Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella

Dr. Bob Rotella was the first book on sports psychology and I owe him and his books a great deal of credit for my success in golf and in life.  Below are his thoughts and proven strategies from Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect.  Simon & Schuster Source. New York. 1995.




My Favorite Ideas

1. No matter what a player's handicap, the scores will always be lower if the golfer thinks well.
2. Most people who become good at golf learn that it's best to maintain a low, consistent level of intensity through good shots and bad, because the calmer you are and the quieter you keep yourself, the easier it is to play the game (82).
3. Above all in the short game, be decisive and have dead hands (see Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible).  Be decisive in putting, driving, and all other shots too.
4. Attitude and focus on a spot on your line makes you a great putter (see Putting Out Of Your Mind)
5. To be successful, a golfer must blend work on mechanics with work on the mental approach to the game.  But the time to worry about swing mechanics must be limited and the place to worry about them is the practice tee and only the practice tee.
6. Great players win tournaments, as often as not, because they manage to use their short game and their mind to avoid a high round on the day or days when their swing is not what they wanted. 
7. Focus on a specific target and all the hazards will fade away into the peripheral.  An elevated, specific target is preferable.  
8. The foundation of consistency is a sound pre-shot routine.
9. No matter what happens with any shot you hit, accept it.  Acceptance is the last step in a sound routine.
10. You can begin a sound routine while the other members of your group are hitting their shots.  You can figure the yardage and pull the club.  You can read the green while others are putting.  If you have an unusual lie, you can assess it and take a few practice swings while you're waiting.
11. Grip and stance are the most important things to worry about setting up to the ball and if you have any doubts, back away and start over.
12. Have a maximum of one simple thought while making your full swing.  Examples: exit swing 2* to the left, exit swing 2* to the right, keep weight on the left side, keep the left shoulder pointing towards the ground on the backswing, load up on the right glute, post up solidly on the left side. 
13. You need to visualize the shot in your mind (the ball flying through the air, landing, rolling, and going in the hole or stopping where you want it to stop).  Picking a precise target truly helps the visualization process.
14. I never urge a professional to hasten his routine unless I see evidence that indecision rather than being deliberate, is the cause of the slowness.
15. A golfer can and must decide how he will think.
16. "You're going to have to decide before the round starts how you're going to think, and do it on every shot.  You have to choose to think well."
17. Jim Flick one of the best golf teachers in the world says that a golfer has to pass through three stages: unconsciously incompetent, consciously competent, and unconsciously competent.
18. "Doc, I stayed out of my way the whole day," he said.  By "staying out of my way," Chip meant that he had not allowed doubts of any kind--particularly doubts about his mechanics--to interfere with his game.  He had a plan for each hole, each shot, and he executed that plan.  He trusted completely that his mechanics would enable him to do so.  He let nothing from his mind interfere with his physical capabilities.
19. During her 59, Annika Sorenstam conversed with her caddie about renovating her house and the things she was planning on putting in it.
20. The heart of a putting routine

Foreword by Tom Kite
Throughout the years there has been a great deal of discussion about the game of golf and about improving scores.  Invariably, the discussion turns into a debate on exactly how much of the game is physical and how much is mental.  Generally, the better a player is, the higher the percentage he will attribute to the mental side.  That's reasonable.  A beginner, who has very little control over his swing, can't be expected to understand that the game is 80 percent or 90 percent mental.  But on the PGA and LPGA Tours, where all the players can hit quality shots, the mental side is at least 90 percent of the margin between winners and losers.  Percentages aside, no matter what a player's handicap, the scores will always be lower if the golfer thinks well.

For whatever reason, accurate information on the mental side of the game is long overdue.  Bob Rotella's book--this is it.  What Doc can do is show you what thoughts are advantageous and what thoughts are destructive.  And one of the really neat things that comes along when you try this approach is that not only do you become a better golfer, athlete, or sales executive, but you learn more about yourself and become a more fulfilled person.  Who says we can't have it all?

• A person with great dreams can achieve great things
• Golfing potential depends primarily on a player's attitude, on how well he plays with the wedges and the putter, and on how well he thinks.

Tom Kite is a great example of a person who dreamed huge dreams, and kept dreaming them in the face of all kinds of supposed evidence that they were foolish.  A few years ago I was down at the Austin Country Club working with Tom the week before the Tournament of Champions.  He had to go inside to take a phone call, and while I waited for him to return, a tall, athletic-looking man walked up to me and introduced himself.  "you're Bob Rotella aren't you?"  he asked.  "What are you talking to Kite about?  you know, he really thinks you're helping him."  We shook hands, and he identified himself as an old friend and competitor of Tom's from boyhood days.  "I went to high school with Tom and played golf with him," the man said.  "Ben Crenshaw was right behind us.  Ben won the stat championship twice.  I won it once.  Tom never won it.  I thought I was way better  than him.  He seemed to always be shooting three over par.  How did he get so good?"

There was a long answer and a short answer to that question.  The short answer was that Tom had a dream and he never stopped chasing it.  The long answer would have recounted how hard Tom worked, on both the physical and mental aspects of the game, how often he endured failures, how often he bouced back, as he pursued those dreams.

I believe that with his mind and attitude, if Tom had decided as a fiver-year-old that he wanted to be great basketball player instead of a great golfer he would have been an All-American in basketball.  That's because talent and potential have much more to do with what's inside an athlete's head than with his physical characteristics. Most people use only a small percentage of their innate physical ability, anyway.  The golfer whose attitude enables him to tap a higher percentage of a relatively modest store of God-given talent can and will beat the one who doesn't know how to maximize what he has.

Big improvements require working and chipping away for years.  A golfer has to learn to enjoy the process of striving to improve.  That process, not the end result enriches life.  I want the people I work with to wake up every morning excited, because every day is another opportunity to chase their dreams.  I want them to come to the end of their days with smiles on their faces, knowing that they did all they could with what they had.  That's one reason golf is a great game.  It gives people that opportunity.


Chapter 7: The Target--What the Third Eye Sees 
One of the fundamental psychological principles in golf: Before taking any shot, a golfer must pick out the smallest possible target.

Aiming down the middle of the fairway is not good enough.  Aiming at the tree branch in the distance is much better.  Sometimes there is nothing to aim at, then you should pick a specific undulation in a fairway/ green.  Good golf course architects will use undulations to create illusions that can cause you to question your alignment.  That's why an elevated target is preferable.

