel based approach, where I not only see the shots I’m trying to create, but try to feel what it’ll feel like to hit them.  And every shot is unique and feels differently.  This makes golf more fun, and the end result for me has been better scores, more fun, and not having to practice as much.

Other posts about Rickie Fowler:

Pro’s slow motion swings

Rickie Fowler – a result of Consistent Coaching

Stuck in a slump?

Never Give Up

GMac’s victory at the Chevron this weekend over Tiger Woods is a wonderful example of not giving up.

He continued fighting even as things seemed to be breaking down around him.  His miraculous bogey on 17 kept him in it.  Tiger then hit it tight on 18 giving McDowell a must make putt with a lot of pressure. He made a gritty 15 footer for birdie putting the pressure on Tiger’s short putt.

On the first playoff hole, as they played 18 again, Tiger left himself with an almost identical distance for his approach shot.  Graham had a shot from about 175 over the trees.  He hit a good shot and left himself a nearly identical putt to the one he made to force the playoff.

Tiger Woods hit a solid approach shot inside McDowell’s ball giving him an advantage.  As we all know, McDowell sank that putt again putting the pressure back on Tiger and Tiger’s putt slid past the cup, giving GMac an impressive victory.

I can’t really think of many people who would handle the pressure the way he did.  Think about how you would have handled the pressure.  I was absolutely amazed at the gritty resilience that GMac showed.  I know I couldn’t have handled that kind of pressure and it is inspiring for me.

I want to give you another example of not giving up.  In one of my last rounds this year I started out 7 over par for my first 9 holes.  Throughout those first nine, I just could not find my game.  My short game was off, my putting was off and my ball striking was off.  It was very frustrating.

I could have easily given up and gotten mad.  I could have complained about the weather, or the pace of play.  But stuck it out.  I determined that I was going to enjoy the rest of the round no matter what.

The back nine turned into the best nine holes I’ve had all season, scoring wise.  It was a real grinding round though.  On my tenth I hole missed the fairway way right.  I hit a short iron over the trees, onto the green and two putted for par.

On the next hole, a downhill par 5 with trouble right, I hit my tee shot into the right rough, laid up, missed the green short right with my approach from 115 but I managed to chip it to 8 feet and sink the putt for par.

The next hole brought the first birdie of the round along with the only fairway hit. Hit the green and sank a 10 footer for birdie.  The next hole is the number one handicap hole on the course.  I hit my drive through the fairway just missing a fairway bunker.  With 145 yards left, I hit an 8 iron to 10 feet and sank my 2nd birdie putt of the day.

The following hole brought me back to reality a bit.  A long par 3 with trouble left and long.  I hit my tee shot way right, hit a fat chip, chipped again into the bunker, splashed out on to the green and 2 putted for a double bogey 5.  I’m not going to lie to you, that one hurt.

On the next hole I hit a long straight drive that ended up in the rough through the fairway.  I had a decent lie and 225 yards left to a severely uphill par 5 green.  I took out my fairway wood and hit a solid shot out of the rough that came up 15 yards short of the green in the rough.  Chipped up and 2 putted for par.

The next hole, a dog leg right par 4 with severely tree trouble at the dog leg was next.  I hit a decent tee shot that got slightly past the dog leg but left me in the rough with a large overhanging tree.  I needed to hit a low shot that would get to the back of the green.  I hit a 3/4 6 iron from 155 that just got through the back of the green.  I had a decent lie so I opted for the hybrid chip and the ball stopped 2 inches from the cup.  Tap in par and on to the next hole.

The eighth hole on this back 9 is an uphill par 3 that reads 195 on the card but plays more like 205 – 215.  Although I was trying for a draw to the left side of the green, I left the club face open and the ball ended up down the right side.  I was left with a shot off hard pan, to a green 20 yards above my head and overhanging trees.  After much deliberation I selected a lofted club.  I hit a good shot and got a nice break off a branch that left the ball 4 feet from the cup.  I made the putt.

I call the last hole my nemesis.  It’s a hole that for some reason always gives me trouble.  It’s a long uphill par 4 with one of the toughest greens on the course.  I usually feel pretty good if I walk away with a bogey.  I hit my drive long, but right onto the next fairway.  I was left with a 200 yard shot over trees to a pin tucked on the right, 2 bunkers right in front of it.  The wind was swirling and in the end I picked a 4 iron.  I hit a good shot, but the wind killed it a bit and I ended up in the bunker, short sided to the pin.  My bunker play had recently been a strength so I felt the shot I wanted to hit.  I got cute with it and dumped it into the rough short of the hole.  Feeling par slip away, I took my PW and hoped to get it close.  Miraculously the shot went in and I saved my par.

On that back nine I hit 1 fairway in regulation, had a 1 chip in, and a grand total of 11 putts.  I don’t think that would have happened if I had given up after the first nine.  In the end I walked away feeling great.

Never give up.  You never know what can happen.

Did their expectations do them in?

We saw the world’s number one player, struggle to his worst finish as a professional, while the number two player in the world was coping with a new kind of pressure, the chance to take the number spot away from Tiger Woods.

So why weren’t Tiger and Phil able to muster anything better than +7 and +8 respectively?  Was the course unfair?  Hunter Mahan shot a 64 on Sunday to win by two shots.  Goosen, Furyk, Harrington and Oosthuizen had good rounds in the mid 60s.  So I would say that the course was not unfairly setup.