The brain and nervous system respond best when the eyes focus on the smallest possible target.  It is true in virtually every sport.  We teach basketball players to look at the net loop in the back of the rim.  We teach quarterbacks to aim, not at the receiver, but at his hands.  The smaller the target, the sharper the athlete's focus, the better his concentration, and the better the results.

The brain tries to be an accommodating mechanism in that it will try to send the ball in the direction of the last thing you look at or think about.  Focus on a specific target and all the hazards will fade away into the peripheral.

Nick Price, after we had worked together for a while, told me that once he had picked out a target, he could look back to the ball, but continue to "see" the target in his mind.  He has seen his consistency and his success greatly increase as he has committed himself to refusing to hit a shot unless his mind is locked onto the target.  It feels like he has a third eye on the side of his head, still seeing the target.

Work with your dominant tendency.  Too many players get obsessed with straightening out/ perfecting their swing when they could simply play with it and focus on shooting their best score rather than on fixing their swing.  However, don't ever aim at a target that would mean severe trouble if you happened to hit the ball straight.  Many players I work with also pick an intermediate target on the tee a few feet/ yards in front of them to help with alignment.  All that matters is that it is precisely on the line between the ball and the target.  The player picks both the target and the intermediate target as he stands behind the ball.  He walks up to the ball with his eye on the intermediate target.  He uses it to align his club and body, then he forgets it.

Chapter 8: Routine--Your Rod and Staff
The next fundamental principle:  the foundation of consistency is a sound pre-shot routine.  The next time you watch a tournament on television, take a look at a player like Tom Kite or Pat Bradley and see if you can break down his or her routine.  You will find a remarkable consistency.  Great golfers strive to repeat the same mental and physical steps before each shot.  They use this routine for every full shot, be it a wide-open layup or the tightest, most challenging tee shot on the course.

Slow play is caused by people who aren't ready to play when it's their turn because they're too busy chatting or watching their friends hit.  Indecisive players, second guessing things are slow, and players who give themselves swing lessons as they address the ball are all slow.

You can begin a sound routine while the other members of your group are hitting their shots.  You can figure the yardage and pull the club.  You can read the green while others are putting.  If you have an unusual lie, you can assess it and take a few practice swings while you're waiting.  Then, when it's your turn, you're immediately ready to focus on the target, believe in the shot, set up, look at the target, look at the ball, and swing.  

Some players could use a trigger to cue them in to begin their routines, others can pick out their target and go.  The routine should feel like stepping into a bubble, a small, private world in which nothing can distract them.  In the routine, players assess the lie, the wind, the yardage, what type of shot they need to hit, and then the club.

Have a maximum of one thought while making your full swing.  Examples: exit swing 2* to the left, exit swing 2* to the right, keep weight on the left side, keep the left shoulder pointing towards the ground on the backswing, load up on the right glute, post up solidly on the left side.

The important thing about club selection is decisiveness.  If a real nagging doubt creeps up into your mind that sends an emotion through your body, then back away from the shot and reenter the routine.  You must be certain about your swing, club, and shot selection, otherwise back away and rethink it.

Then you need to visualize the shot in your mind (the ball flying through the air, landing, rolling, and going in the hole or stopping where you want it to stop).  Picking a precise target truly helps the visualization process.

Practice swings are great for the short game, to capture a feel for the shot, but in the full swing, it is not necessary if you are feeling certain about your comfort with the club in your hand.  Just be flexible on the number of practice swings you take.

Grip and stance are the most important things to worry about setting up to the ball and if you have any doubts, back away and start over.

Go with a routine at a tempo that feels comfortable to you, but make sure that it is efficient (you don't need 100 practice swings or 10 looks at the target).  A person with a sound and deliberate routine will be a faster player since they will be in the fairways, on the greens, and in the holes much more often/ much quicker.

I never urge a professional to hasten his routine unless I see evidence that indecision rather than being deliberate, is the cause of the slowness.  Glen Day was having indecision while leading after 36 holes.  He was playing very slowly.  He shot 72 and fell out of the lead.  He called me after the third round, upset about the added pressure this placed on him.  I sympathized with him.  But I told him that this was a fact of life he would just have to put up with.  I told him that when he and I had worked on his routine, he had not trouble making his shots within the time allotted by the rules.  But in the tournament, once he got the lead, he started having trouble making up his mind.  He read putts two and three times.  He changed clubs before approach shots.  That was taking up time.  More important, it was undermining his confidence.  It showed in his score.  I told him, he ought to trust his first instinct on putts and club selection the next day.  Glen trusted his first instincts that following day and shot 66, finishing in second.  Note that there is a difference between being indecisive at the beginning of the routine and being distracted close to the end of the routine.  While I want my players to be decisive, a player should never hit a shot if he is distracted and not absolutely ready.  If he feels he should back away from the ball and start the routine over again, then he must do it.

David Frost was told this piece of information before a tournament in New England years ago.  He had to back off from about 10 shots: one time he heard a baby crying, another time, someone jingled change in his pocket, another time the wind kicked.  He said, "you told me not to hit the ball if my mind wasn't where it should be, and I walked away every time.  Should I have had to do it that often?"  (Frost shot a 66).  Dr. Rotella answered, "well, since you shot 66, I guess you did."  I assured him he would not always have to walk away so often.  As his routine became an ingrained habit, he would be less prone to distraction.  But the most important thing was that he had played a round free of mental errors, where in the past he probably would have hit two or three bad shots because of lost concentration.

No matter what happens with any shot you hit, accept it.  Acceptance is the last step in a sound routine.

Chapter 2: You Always Have the Choice
A golfer can and must decide how he will think.  Nick Price was in his early thirties the first time we met.  He was a good professional, but not a great one.  He had not won a tournament in 6 years and had never won a major.  He had dreams.  He dreamed of winning all the major championships.  And his talent was apparent in the very low numbers he sometimes posted--rounds in the mid-sixties and lower.  But he was capable of following a 64 with a 76 and shooting himself out of a tournament.  Inconsistency plagued him.  As we talked, it became apparent Nick had a problem shared by a lot of professionals.  His thinking depended on how he played the first few holes.  If they went well, he fell into a relaxed, confident and focused frame of mind.  Not coincidentally, he shot an excellent round.  But if the first few holes went, poorly his concentration was shattered.  He might start trying to fix his swing in the middle of the round and become increasingly erratic.