I think two things happened.  It appeared that Mickelson became very technical. His swing wasn’t as fluid and powerful as he usually is.  And his putting was shaky at best.

I think Tiger phoned it in.  He had given up hope, he had lost his fight, and he just wanted to get out of there.

What’s interesting about the Tiger story for me is that he had felt that his game was where it needed to be.  He thought that he had found some keys to playing well again.  He also had a lot of confidence from the venue itself.  He had won 7 out of the last 10 times he played without finishing worse than 4th.  Given all those factors he came into the event expecting to contend, if not outright dominate.

Could Tiger’s expectations been his downfall?  Where they realistic based on the amount and the way he’s played this year?  Did he put pressure on himself in a way that he’s never really done?

Lesson learned

As a golfer who is working his game down to scratch (though I still have a way to go), I got a lot out of watching this event.  Surprisingly the lesson I came away with was to be kinder and more patient with myself.  If the world’s #1 and #2 players, can have days like those, why am I expecting so much of myself?  Why don’t I just play the game, shot by shot, and see where that takes me?

Recently I had worked really hard to prepare for my local city championship.  It was my first time qualifying for the event at the Championship division, meaning there was no handicap.  I prepared for several weeks, and felt my game was ready for the event.  I ended up playing some of my worst golf in recent memory in those two days and missed the cut by a wide margin, and although I can’t draw a direct comparison to what happened with Tiger and Phil, I believe I can learn from what I saw this week at the WGC.

It is frustrating to show up at the course without the game you know you are capable of.  It is even more frustrating when it is a tournament situation and you realize you just don’t have it that day.  How can you turn it around?  How can you post a good score, when you don’t have it, and how do you change what you are thinking so that you can change the experience?

Days like that happen to everyone.  If you come in with high expectations you automatically put more pressure on yourself.  But you can’t come into it with low expectations either.  I think one of the hardest things to do is to set aside your expectations and just play the game.

There’s a lesson in every shot

As I kept thinking about what the way Tiger and Phil played, for some reason I thought about that Rolling Stones song “You can’t always get what you want”.  I think that every round of golf, every shot has a lesson, “But if you try sometimes/you just might just find/you get what you need”.  I’m using that tournament experience as something I can learn from.  And just remember, it happens to everyone.  Be kind to yourself, stay patient, and good things are bound to happen when you get out of your own way.

What I mean is that everyone’s “career” with golf, whether playing professionally or playing on the weekend with buddies goes though periods of highs and lows.  Whether it’s missing 5 or 10 cuts in row, or shooting 10 strokes above normal for your last 5 or 10 rounds, we all go through tough times trying to get that little white ball into the cup.  We all get into occasional slumps.

I’ve been on a bit of a slump myself.  After shooting some of my best rounds of the year several weeks ago, I have fallen into a deep fog, where it seems like I had lost all control of my golf ball.  We’ll at least until today, although the seeds of the discovery were sown a while back, but I’ll get to that shortly.

The slump seems to have come out of nowhere.  My last round before the slump was a 77.  I’m not yet a scratch golfer so 77 on a tough par 72 course from the back tees is just fine with me.  However when the slump started it began a downward slide in scores.  Before I knew it I had several 88s, a 90, and the dagger in my heart was 97 in the member member tournament yesterday.

Although I wasn’t sure how I would fix it, I firmly believe that I will.  I also know that I’m not the only golfer to have gone through slumps either.  Jack Nicklaus, Steve Stricker, David Duval, Davis Love III, Ian Baker-Finch and many more have gone through their share of slumps.  Steve Stricker came back from “no man’s land” to world #3.

How they fixed their individual slumps is another story, but knowing that even the worlds best players go through times like these, gives me hope that I can get my game together, and take it to even higher levels.

I also believe that whatever happens can be a blessing in disguise.  In my case, the slump made really dig deep and address some swing flaws.  I knew that I didn’t want this inconsistency any more and I became determined to find a way to fix it.

Last night, hours after coming home from the the worst score of the season at that tournament, I had a thought that turned into a deep examination of a flaw, what caused it, and how to make it go away.  I remember something that my coach Eben Dennis said to me in a discussion we had about Jamie Sadlowski.  The more I thought about that conversation, the more I realized he was right, although I still wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

It was a moment where I challenged a deeply held subconscious belief about the golf swing.  And as I worked with that thought, things began to click.

My major flaw had come into being a long time ago as I had decided that I was going to learn how to create big time lag.  Sure enough I learned how to create lag, but the way I did it, made it extremely timing dependent when it came to releasing it through the ball.  As Eben put it, I was “dragging the club head” through the finish.  This drag made it really difficult to square the club face at impact.  I also realized that this dragging result, was not the cause of my mis hits.  It was actually an effect of a different flaw.

I realized that if I wanted to play well and consistently, I need to address the root cause and not just band aid the effects.  I set out to discover the cause, and I believe that I have found it, at least as it pertains to my swing.

Something else interesting happened along the way.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve analyzed Rickie Fowler’s swing.  Well, I now believe that my previous analysis of his swing, was incorrect.  I was simply looking from the outside in, at what he was doing.  Well, the reason I bring this up, is that without trying to copy him, my swing seems to now have some of the same characteristics of his swing.  What’s more is that now I have a better sense of where his consistency comes from.

When I look at video of both swings together, side by side there are some pretty clear similarities, but there are also some major differences.  Now let me repeat this, I did not set out to copy or imitate Rickie Fowler’s swing.  It’s unconventional, and I think most golf teachers would steer clear of that, but there are some elements about it that work very, very well.

The main element about Rickie’s swing that I understand now, is that from start to finish, it never gets to a point where he has to “save it with his hands”.  He doesn’t really get stuck to where he needs to flip it or where’s going to block it (the way Tiger Woods often does).  In fact his whole swing is designed to bring the club head back to square at impact in an extremely efficient way.

I bring up the Rickie Fowler reference because as I watched video of my swing, it reminded me of Rickie’s but in my own way.  And like I said, I’m not trying to copy him.  I was just trying to find the most efficient way for me to bring the club head back to square at impact, and it’s probably just a coincidence that there’s any resemblance to his swing.

So how did this swing perform?

At home, I use the driving range on my dancin’ dogg simulator basically to look at two statistics: club face angle, and swing path.  From the day that I got the simulator, I always had a difficult time getting my face angle to square.   I would occassionally be able to do it.  The reason for that, is that the dragging effect I talked about above, made it very hard to square the face.  Recently it’s gotten somewhat better, where I could keep the face in the +2 to plus 5 degrees open.  With a path enough from the inside these allow for little draws, or baby fades.

With the changes that I made last night, and this morning, I was able to keep the face 0.0 to 0.7 degrees open, consistently.  This is essentially a square face.  That is a dramatic improvement.  You can imagine how shocked I was when I was able to do this 20 times in a row.  But I didn’t just want to take the simulator’s “word” for it.  So I went to the driving range to see if the results held up there too.

They did.  I don’t remember ever hitting the ball as straight as I did this morning.  And it just kept happening, ball after ball.  I believe that I will be out of my slump soon, and in a weird way, I have the slump to thank for this.  It got me to the point where I knew that what I was doing before, just was not going to work in the long run.  I knew I had to get to the root of the major flaw and fix it.  So, thank you Slump, you’re a great teacher in disguise.

The last couple of weeks have been up and down in terms of my scores, but I have learned some very valuable lessons along the way.

In my last five rounds I have two of my best scores for the season, two of my worst, and an average round.  What does that tell you?  It tells me that golf is a game of patience.  You can’t control the outcome.  You can only control your process.

Golf is interesting because you can’t force a good shot, you can only let it happen, but you can definitely do a lot of things to create bad shots.  The opposite of that is what I think sports psychologists call “getting out of your own way”.

Over the last few weeks I’ve kept plugging away and practicing what I learned from my coach Eben Dennis.  What’s interesting is that little by little the pieces are coming together, but only because I’m still working on them.  Most golfers, when they take a lesson, or try to make a swing change, take a short term approach.  I don’t think they do it on purpose, but I think they get frustrated when they are not getting results.  So they start to think that what they were learning doesn’t work.  It might be because they tried to take it to the golf course and when it failed there, they assumed the idea or concept is broken.  They dump it and start working on another idea, trying a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.  But what if it wasn’t the idea or concept that was broken?  What if they just didn’t take the time they needed to really get it?

You can’t become a better player if you’re constantly trying and throwing out ideas.  Some things take a while to learn.  And sometimes, we need to unlearn before we can learn.  Drop bad habits so that you can make room for good habits.

One of these bad habits I had, which I didn’t even realize was that I was re gripping my club during the swing. I’m not sure if it was on the back swing or on the downswing, but at impact, the club was in a very different position from where it started in my hands.  Here’s the thing though, I didn’t figure this out until a few weeks after seeing Eben.  And once I figured it out, I needed to unlearn this habit, before I could pick up the habit of maintaining my grip in the same position throughout the swing.

Now that I’ve worked on it, there is one less compensation to make and this has made a world of difference.  It has taught me to use the club as it was designed to be used.  Sounds like a simple and common sense statement doesn’t it?  Use the club as it was intended to be used.  But the truth is that few very few golfers actually do that.  They use it as they think it’s supposed to be used, not as it was actually intended to be used and there’s a big difference.  If you go to the driving range you will see golfer after golfer, chopping away at the ball.  You’ll see them get into all kinds of contortions as they make compensations to get the club on the ball.

But the truth is that the club was not designed to require all these compensations and extra effort at the ball.  It was designed for ease of use to let the ball get in the way, and to use the loft and the club head to do the work as the ball simply bounces of the club face.  Think about that for a few minutes.  Marinade your mind in that thought.  The ball bounces off the face of the club, no extra effort needed and no need to chop at it.

This morning’s round is a sign that I’m working on the right things.  I shot a 76, that could easily have been a 70 if only a few more putts had gone in.  This round simply ramps up my determination to continue to work with the concepts I’ve been learning.  Control, Vision and Dynamic balance.  Get Power Feel Golf to understand what these mean in the golf swing.

Often though we get caught up in things like our score, our competitors, pressure, what I did on the last hole, or 3 holes ago and we get away from asking “What is my target?”.  But Dr. Valiante is right.  The questions do drive us.  Asking the right questions can help us play better, make better decisions and keep us in the moment, while asking the wrong questions, can quickly take us out of the moment and down that road we’ve been before, and we know where that road ends.

The wrong questions introduce fear and distractions, they make us focus on the past or on the future, and they take us out of the zone if we were in it, or more likely, just take us further away from being in the zone.