The worst thing that could happen to him, he said, was to hit his approach shot close to the pin on the first hole.  If he then missed the putt, he became discouraged and timid.  He putted worse.  This was the state of mind that accounted for the all too frequent 76.  Nick let events control the way he thought, rather than taking control of his thoughts and using them to influence events.

"If you're going to be victim of the first few holes," I said, "you don't have a prayer.  You're like a puppet.  You let the first few holes jerk your strings and tell you how you're going to feel and how you're going to think.  "You're going to have to learn to think consistently if you want to score consistently," I went on.  "You wouldn't be foolish enough to try a different swing on every shot, would you?"  No, he answered.
"It's the same way with your mind," I said.  "You're going to have to decide before the round starts how you're going to think, and do it on every shot.  You have to choose to think well."

Not many people think that their state of mind is a matter of choice.  But I believe it is.  Your state is determined primarily by your physiology, then what you choose to focus on  (see Tony Robbins).    

Phil Mickelson demonstrated his superior mental fortitude and positive attitude when he got a terrible break on the 16th hole in round 4 of the British Open, where his ball was struck beautifully  to right underneath the pin about 20 feet away, until the slope took his ball all the way off the green.  He was flabbergasted at first, but then he refocused himself (with the help of his caddy "Bones") and made a great up and down, including a 15 foot downhill putt to save par.  In the same round, a few groups behind him, Tiger Woods was implementing a disempowering attitude when his shots started to go more awry than in his previous rounds.  By cursing, muttering, and displaying his frustration and anguish very demonstratively, he did not do himself any favors and he finished 5 shots back and +3 on the day (his highest round that week).  At this level, attitude is everything.

A golfer can and must decide how he will think.  You can indeed think about the ball going to the target.  In Nick Price's case, these ideas meant that Nick could choose to allow a few missed early putts to affect his thinking for an entire round.  Or he could choose to think the way he did when those first few putts dropped and he was on his way to a 64.  He could think only about what he wanted to achieve on the course, about the ball going to the targets he would select.  He could think about scoring well instead of real or imagined flaws in his swing or putting stroke.    

After listening to this for a while, Nick said, "If I had known this is what you were going to talk about, I would have come to see you a long time ago."  "Why didn't you?" I asked.  "Well," he replied, "I was afraid you'd be into something weird.  I didn't realize it would be this logical and sensible."   I laughed.  At that point, Nick and I were ready to go out to the practice tee and work on how he could control his thoughts and make his game more consistent.

Chapter 3: Train It and Trust It
Golfers like Tom Kite, Pat Bradley and Nick Price have come to me with exciting dreams and aspirations.  But they have encountered obstacles, and they want help overcoming them.  A lot of them tell me that they've never worked harder practicing their game, but they're not getting better scores.  Almost all of them want help learning to win and to play more consistently.



The high handicappers whom I see in clinics tend to be people tying themselves in knots, physically and mentaly.  They've read all the books and all the golf magazines and they've been to six different pros, and they can't understand why their games aren't more consistent.  Or they say that they hit the ball well on the range, but not on the course.

But pro or amateur, whatever their specific concerns are, they all know one thing.  They're better players than they're showing on the golf course and in tournaments.

This raises one of the essential issues in golf.  Why is it that a golfer cannot simply command his body to repeat the motion that has brought success thousands of times on the practice range or the putting green?  The answer has to do with connections between the brain and other parts of the nervous system that we still only vaguely understand.  Having come to golf from other sports, I bring a broader perspective that that of professionals who have devoted their entire careers to the mechanics of the swing.  To me, the act of striking a golf belongs in that category of sports events in which the player need not react to what another player does, as a batter must react to the pitcher.  Major variables are constant and under the golfer's control--the moment the action begins, the position of the ball, and his position in relation to it.  Swinging at a golf ball is akin to pitching a baseball, shooting a free throw in basketball, or walking a balance beam in gymnastics.



For example Greg Maddux told me that he pitches his best when he virtually forgets about the batter and thinks only of the place he intends his pitch to go, his target.  A free throw shot, much like a tee shot, has nearly everything constant (the height of the basket, the distance) except the movement of the athlete.  The best free-throw shooters have routines on every shot and they focus on a small piece of the rim.  They let the shot go, without giving much, if any, thought to such things as the angle formed by the right elbow at the point of release.  If you lay a balance beam on the floor, people can walk across it instinctively.  But put it high in the air and mentally the game has changed dramatically.  Physically it is the same, but mounting the beam high in the air introduces a strong fear of a failure.  Most people in such circumstances respond by starting to think about mechanical things they didn't worry about when the beam was on the floor.  How, exactly, does a person keep his balance?  And how does he put one foot in front of the other?  Toes in or toes out?  Body sideways or facing straight ahead?  Eyes on the end of the beam or on the feet?  Arms limp or extended to the sides.  Their goal will become not falling, rather than getting to the end of the beam.  They will stop trusting their body's ability to remain balanced as they negotiate the distance.  Thinking that way causes the muscles to tighten and the movement of the body to grow spasmodic and jerky rather than rhythmic and graceful.  If you actually conducted the experiment, many people who successfully negotiated the beam when it was on the floor would fall off from forty feet.

In much the same way, a golfer who fears failure--as most amateurs and many professionals do, at least some of the time--tends to think about how he takes the club back, how far he turns, how he cocks his wrists, how he starts the downswing, or other swing mechanics.  Inevitably he will tend to lose whatever grace and rhythm nature has endowed him with, which leads to inconsistent shotmaking with every club, from the driver to the putter.  This suggests a most important principle: you cannot hit a golf ball consistently well if you think about the mechanics of your swing as you play.   Human beings perform tasks like swinging a golf club much better if the athlete looks at a target and reacts rater thank looks, thinks, and reacts.  We are endowed with the most marvelous computer system imaginable, and it is wired to maximize physical performance and grace if a person simply looks at a target and reacts to it.

To be successful, a golfer must blend work on mechanics with work on the mental approach to the game.  But the time to worry about swing mechanics must be limited and the place to worry about them is the practice tee and only the practice tee.  If you step onto the course with intention of shooting your best possible score, you cannot think about mechanics.  On the course, you have to be like the great free-throw shooter who eyes the basket and lets the ball go.  You have to believe that you've practice the golf swing enough to have faith in it.  A golfer must train his swing and then trust it.