So how do we get to the point where we are asking the right questions?  One of the key ways I think is to think well about the strategy, the way we want to play the hole.  Thinking about strategy puts us back squarely in the present.  Asking ourselves the question “How do I want to play this hole?” is much more constructive than something like, “I usually hit way right on this hole, what if I do that again? Or worse, what if I hit it in the water?  What if I look like a fool?”.  One question gets your mind moving in a direction that allows you to marshal your resources, the other takes you out of the present, introduces fear and doubt, and makes it hard to focus on this shot right now.

This is where something like Game Sense is very helpful.  Listening to the program will teach you those strategies.  Then when you ask yourself “How do I want to play this hole?” you can pull up strategies that work.  Instead of focusing on useless, doubt creating questions, you can strategize and step up to the ball confidently because you know that with the right strategy, even if you don’t hit the perfect shot, you can get away with it and miss it good.  That alone can result in more confident and fearless golf.

So remember, it’s the question that drives us.  Choose the right question and you move in the right direction.  Choose the wrong question and it’s like trying to play with one hand  tied behind your back.

Sometimes it’s our equipment.  There’s a 4 wood in my bag that doesn’t fit my swing anymore.  My irons and driver have an x-stiff shaft and this 4w has a stiff voodoo SVS7.  It just seems and feels out of place now.  I feel like I need to make too much of an adjustment to my swing to hit it well.  So when I have a 235 yard show where it would be appropriate I hesitate.  This happened recently and I’ve decided not to repeat the mistake.

The hesitation is, I believe, my body telling me not to use the club.  Even on the practice tee it feels strange now and it really doesn’t feel like it belongs in my bag now.  I used to love hitting this club but as my swing has evolved, my equipment changes with it, and that’s what has happened with my irons and driver.

Not being comfortable with the equipment can cause hesitation.  The result of this is usually a less than committed swing that tries to compensate for the discomfort.  And this often leads to bad shots.  It’s what Doc Joseph Parent calls an “anyway.”  A shot that you hit “anyway” even though you feel uncomfortable about it.

One the other hand, I really love the way my irons play now.  It’s taken me a little bit to get adjusted to the stiffer shafts, but the ball flight and consistency have made it all worth it.  This gives me so much confidence when I get ready to hit a shot that it becomes very easy to see the shot in mind, and hit it.

There are other things that can cause less than full commitment to a shot.  This is not a complete list but I think these are some of the major reasons:

1. Not knowing the right distances to play to, especially if the green or target is up hill or down hill.
2. Not knowing exactly how to calculate the effect of the wind.
3. Having a difficult or very long forced carry.
4. Having a very difficult lie in the rough or even the fairway like when the ball is in a divot.
5. Being unsure of the speed of the greens.

One of the best ways to eliminate many of these doubts is to practice hitting from difficult lies.  The more experience you get escaping from difficult lies the more confidence you’ll have in approaching those shots.

One of the things I see that I think really holds golfers from becoming better is when they improve their lies in recreational rounds and then go out and play a tournament.  If they don’t ever practice out of those difficult lies, they won’t know how the ball is going to react out of them.  So right away, they put themselves at big disadvantage in competition.

Challenging your fears and doubts

Learn to get excited about practicing the shots that make you nervous and you’ll become a better golfer.  Make a game of it.  See how many times you can get up and down from a difficult shot.

Try to eliminate the doubts and recognize why they happen.  Sometimes the doubts come from a lack of experience with a type of shot, other times they come because you’re body is telling you that something is not quite right, as when the equipment doesn’t fit you.  These doubts can be overcome but in either case it’s very helpful to deal with them.

Rory McIlroy put on an incredible performance to win The Quail Hollow Championship.

“I suppose I got into the zone, I hadn’t realized I was going in 9, 10 under. I just know I got my nose in front and I was just trying to stay there,” said McIlroy after the round.  In his post round interview he also said that he was really seeing his shots, and hitting them, and that he saw his lines much clearer.  He wasn’t being technical or addressing the ball full of swing thoughts.  He was visualizing and executing, and it’s a great way to play golf.

One of the amazing things about that round is that he stayed in the zone and in the moment.  He wasn’t trying to break the record.  He wasn’t forcing shots.  He recalled a similar time that he had been in the zone like that and it helped keep him going.

Most golfers whenever they’re close to a record, usually their personal best, they end up sabotaging themselves.  One of the things that separates tour players from almost every other golfer, besides their sharply honed skills is that they are not afraid to go low.  Many golfers have a fear of success and is one thing keeping them from playing their best.  We can all learn from and be inspired by young McIlroy’s achivements.  He’s got a great mind to go with a great game, and I’m sure there is a lot more we’ll see from him.

I saw an amazing video today from Ted.com.  Neuroanatomis Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke and learned first hand the differences between the right brain and left brain when she had a massive stroke one morning.  Watch this video if you have some time.

Although she never mentioned golf in her lecture, it got me thinking about the golf brain.

I think most golfers play left brain golf.  They have a tremendous amount of mental chatter going on.  They are also thinking a lot about the sequence of the swing along with the 32 million other swing thoughts cramming their brains.

Just go to a driving range and watch golfers hit.  You can immediately tell that there is so much chatter going on.  In addition to the chatter they are constantly reliving golf mental and emotional baggage.  They’re constantly getting angry because they hit a poor shot, and then they remember a good shot and think that’s how they should be hitting it all the time.  I watched one golfer mumbling at the golf ball after every shot, trying to tell it what to do.

Now, the right side of the brain is the more like a parallel processor than the left side of the brain.  Instead of thinking in sequences, it sees the whole picture right now as it gets all the information from the senses.  It is also the side of the brain that runs much of the body like your heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing etc.  In addition it is also the creative center.  I believe that golf is a creative activity.  The best golfers are like artists who use the golf course and the golf ball as a canvas on which to create amazing things.

When you put all this together it makes sense to have the right side of the brain be the main driver of the golf swing.  Now obviously you need both halves to play well.  The left side of the brain can be used to create strategy and analyze the situation.  Once that is over and you’ve decided on a course of action, you need to let the right side of the brain take over and hit the golf shot.

I went out to the range and experimented with a number of ideas to reduce mental chatter and engage the right side of the brain in my shot making.

The hardest part to do was to quiet the chatter.  The left side of the brain is really chatty and wants to constantly give you information.  I found that I could quiet it by focusing on my environment.  I could look out the range and notice the trees in the back of it, or notice the patterns that the mat made, or the feel of the grip under my fingers.  All of these things could quiet the left brain chatter.  I also found that once I decided on what I wanted the shot to do, I didn’t need to remind myself of it.

So what happened on the swings where I was able to cut the chatter out?  I was able to hit some really good shots.  They felt pretty effortless and it was as if everything was nicely in sync.

I also noticed, that at times, the chatter would come back in the middle of my back swing.  That was annoying, and would take make out of the moment.  It also resulted in average to below average shots.  Luckily I experienced that less than I expected to.

Rob LaRosa, the Head Golf Professional at Sterling Farms Golf Course where I play and practice, came over and noticed how good I was swinging.  I hadn’t seen my swing on video since the first 30 day challenge I had and so he took a video and showed it to me.  It was really smooth and fluid.  He told me that it looked really good.

I think this is a great area to explore.  If I can begin to use my right brain more when I play I think it will really help to improve my ball striking.  It certainly felt really good to quiet the mind and just swing.

“I’m trying to be a little more relaxed about things,” Appleby said. “I felt like I probably shut down my natural abilities, talents, whatever it is to play golf. I’m trying to play more natural golf and (use) the feel that I have.”

If we can, as many sports psychologists say, “Get out of our own way”, then we have a chance to tap into our natural abilities.

I read a book that has had a big impact on my life outside of golf recently.  It’s called “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future” by Daniel Pink.  The central theme of the book is that our culture has been dominated by left brained activities that require analysis, and a rigid process, but that the future will be ruled by those who take more creative approaches and use the whole brain.  It makes sense in golf too.

If you look at the way instruction has changed over the past 20 years it has become more and more technical and analytical.  But what you are starting to see now is a move away from that.  More and more players seem to be returning to feel golf.  Jim Furyk is a prime example.  I recently wrote about how he was interviewed by Michael Breed on the golf fix and how he couldn’t really describe his approach to the game other than to say that he is a feel player and let’s his dad worry about his swing.

Another good example of a feel player is Rickie Fowler.  You might expect that because he’s young he might have been trained technically.  But his teacher, who is the only teacher he has ever had, was a strictly feel based teacher.  And Rickie Fowler has proven himself to be a phenom.  Super talented, plays fast, and is very exciting to watch.

I often hear recreational players talk about how they get overwhelmed with all the technical bits of the swing.  They get confused and they try to do everything with their left brain.  The thing is, golf is more of a creative sport than that.  I like to picture myself as an artist, my canvas is the golf course and my brush is the golf ball.  I want visualize and feel shots, then make them happen.

When I successfully do that, I play my best golf.  When I’m working on technical details, I don’t play nearly as well.

For example, yesterday I had my first round with a new set of iron shafts.  Same club head different shafts.  For the first 9 holes I was trying to get used to them and I wasn’t being creative with it.  I wasn’t seeing my shots clearly, and I struggled.  On the back nine I changed my approach and decided to visualize every shots carefully and feel it.  My second nine was 7 shots better and only 3 over par.  Not bad for being out on the course with a new set of shafts.  BTW the shaft change was significant.  I went from Project X 5.0 to Dynamic Gold X100.  Once I changed my perspective the feel came back and the shots improved and my scoring really improved.  Like Stuart Appleby by focusing on the shaft change I “shut down my natural abilities”, but by focusing on creativity and feel, I engaged my natural ability and let it play.

On this weeks episode of “Being John Daly” we saw Daly’s meltdown in the last round of the tournament in Mayakoba, Mexico.  By his own admission, he was going for too much.  He made some bad decisions and he compounded the errors by trying to hit it farther, or draw it more, or going after too many pins.  He was forcing it and he paid the price.

He knew that he didn’t need to hit driver, that it was a perfect 3 wood golf course for him.  But when things started to go south, the driver came out to play.

Instead of taking his medicine and getting back to the strategies that got him there, he took unnecessary risks, and he felt he had to do that because the tournament was getting away from him.  But that is precisely the time that he needed to play within himself.

I’m certainly guilty of doing this.  I know that sometimes when a round isn’t going well I’ll try to make up for lost shots with some hero shots and end up getting in more trouble.

Golf is a game of patience, and part of being patient is being in control of your emotions.  I think Daly let his emotions get out of hand on Sunday because he really wanted to be in the top 10 to get that exemption into the Waste Management Open with a top ten finish at Mayakoba.  When he saw that slipping away, he fought harder, but in fighting harder he brought more mistakes into play.  If he had hit 3 wood and off the tees instead of driver, he might have kept himself in the tournament.  But it’s hard to come back from 5 bogeys, multiple double bogeys and a triple.  Daly paid the price for trying to get too much out of each shot.  And it’s a lesson well worth learning from.