But how can a weekend player who sprays the ball all over the course trust his swing?  I respond that I have seen lots of high handicappers with lots of kinks in their swings, but I almost never see one who improves his play by doubting himself, dwelling on mechanics or trying to correct a swing flaw in the middle of a round.  The fact is, most amateurs don't know exactly what breaks down when they swing badly.  If they try to correct their swing, they usually wind up compounding the error.  They would be far better off forgetting about their swing mechanics, thinking about appropriate targets and strategy, and making up their mind that they will shoot the best score possible with the swing they brought to the course that day.  Why do they fear abandoning the effort to control and guide their swing?  It's just habit, habit that has become comfortable, however ineffective.

The fact is that neither Tom Kite nor Nick Price nor anyone else I work with hits the ball perfectly or even close to perfectly all the time.  I can't remember more than a few times when a winning player has told me he or she hit the ball really well for more than two of the four days of a tournament.

Winners learn to accept the swing they bring to the golf course on any given day and to score with it.  They win tournaments, as often as not, because they manage to use their short game and their mind to avoid a high round on the day or days when their swing is not what they wanted.  If they need to work on their mechanics, they do it after the round is over, or they take a week off and go to the practice tee.

Most golfers, amateur or pro, lack Nicklaus's patience and discipline.  Most of them would react to a poor shot by taking the driver out on the next tee and trying to fix their mechanics.  And their score would suffer for it.  Trusting is not instinctive or easy form most golfers.  They may have a feeling of supreme confidence with a particular club or in the midst of a hot streak.  You must trust your swing with every club and score well when your shots are telling you that your swing is not in the slot.  It's not easy or instinctive for many people, but this is the way great golfers and all great athletes think.

When great athletes stop trusting, they stop being great.  The difference in a player's attitude can be very subtle.  A little doubt or a little indecision is sufficient to impair performance.  I find it helpful to think about the path of the clubface, whether it's coming across the ball (out to in) 2 degrees, or coming in to out 3 degrees, or coming in square and then I just think about the face angle in relationship to this path to figure out what shot I should hit.

After you keep missing shots, I figure the odds are increasing in my favor.  When I am on fire and make a lot of shots in a row, I decide that today's your day, you're on a hot streak, and you're going to make everything you look at.  Great athletes create their own realities.  They think however they have to think to maintain their confidence and get the job done.

Jim Flick one of the best golf teachers in the world says that a golfer has to pass through three stages: unconsciously incompetent, consciously competent, and unconsciously competent.  Thus the phrase: "train it and then trust it."

Chapter 4: The Hot Streak
Most golfers have experienced a string of holes where everything fell into place and for a while they played the golf they had always sensed they were capable of.  Then something happened to "break" the spell--an slightly offline tee shot, a good putt that misses.  The hot streak represents the golfer's true capabilities.  Essentially it results from trust.  The golfer trusts his abilities.  He steps up to the ball knowing that he can pick a target and hit it there.  He does things unconsciously.  The swing feels effortless, the putting is sensational.  You can learn a lot from a hot streak.

I've asked many golfers to recall and describe their state of mind during their hot streaks.  I have yet to hear one respond that he was thinking of swing mechanics.  Most would say that the hot streak enabled them to stop thinking about swing mechanics.  That's another way of saying they were ab;e to trust their swings.


The lowest single round score any of my players ever recorded in an official tournament was Chip Beck's 59 in Las Vegas.  He called me after the round and I wanted to know as much as possible about his state of mind that day.  Of course he had sunk a lot of birdie putts.  He had hit lots of fairways and greens.  Mentally he told me, he had a serene feeling of confidence as the round progressed.  "Doc, I stayed out of my way the whole day," he said.  By "staying out of my way," Chip meant that he had not allowed doubts of any kind--particularly doubts about his mechanics--to interfere with his game.  He had a plan for each hole, each shot, and he executed that plan.  He trusted completely that his mechanics would enable him to do so.  He let nothing from his mind interfere with his physical capabilities.

Many golfers have reported that they focus on distractions in between shots to take their mind away from the golf and how they are playing.  During her 59, Annika Sorenstam conversed with her caddie about renovating her house and the things she was planning on putting in it.

You have to start replicating the state of mind you have on a hot streak as soon as you step onto the first tee.  No matter what happens during your round, you have to strive to maintain that state of mind.


Chapter 9 Let the Short Game Flow
Once in a while, I come across a player I don't help to improve.  Almost invariably, this is a player who cannot accept the fact that low scores depend on how well a golfer plays once the ball is within about 120 yards of the hole.  This is a player who persists in thinking that golf is about who hits the longest drives or prettiest 3 irons.

It's not.  Everything that happens from the tee to that 120 yard range is almost insignificant compared with what happens thereafter.  A good golfer must not only accept the preeminence of the short game.  He must learn to relish getting the ball into the hole, to love it as much or more than mere ball-striking.


The closer a golfer gets to hitting as long as a Bubba Watson or Tiger Woods, the more critical his short game becomes.  Your short game may not set up as many birdies as Bubba's, but it can still save pars and turn double bogeys into bogeys.  A solid short game can turn a hacker into a player who shoots in the low 80s or high 70s.  Nick Price in 1993 led the Tour in scoring average with just under 69 strokes per round.  He hit and average of 12 or 13 greens in regulation.  Most 20 handicappers I see hit at least 4 greens in regulation.  If they had Nick Prices's short game, they'd be shooting in the seventies instead of the nineties.  But they botch too many shots from 120 yards and in.

Nick tells me that improving his short game has contributed enormously to the improvement in his general attitude over the past few years.  He is so confident in his wedges and his putt that he knows he will score well even on days when he's not swinging well.  This gives him peace of mind and helps him maintain that mind-set that has characterized his recent play.  He can be patient and trusting.

Good short shots are extremely productive.  On the average par 4 you can hit an excellent drive, a pretty good approach, and still have work left to make par.  Conversely, you can hit two bad shots with the longer clubs--say a drive into the rough and a fat approach--and still save your par with an excellent chip or pitch that stops next to the hole.

All I can say is that if you want to score well, attach your ego to how well you think, how well you manage your game, how well you hit your wedges, how well you putt.  You can always think well, manage your game well, and play the short game well.