See also “Bad Decisions are Worse than Bad Swings“.

Only 5% of golfers can shoot lower than 80.

With all of the advances in technology and the the improvements in the quality of the golf courses as well as the availability of access to golf professional and teachers you would expect this number to have improved over the last 20 years but it really has not.  So what is going on?  Why are golfers not getting better?  And how can you use this information to become a golfer who does improve?

I think the number one reason golfers don’t score is they make bad decisions that costs them more shots than they should take.

Bad decisions are very costly.  They compound mistakes and they add many unneeded strokes.

So what makes a decision bad:

1) You are unlikely to pull the shot off.

2) If you don’t pull the shot off it brings a high number into play.

3) There are higher percentage plays that you can make but instead you take the low percentage play.

4) You don’t factor in all the information needed to make a sound decision.

5) You over estimate your abilities.

6) You don’t practice this shot so you really don’t know how to play it.

Not all of these are involved in every bad decision, but if you look at your bad decisions you will see that many of them are.

Now I want to differentiate a bad decision from a bad shot.  Since we are all human, and therefore imperfect, we will make bad swings.   That’s just the way it goes.  You may have made the right decision, but put a bad swing on it.  That happens.  Most scoring problems however, really happen when bad decisions and bad swings come together.

The difference between golfers who score well and golfers who don’t, is that golfers who don’t score well, consistently throw away shots.  Golfers who score well, make decisions that makes it difficult to throw away shots.

I’ve been taught to play defensive aggressive .  Play to a defensive part of the course (in other words away from trouble and away from your weaknesses) but put an aggressive swing on the ball.  In other words you play the high percentage shot that will leave you with a bogey at worst and takes double bogey or worse out of the equation.  It sounds like you’re hoping for bogey but that’s not what this does at all.  Playing this way actually enables you to make many more pars and even birdies while limiting the effect of mistakes.  Try it and let me know how your scores change. See also: Use your natural autopilot to play your best golf.

Do you ever show up to golf course only minutes before your tee time, dash to give yourself a quick stretch, take 2 swings, and then hit your first tee shot deep into the woods, OB or in the rough?  Does this happen all the time?

How can we give ourselves the best opportunity to play well?  How can you expect to play well without giving yourself an adequate warm up?

I want to offer a different way to warm up for your round of golf.  It’s going to be designed to help you quickly get into the groove so that you can play your best.

First, let’s talk about what the purpose of the warm up is.

Certainly part of the warm-up should be designed to get your body moving.  Golf after all is an athletic activity.  It requires coordination, flexibility and strength (to varying degrees).  Any tightness in your muscles will affect how you play.

The other part of the warm up is to prepare you for the round you are about to play.  You want to see what your swing is doing that day, and you want to give your self the best opportunities to play well without having to think about mechanics on the golf course.  Any sports psychologist or mental game coach will tell you that thinking about mechanics while you’re doing the activity will lead to decreased performance.  So how do we give ourselves the best opportunity to play well.

I’m going to share a routine that works well for me.  But I want you to understand what I’m trying to accomplish with it.  I want to eliminate 2 variables from the warm up so that we can get off to a great start.  I also want to make sure that we engage the imagination and feel parts of our brain.  This will help us on the golf course.

Eliminate the variables

The first variable I want to eliminate in the warm-up is club length.

Why would I want to do that?

The average golfer does not practice nearly enough to have a consistent swing.  This is a big reason their handicaps have not improved in the last 20 years.  If you are constantly changing the length of the club, than you are going to need to constantly adjust.  When you don’t practice enough, it becomes difficult to make those adjustments quickly.  By warming up with the same club, a 6 or 7 iron only for the first part of it, you have a consistent ball position, a consistent bottom of the arc, and a consistent length of the club.  By not having to adjust to changing those variables you can more easily get a true sense for what your swing is doing that day.  You can also groove consistency.

The next variable I want to eliminate is loft.

Again by warming up with the same club you can groove consistency.  You can get some rhythm.  And you can prepare to play great golf.

Engaging Feel and Imagination

So I’ve taken away two variables.  But what I do want to do is really get your feel and imagination warmed up and ready for play on the golf course.  When you watch the best players in the world, you will find that each shot is unique.  They are normally not playing the same stock shot every shot.  Each shot has a unique trajectory, curve and target.

I’m not going to expect the average golfer to practice unique trajectory, curve and target but I do want to engage feel and imagination.  So here is what to do.

With your 6 or 7 iron you are going to hit to different distances, straight out in front of you.

Take a few balls and hit between 3 and 5 to each distance below.

15 yds

30 yds

50 yds

80 yds

100 yds

120 yds

150 yds

By starting with short chips and moving to longer shots you began to engage feel and imagination.  You need to try and feel the length of the shot. Your imagination becomes engaged in the process.  Starting with shorter shots also builds your consistency.  As you strike short shots accurately your confidence goes up.  If after moving to the next distance you see shorts start to go off line, take a few balls and hit some short ones again, get that feeling solid and return to hitting the longer shots but with that solid feel in mind.

After doing this first part of the warm up, you should be ready to hit some longer clubs including driver.  Maintain the feeling you had when you were hitting crisp shots with your 6 or 7 iron and you should see improved ball striking on the course. For more on practicing see managing your expectations on the golf course or using your natural auto pilot to play your best golf.

The poster wrote that he often experiences breakthroughs while on the range, but they disappear as quickly as they came the next time he plays golf or practices.