How do you develop a good short game?  First of all, you practice it.  The professionals that I work with all do.  If you're not spending 70% of your practice time on shots from 120 yards in, you're not trying to become the best golfer you can be.  The ideal way to develop a good mental approach to golf would be to learn how to think your way around the green and then let those skills transfer to the long game.  From a psychological point of view, the short game requires the same uncluttered mind, the same focus on the target, and the same disciplined routine that the long game requires--only more so.

What do I mean by more so?  First of all, have no swing thoughts whatsoever from 120 yards and in.  Think only of the target.  You will use your standard routine for the short game, except that you may want to make a few more practice swings, eyes focused on your target until the swing feels right and you can trust it completely.  More so in the long game,  you will have shots that require some adjustments in grip and stance.  You may have odd lies.  Take care of those adjustments with first couple of practice swings.  Don't hit the shot thinking about making a weight shift or how far your backswing should go.  That kind of thought introduces tension into the body, and tension can ruin a pitch or chip.  Frequently, the pitch shot you face will be shorter than the distance you get from a full swing with your wedge.  First of all, make sure to lay up to your favorite yardage.  But when you do face a wedge from other than your optimal distance, trust your feel and your Pelz swing.  If you've practiced enough, you'll have it.

Once you've set up, taken your practice swings and envisioned the shot, don't freeze over the ball.  Look at the target and swing.  Depending on his or her skills every player needs to have a threshold distance from with that range they think about sinking the shot into the hole.  For my professional players, 120 yards from the pin is a threshold distance.  You have to consider how the ball is going to roll once it hits the ground.  If the slope of the green is going to make the ball break, you must shift your target accordingly.

Players that I work with pick a target at the distance they want the ball to travel or chip or pitch to a landing spot and think of that as their target.  If you spot-chip/pitch commit yourself to doing it ever time in the same way.  The main thing is that the player be thinking about chipping the ball in the hole.

As a college student, Davis Love III already had a long, fluid swing and enormous distance.  He knew how to hit the short shots, but his short game wasn't as productive as it would need to be if he wanted to be a successful professional.  I suggested that he approach pitches and chips the way his friend Michael Jordan approached scoring in basketball.  Jordan just looked at the basket and shot.  I wanted Davis to do the same thing with chips and putts--just look and react.  I told him to think of his short game as a run and shoot offense.  I threw another metaphor at him suggesting that it was a lot like playing jazz on the piano.  Anyone can learn to put his fingers on the right keys just as anyone can mechanically place his putter or his wedge in the right spot.  But to make beautiful music, a piano player has to let it flow, the way a putter or chipper has to look and react.  Davis also needed to learn to think about holing his short shots.  When he first came to me, he was not thinking about getting his chips and pitches into the hole.  He was thinking about getting up and down.  Sometimes he'd be confident he would.  Sometimes he'd be worried he wouldn't.  But he was not thinking about the hole.  That had to change before he could win consistently, and it did.  Davis has gotten better every year, and he's become a  fine player with his wedge and putter.  I'm particularly happy for him with his wedge and putter.  Of course, I'm particularly happy for him when he wins a tournament with his short game.

A few years ago, Brad Faxon got into a sudden death playoff at the Buick Open.  He hit an errant approach and left himself with difficult shot--from a tight lie, over a bunker to a tight pin.  He had to make the shot to stay alive.  Most players faced with that shot on national television would have thought about avoiding disaster.  They would have played not to stub it, not to leave the ball in the bunker.  They would have been satisfied just getting the ball somewhere on the green.  Not Brad.  He took a long, fluid swing and flopped the ball just over the lip of the trap.  It trickled down, rolled just over the edge of the cup and past.  Brad fell to the ground in comic disbelief.  Those are the breaks of the game.  The important thing is that Brad had focused sharply on hitting the ball into the hole.  If you do that, your misses will be closer and the breaks will eventually even out.



Above all in the short game, be decisive.  You model might be Tom Watson's famous chip shot from the deep rough at the 17th hole at Pebble Beach, the shot that won the US Open in 1982.  Bill Rogers, Watson's playing partner, must have taken ten minutes to get the ball from the fringe up to the pin.  Watson's mind remained quiet.  He took a look at the lie, then returned to stand with his caddie, to wait until it was his turn to play.  Then he walked behind the ball, took two practice strokes, decided it felt good, took a last look at the target, and let the shot go.  Most golfers would have hunched over that ball forever, until whatever touch they had was gone.  They would have decided that it was good enough just to keep the ball close.  then they would have jabbed at it and sent it skittering past the hole.  But Watson told his caddie he was going to put the ball in the hole.  And he did.

Chapter 10 What I Learned from Bobby Locke
Bobby Locke was the man widely acclaimed as the greatest putter who ever lived.  I had a summer job toting clubs at the Rutland Country Club.  Every Summer, Locke would come by to play a few rounds or give an exhibition.  I got his bag.  He did not look like much of an athlete.  He was pear-shaped, with a thin little mustache, and he still wore plus fours and a long-sleeved shirt with a tie, even thought this was around 1960.  Nor did he display the fierce demeanor that I had been led to believe was common to all successful athletes.  He was not one to get up at dawn.  Most days he would show up at the course around ten in the morning.  He'd hit fifteen or twenty wedges, chip and putt for a few minutes, and then go play.  He walked very slowly, but I noticed that he never spent very much time over the ball.


Years later when I read his autobiography, I learned that someone had told him early on in his career that a good player had to be relaxed.  Locke said he had set out to cultivate relaxation in everything he did.  That certainly described the man I knew in Vermont.  Locke said that he had set out to cultivate relaxation in everything he did.  That certainly described the man I knew in Vermont.  It was not that he did not care how he played, because he did.  When he gave an exhibition, he warmed up more thoroughly.  At the close of every exhibition, Locke would answer questions.  Whenever someone asked him about his putting secret he would say: "Well, you just hit it and listen."  And someone would inevitably say, "What do you mean, hit it and listen?"  And Locke would reply, "You just hit it and listen."  Then some genius would ask, "Yeah, but don't you want to see if you make it?"  And Locke would respond, "I don't have to see if I make it.  I can hear it."  Then some real genius would pipe up, "Well if you miss it, don't you want to see how it will break coming back?"  And Locke would say, "Why would I want to see it if I miss it?"  The point I now realize was that he wanted nothing to impair his confidence.  He didn't want to dwell on the putts that he missed, because that would only make it harder to be certain that the next one was going in.  And that was one thing Locke insisted upon.  Putting was about confidence.  He wrote in his autobiography, "Hitting a putt in doubt is fatal in most cases."  Locke had to be certain that the putt was going in.  Looking back, I can believe that he was.

With the speed of the greens as fast as they are today, it is highly recommended that you do not involve your wrists in the stroke.  The easiest way to take them out is to make sure your putter is short enough for your height, arms, legs, etc.  You want your arms to hang down from your shoulders, rather than having your elbows bent out.  This will quiet the wrists and shoulder movement considerably which means less moving parts and more touch (given you aren't thinking mechanically/ about speed) on the longer putts.




The point is not that the head should move and the stroke should be long.  Or that the head should be still and the stroke short.  The point is that what's important is not the mechanics of Crenshaw's stroke, but his feel for it, his belief in it, his trust that it will make the ball go in the hole.  When doubts started to erode this confidence, he had to catch himself and get back that feeling of trust.  Attitude is what makes a great putter.  Putting is largely mental, and you have control over your mind and attitude.  To become a good putter, you must make a commitment to good thinking.  You have to fill your mind with thoughts that will help you, not excuses for poor putting.  You have to decide that, come what may, you love putting and you're glad that every hole gives you a chance to use your putter, because that's where you've got a big advantage over all the players who dread putting.

Nick Price, when he was dominating the tour in the summer of 1994, told me he was so confident when he stepped up to a straight putt he almost felt as if he were cheating.  That kind of confidence guaranteed that he would make a lot of putts.  Gary Player once said, "You just have to love whatever greens you're playing on."  To someone unfamiliar with the way great athletes think, Player's attitude would seem to verge on foolishness.  A golfer might like fast greens or slow greens or medium greens, but he cannot rationally like fast greens one week and slow greens the next.  But this kind of foolishness is precisely what all great putters have in common.  Great putters rarely lose the instinct to look at the hole, look at the ball, let the putt go, and know that it's going in.  When they do, they immediately notice, and recommit themselves to that instinct.  To train this instinct, a great idea is to roll all your putts with your eyes on the target the entire time.  This will help you ingrain the feeling of being target oriented.  When you go back to looking at a spot a few inches in front of the ball when stroking the putt, you should start to see the hole/ your target in your mind's eye.  A good putting attitude is free of fear.  It doesn't pay to listen to what Johnny Miller, Gary Mccord, or any other commentator says about putting (poor putting and poor thinking is what ended some of their careers).  The golfer has to believe the putt will go in the hole, but he must not care if he misses.

Most players have their putting confidence spoiled well before they become champions.  There is a process of socialization at work.  As kids of twelve or thirteen, I think most golfers are instinctively good putters.  Like the young Bobby Jones, the good natural putter begins by simply walking up to the ball and rapping it at the hole.  But eventually the good young putter will miss a five footer.  And when he does, some well meaning adult will tell him that he missed it because he was too casual.  He will tell him that putting is hard.  He will tell him to size up every five foot putt as if he were buying the putting surface instead of playing on it.  And the youngster will start to tighten up and get careful with his putts the way the 20 handicappers do.  More often than not, he'll be on his way to having a 20 handicap himself.

But kids, before their attitudes are spoiled, have a confident approach to putts.  A few years ago, I was watching the Buick Open.  Brad Faxon had a six-footer to win the tournament.  My daughter, Casey, who was about nine years old, walked in the room and noticed that the adults were all nervous.  She asked why, and I explained the situation.  "Oh, that's nothing," she said, mystified by our attitudes.  "Brad always makes those."  She left the room, supremely confident in Brad.  And Brad made it.  I remember once watching along with Tom Kite's mother, as Ben Crenshaw sank a few long putts to win a tournament.  "That's nothing compared to the way he used to putt,"  Mrs. Kite said.  "When Ben was a boy, he'd just walk up to the ball and hit it.  He generally didn't even bother to squat down behind it and read the green.  and he sank putts from all over."  Over the years, Ben has gotten more deliberate and careful.  And though he's still very relaxed on the green compared with most golfers, and he's still a wonderful putter, I'd love to know whether he's any better now than he was when he was a teenager.

When touring pros come to me for help with their putting, we begin as we begin for all shots, by establishing a good routine.  All routines have personal variations, of course, and the putting routine differs somewhat from the full swing and short game routines because it has to allow for the reading the green.  I would recommend the Tiger Wood's tip for eliminating distractions in the periphery.  He sometimes squats down and covers his hands over the bill of his cap to limit his peripheral vision and to focus on the break of the green and ultimately his target.

The important thing is that you commit yourself completely to the read you make.  A decisive attitude is much more important in putting than reading the minute breaks and the grain of the grass.  It's easy to fall into the trap of overreading a putt.  Frequently I find that players would do better if they didn't bother trying to read putts at all, if they walked onto the green, looked quickly at the line and hit the ball.  Blaine McAllister did just that a short time ago in the B.C. Open.  He came to the final green brimming with confidence, tied for the lead in the tournament.  He had an eight-footer left to win.  He was so confident that he didn't bother to line it up.  He just walked up to it and rolled it in the hole, for the win.  When we talked on the phone afterward, Blaine was still overjoyed by the confidence he'd displayed.  I told him that it was a good thing he'd let that confidence dictate his putting.  A lot of players would have analyzed that eight-footer until it looked like a freeway interchange.  They would have found it impossible to believe that such an important putt could be straight; they'd have read the green until they found a break.  Then they would get tentative and leave the ball either short or long.  they'd have left themselves a three-footer to tie and gotten even more nervous.  It happens all the time.  People who overread are, as Billy Casper once said, often really looking for a way to miss rather than a way to make the putt.  And they forget a most important principle.  It's more important to be decisive about a read than correct.

The next step after being decisive about a read is to visualize a line on the green that will be a track for your ball to go into the hole.  Think about speed in terms of barely making the ball crawl over the front lip of the cup on its last rotation (think Tiger's chip at Augusta), or thinking about the ball striking the back of the cup as it goes down.  Remember that the goal is to sink the putt, so focusing on speed is not essential.