I would bet almost everybody goes through this.

So how can you take a breakthrough and build on it, rather than letting it slip away?

Imagine what would happen if every breakthrough you had practicing, stayed with you?  You would quickly become an excellent golfer.  You would have a more consistent repeatable swing.  And you would have more fun on the golf course.

Here’s why breakthroughs don’t last.

1. We don’t document what we did.
2. If we do document, we document the wrong thing
3. We try to extend the breakthrough
4. If we can’t get it back quickly, we forget about it

We don’t document what we did

One of the best things you can do is keep track of your progress in some kind of written form.  A notebook, a pad, a laptop, or even a blog will do.  I hard that Annika Sorenstam kept copious notes of every practice session, every practice round and that she has notebooks filled with her insights, thoughs, and feelings.  Those are invaluable.  As golfers we go through periods when we are playing well, and periods when we’re not.  The game is filled with ups and downs.

It’s nice when you’re not playing well, to look back at times when you were, see what you were doing right, and it might spark some new enthusiasm or just get you back on track.  That is actually one of the main reasons I started this blog.  I know that any time I’m not playing well, I can just come back to this blog, see when I was playing well, and read some entries around that time.  It might lead to an a-ha moment that can set me on the right track.

If we do document, we document the wrong thing

If we do take notes of our practice sessions we tend to write about the wrong things.  We may write about some mechanical aspect of it.  Our elbow was here, or my feet were set like this…etc.  I think it’s more important to document feelings.  What felt right about the swing.  What did you feel in your body, your hands.  What was your mindset like?

These things are more important because they change how you approach your practice sessions.  By focusing on feelings you can learn to recreate those.  By recreating feelings you are more likely to get back to the results you were having that day.  If your swing has changed over time, the mechanics that you look at or remember, may no longer apply.  In fact you may be doing more damage by trying to work those mechanics back into your swing.

We try to extend the breakthrough

Ever notice that when you’re striking it particularly, there is a feeling of “wow, if I’m hitting it this far at 85%, I can really get it out there at 100%”.  These thoughts are deadly.  What happens is that you then lose the success.  The breakthrough dissipates and is not heard from again.  What happened here?

You tried to extend the breakthrough.  You tried to make it do more instead of keeping it, feeling it, and making it a part of your swing.  It’s sort of like killing the goose to get the golden eggs.

If we can’t get it back quickly, we forget about it

Ah defeat.  You’ve lost the breakthrough because you killed the goose.  Now what?  If you can’t get it back you wind up forgetting about it and hoping another breakthrough comes along.  It will, but you’ll probably lose it again unless you change what you do when you get a breakthrough.

So what should you do?

Focus on the things that are re creatable.  Mainly how things feel in your body, and your mindset.  At first it will be difficult to document how the swing feels.  Over time you will get better a describing it.  In describing it you’ll be accomplishing two things.  You’ll make the feeling more real so you’re body will remember it better, and your creating a document you can look back on to get you back on track when things are off.

It’s just as important to describe your mindset.  If you can get back to into the same mindset you will probably start to get those results back.  If you combine the mindset with the feelings, you should be able to quickly get back on track.

Sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective to improve in leaps and bounds.

When I was in college, I had a dream to visit my father in Japan.  I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid and I had always felt a void there.  I spent the first two years of college learning Japanese well enough so that I could go to Japan and see him.  He had no idea I was coming but it was an important, driving dream for me.

We managed to communicate and then I got to go spend some time with him.  He lived in south of Japan and I got to spend 10 days with him.  He had been a World Champion in Karate, and I had always wanted to ask him how he got to that level of success.  I remember hearing stories about him, and about his tournament success.  From when I was a kid, those stories about him really inspired me.

One of the first things I asked him was how he became so good at Karate.  He told me a story, that to this day serves to inspire me.

He told me that when he first started doing Karate, he wasn’t one of the best.  In fact, the first two years on the team in college he couldn’t win a fight.  But he worked harder than anyone else on the team, 3 times harder than anyone else.  Still he kept losing.

He says that one day, it clicked for him. He figured it out, and from then on he was basically unbeatable.  He didn’t tell me exactly what clicked, but whatever it was that he figured out enabled him to be a 3 time world champion.

I think the same is true in golf.  Over the last week I have had numerous insights while doing the 30 Day Challenge.  In giving up video analysis for 30 days and concentrating on feeling the swing I have made breakthroughs that really surprise me.  This has created a shift in my perspective and suddenly the game seems so much simpler.  I’m sure I’m not done learning and what gets me excited is feeling like this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Feeling like I’ve started down the rabbit hole.

Have you experienced anything like this in golf?  In other areas?  I would love to hear of other experiences like this.

Have you ever been so excited to go to the golf course because your practice sessions have been going great?  You tee it up, and wham, OB. Uh oh, this could be a long day.

Expectations can lead to frustration on the course.  Managing them properly is the best way to play your best golf.

Golf is played one shot at a time.  Anything that takes you out of that is asking for trouble.  Coming to the course with expectations that you are going to play great because you were striping it at the range can lead to disappointment.  If you don’t manage your emotions properly, that disappointment can quickly escalate and throw your entire round off.

The hardest thing in golf is to maintain the one shot at time philosophy.  It’s so simple in concept, and yet so difficult in practice.  Why is that?

I think the heart of it is that we are emotional beings.  We aren’t robots who can turn off the emotion.  But we don’t need to be robots to be successful either.  We can use our emotions to help us.  After all playing from feel is essentially playing from emotion.  When you play from you feel, you are feeling the shot, and going with what feels good, right, etc.  It’s a positive emotion that you have chosen the right shot.  So it’s actually based on emotion, but it’s not reactive.  This is using emotion proactively to play well.

The opposite side of the spectrum is reacting to bad shots, reacting to pressure poorly, reacting to your range session.  Reacting emotionally takes away from being in the moment, seeing the shot, and feeling it.

The more technical we are, the more reactive we can be.  Bad shots, tend to drive us to analyze, what went wrong, what happened, I was hitting it so well before, where did my swing go.  These thoughts happen, and the response, well my stance, my grip, did come over the top, did I tuck in my elbow right, did I get the right wrist hinge, did I turn my back fully….etc.

I think a better response is to say “Did I see my target clearly before taking the shot?”, “Did I feel the shot before I hit it?”, “Did I factor wind, slope, lie and temperature into my calculations?”.

So how does this relate to managing expecations?  Simply, your expectations, good or bad, take you out of the moment if not managed.  Whether you were striping it on the practice tee or not, you need to treat each shot as a single event.  Step outside the boundaries of the expectation and say, what do I want to create here?  Visualize, feel, and swing.

I’ve heard stories of tour players playing a brand new course, sight unseen, who ended up with a great round.  When they talk about it, they say things like “Well, I didn’t really have any expectations.  I haven’t played the course before, and I didn’t know where the trouble was.  So I just went at it, one shot at a time.”

Improving drives me.  If I’m hitting my chips to 6 feet, I want to hit them to 2 feet.  So I’ll set up a goal and work toward it.  As I see my chips get to 5 feet, then 4 feet, etc, it drives me to get even better.  It’s exciting, it gets me to the range, or to the putting green, and it makes the game so much more fun.

That’s not to say that every golfer should try to do this.  Weekend players, who tee it up a few times a year shouldn’t have this attitude.  They just won’t practice enough to get the benefits of it.  But for anyone serious about becoming a good golfer this attitude is a must.

If you improve just 1% each day, in a year you will have transformed your game because improvement, in my experience does not happen on a linear scale.  When you work at it everyday, it begins to happen in a way, similar to compounding interest.  Over a year, it really pays off.

Aaron Baddeley:Putting from seeitgolf is unlike any putting video you have seen. It is designed to replace the images of doubt and failure and replace them with success and confidence.

This video is intended to be used both in a 30 day training program as well as before rounds of golf. The idea is that by watching perfectly executed putts free of distractions you build in your mind solid images of success and visualization you can call upon on the golf course. It is intended to be viewed on a portable video player like an iPod, iPod touch, an iPhone or any other portable video player.

The putts are beautifully shot using 4 RED cameras. These cameras record at a very high resolution and are known for fantastic images.

Along with pristine footage of the putts is a musical score that is designed to help ingrain the images and tempo into your brain and memory. The music is beautiful and easy to listen to.

All in all it is an impressive package. Although it is not your typical training aid for your physical technique, it is an excellent training aid for your mind. With repeated viewings I felt my putting visualization significantly improve.

When you listen to the best mental game coaches they emphasize visualization. The objective is to visualize so well and so congruently that your body reacts to what your mind sees. Instead of thinking about your technique, your stroke, you can use the mind to drive the body.

Using this product I did feel my powers of visualization improve. I could more clearly see the line that I wanted the putt to start on and I was able to do that more consistently.

The more you use it, the easier it is to visualize success. Now obviously this does not mean that you will make every putt, nor does the product promise that. I did make more putts, but more importantly I could see the lines better and imagine much more vividly the putts rolling into the cup.

This is an excellent product. If you have an iPod or iPhone definitely get the mobile version so that you can have wherever you go. If you don’t yet have a portable video player or would also like to experience this on your TV (very nice on a large flat panel display), then get the DVD version, which also includes the mobile versions.

The product is endorsed by renowned sports psychologist Dr. David Cook and short game/putting guru Stan Utley.

seeitgolf Website

SkyGolf will be releasing their new flagship GPS the SkyCadie SGX to the public on March 15th.  It will have some new features that can truly help make better decisions on the golf course and improve confidence.  These developments should help golfers to improve their games.  See the press release here.

One of the basic ways that GPS units help golfers is by providing them with accurate distance information.  However, golfers need more than distance information in order to make good decisions, especially when approaching the green.  The SGX’s new or improved green features should give golfers the information they need to approach greens with more confidence.

IntelliGreen Pro provides distances to green contours, false fronts, and any other point on the green.  Although it is not available on all SkyCaddie courses (including the course I play), for those courses that it is available it should be very helpful.

I’m most excited about seeing the “Smart Club” technology in person.  If the SGX can deliver on its promise to track club data (club used, distance hit) etc, that could really help the average golfer.  It would provide and easy way for people to really know how far they hit each club.

Currently, tracking that information by hand is certainly doable, but tedious.  I imagine that few people actually do it, and when they do, they may fall into the trap of only writing down their best shots.  The SGX could provide players with more accurate data as it could capture every shot.  One could potentially track it over time and see trends, etc.  This could take some of the “ego” out of the game so that players can make decisions based on realistic data.

Overall the SGX unit looks promising.  It appears SkyGolf is serious about helping golfers to actually improve their golf games.  They also seem to be responding to their competition by pre-loading the unit with 30,000 courses.  All of this competition between GPS manufacturers should end up enhancing this game we love.

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