A few years ago, the basketball coach at James Madison University, Lou Campanelli, called me.  He asked if I could help one of his players a senior who had previously been a good freethrow shooter.  In his final season, Lou said, this kid was breaking the backboard with every free throw he attempted.  He was still a fine field goal shooter, but his free-throw percentage was way down.  Every shot he took was long.  I went to talk to the young man and asked him when his free-throw problem started.  "I don't know," he said, "the first game of the year, I guess."  "Anything prior to that?" I prodded.  "Well in the NCAA tournament last year," he said, "we were playing North Carolina and we had a chance to upset them.  Inside the last minute it was a one-point game.  I went to the free-throw line with a one-and-one.  And I shot an airball.  They brought it inbounds, but after about 10 seconds we stole it.  I had the ball and the whole North Carolina team attacked me.  I though, my gosh, they want me on the line.  "I thought I was composed, but as soon as I was set to shoot, the North Carolina fans started chanting: "Airball."  that really got me, and I barely ticked the rim with my shot.  North Carolina went on to win the game.  "I had let myself down and I had let my teammates down.  Before I left the locker room, I made a commitment to myself that I would never shoot an airball again."  "Congratulations," I said.  "Keep on doing what you're doing and you'll never shoot another airball.  but if you want to make a free throws, you have to change your thinking.  You have a perfect attitude for avoiding airballs, but a lousy attitude for making free throws.  If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you have to accept an airball now and then."  Golfers can do the analogous thing in their effort to not leave it 5 feet short or long.  You must accept that occasionally you will leave yourself with a five-footer to save par or bogey.        

As with the full swing, there is a rhythm to looking at the target, looking at the ball, and letting the putt go.  When I begin to work with a player, we spend a lot of time getting this rhythm ingrained in his or her routine.  The player strokes one five-footer after another in time with my voice: Look at the target.  Short pause.  Look at the ball.  Short pause.  Let it go.  It's almost like a mantra.  If a player I've been working with develops putting problems and asks me for help, the first thing I check is his rhythm.  Is he following his routine in competition at the same pace he did on the practice green.  If he's not, particularly if the pause between looking at the ball and letting the putt go has lengthened, that's a sign that he's not getting himself into a decisive frame of mind before he strokes the putt.  This is especially important on short putts.  In every round, a golfer will have some putts of 3 to 6 feet.  And everyone I work with, from high handicappers to the winners of major championships, occasionally has trouble with them.  You have to begin by committing yourself to liking them.  You will not be one of the guys who sit in the locker room complaining about what great scores they'd be shooting if they weren't blowing short putts.  You will, instead, be a player who loves holing short putts.  You will roll them just as freely as you roll 40 foot putts.  You won't try to steer them or overcontrol them.  You will have loose relaxed muscles.

When you inevitably miss a short putt, ask yourself why you missed it.  Did you misread the green, or get the speed wrong?  If so, forget it.  But if you missed it because you were afraid of missing it and get tentative and careful because you really didn't believe you would make it, redouble your effort to be trusting and decisive.  If you do, you will still miss some short putts.  But you will be a great short putter holing way more than your complaining competitors.  

The heart of the putting routine is analogous to the core of the exemplary routines for full shots and the short game: look at the target.  look at the ball.  let the putt go.  Two principles, by now familiar to you, underlie this postulate.  One is that your brain and nervous system work best when the brain simply reacts to the target.  The other is that the longer a player stands over the ball before he hits the putt, the more likely he is to allow the intrusion of mechanical thoughts or doubts that will corrupt the pure, simple interplay among the target, the brain, and the nervous system.  The idea is to let the conscious mind step aside and let the subconscious react to the target.  Think when you're behind the ball.  Don't think when you're over it.  Do.

Chapter 11 Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect
One of the things Tom, or any successful pro does best is to accept his bad shots, shrug them off and concentrate completely on the next one.  He has accepted the fact that, as he puts it, "golf is not a game of perfect.  This does not mean that a pro doesn't strive to eliminate mistakes from his game.  But he understands that while striving for perfection is essential, demanding it on the golf course is deadly.  No matter what happens with any shot you hit, accept it.  Acceptance is the last step in a sound routine.  I said to Tom Kite after a tournament he won, "No matter how good you get at this game, a lot of funky, crazy things are going to happen on the golf course.  The better you can get at accepting them, the better you're going to get."  Good golfers have to get over the notion that they only want to win by hitting perfect shots.  They have to learn to enjoy winning ugly.  And that entails acceptance of all the shots they hit, not just the good ones.  If Price or Kite pushes one into the woods, which he occasionally does, he accepts it as something that is going to happen in golf and he calmly plans his next shot.  In fact, the best Tour players make a remarkable number of birdies from out of the woods.  They know that escape from the woods demands that they be even calmer and more sharply focused than they normally are.

The best golfers strive to minimize mistakes, but they don't expect to eliminate them.  Incorporate this acceptance as part of your pre-shot routine.  This will free you up and you will lose your hesitancy and fear when you realize that if you hit the ball out of bounds or in the water, you are more likely to hit

There is a time and place for tough self-evaluation and you will not improve as a golfer or person unless you honestly examine your game and work on its weaknesses.  But don't do it on the golf course.  When a shot is done, it's done.  The only constructive thing you can do about it is to hit the next shot as well as you can.  That requires that you stay optimistic and enthusiastic.  A golfer can't force results to happen.  He can only do everything possible to give those results a chance to happen.  As Tom Watson once put it, to become a really good golfer, you have to learn how to wait.  But you have to learn to wait with confidence.  

A successful player has to develop the ability to evaluate himself objectively, to work harder when he needs more practice, but to ease up when he's tempted to push too hard.  Scott Verplank won his first PGA tournament, the Western Open, while he was still an amateur.  He expected that his golf could only get better once he finished school and could commit himself totally to golf, practicing as long as he wanted, playing all the time.  It didn't immediately work out that way for him.  He started missing cuts on tour when his performance would have been good enough to win the amateur tournaments he was winning.  He perceived these missed cuts as failures.  He responded as most good athletes have been taught to do, by working harder.  He practiced all the time.  He practiced when he shouldn't have, when what he really needed and wanted to do was sit in his hotel room and read a book.  And the hard work didn't show up in better results.  Eventually, he found himself returning periodically to Oklahoma State and asking the football coach to let him help out with the running backs.  It was the only way he could take his mind off golf.  Talking with him before the Buick Open one year, I emphasized the need for him to take it easy on himself.  I told him it would be all right to stay in his room and read a book for a few hours instead of going to the practice tee all day.  And I asked him to promise me that he would try to have fun.  On Thursday evening, I got a call from Scott.  "Gosh Doc," he said, "I did it! I had fun all day long.  And I'm leading!  But what was really great was that I missed a five-footer on the first hole and I didn't let it get to me!  Made a 35 footer on the second hole!"  "I bet you were invited into the press tent afterward," I said.  "Yeah I was," he replied.  "And I bet that they asked whether Scott Verplank could win his first tournament as a professional."  "Yeah that's all they talked about.  "Well if you're not careful, they're going to have you thinking about the results you get instead of having fun.  You might go out there fixed on shooting a certain number and keeping the lead and getting in position to win.  You have to remember to throw away expectations, to just have fun and see what's the lowest score you can shoot.  You have to attend to the process and not concern yourself with the results."  Scott won the tournament. 

Players plagued by perfectionism and unforgiving expectations would do well to remember the common sense their mothers taught them if they'd paid attention.  Here's what Adela Saraceni told her son, Gene Sarazen, about perfectionism and expectations just after he lost the 1927 U.S. Open by a single shot: "Son everything that happens to you happens for the best.  Don't ever forget that.  You can't win all the time, son."  Gene Sarazen said this little bit of advice stuck with him and helped him to develop a certain fatalism about his golf that allowed him to accept whatever happened and make the best of it.  If Mrs. Saraceni were around today, I might be out of business.  


Chapter 12 Anyone Can Develop Confidence
I will be revealing no secrets by stating that good golf requires confidence.  All of the ideas and techniques I teach to golfers, from free will to the preshot routine, are intended to produce confidence.  Sometimes a player struggling will ask me which comes first, confidence or success.  They understand that a player cannot win tournaments without confidence.  But they think that you have to win tournaments before you can get confidence.  If that were true, no one would ever win a tournament for the first time.  In fact anyone can develop confidence if he or she goes about it properly.  Confidence isn't something you're born with or something you're given.  You control it.  Confidence is what you think about yourself and your golf game.  It is nothing more than thinking about your ball going to the target.  

A lot of golfers find this too simple.  They might argue: "Doc, are you confident when you stand over a 40 foot putt that you're going to make it?"  "Yes," I reply.  "well then would you bet me your house that you'll make it?"  "No."  "Then how can you say you're confident?"  Being confident doesn't mean that I don't know that 2 percent is a good average on 40 foot putts.  It means that when I'm standing over a 40 foot putt, no one is asking me to bet my house, and I'm not thinking about averages.  I'm thinking about putting the ball in the hole.  And that's all I'm thinking about.  People would understand this better I think, if confidence guaranteed success.  It doesn't standing on the tee and thinking about your drive going to the target doesn't guarantee that it will go there.  But it enhances the chances.  Negative thinking, however is almost always 100 percent effective.  In a larger sense, your confidence is the sum of all the thoughts you have about yourself as a golfer.  You've got to think about what you want your golf game to be.  If you are a competitive player, you have to think about winning tournaments, about shooting low scores, about being able to stay cool if you get off to a rocky start and still come in with a good number.  

By its nature, golf will try to sap your confidence.  On every round, even the best golfer will mishit some shots.  So maintaining confidence in golf and life is like swimming against a current.  You have to work hard to stay where you are.  I tell players to try to feel that their confidence is increasing over the course of every round, every tournament and every season.  I want them to feel that they are looser and more decisive on the 18th tee than on the first.  I want them to feel more capable of going low on Sunday than they did on Thursday.  I want them to feel more likely to win the last tournament of the season than they did in the first.  

Good golfers frequently have a selective memory that helps them.  The night before the final round of Fred Couples' Masters victory in 1992 he asked me what I thought about his mental game.  I asked him, "what do you try to do?"  "Well you know, when I come up to a shot, I just pull up my sleeves and shrug my shoulders to try to get them relaxed.  And then I try to remember the best shot I ever hit in my life with whatever club I have in my hand.

Zen Golf and pebbles in a bowl

Fearless Golf and asking questions


Chapter 15 What I Learned from Seve Ballesteros
"Once," said Seve glumly, "I was the future of golf.  All I ever did for years is what I think you teach.  I just saw myself in my mind winning golf tournaments.  I saw myself making the shots.  I saw myself winning.  The year I won the Masters by seven shots I knew I would win it before the plane landed in America."  It turned out that in Seve, personality and environment had combined to produce a golfing artist he grew up poor in Spain, and like Hagen, Nelson, Sarazen, and Hogan, he got into the game as a caddie.  He started playing with a few mismatched clubs, and he competed ferociously from the outset.  From the beginning, Seve had focused his energy not on his swing, which he picked up instinctively.  He was always concerned with the ball, with making the ball move in such a way that it went into the hole.  He was the kind of kid who might walk into a sand trap with a cast-off 7 iron and experiment until he found ways to get the ball up to the hole with it.  He had a natural instinct for thinking right.  When he went to sleep at night, he saw himself making great shots and winning tournaments.  When he practiced, he told me, he would almost immediately have all of his clubs strewn on the ground beside him.  He was not the type to hit one club over and over, seeking to groove a swing.  He played imaginary holes on the range, inventing different shots to fit the circumstances his mind conjured up.

In his first years as a professional, Seve said he had a feeling of immense control.  "You know," he said, "when I first came to America, if I hit the ball in the rough, I didn't care."  He crouched down like a golfer peering under the low branches of a tree at a distant green.  "I just looked for a way, an opening.  I didn't care that there was a tree there.  I just found the opening, hit the ball over the tree, or around it, or under it, and got the ball in the hole.  When I saw an American player hit the ball in the rough and then chip out into the fairway, I laughed.  I thought, 'How can they beat me if they do that?'  Then around the green I saw that a lot of them hit a putter from the fringe.  They said that if they missed with the putter, they left the ball closer than if they missed with a wedge.  I thought that was silly.  I used a wedge.  I never thought I would miss."  Now, he went on sadly, he started to resemble those golfers he used to scorn.  He pitched sideways out of the rough.  He used a putter from the fringe.  His whole attitude toward the game had changed and all the joy was gone.  "It used to be that I would come to the 18th hole and be sad because there was no more golf left to play,"  he said.  "Now I come to the ninth hole and I'm sad because I still have nine to go.  I hat golf like this.  I don't want to keep playing if it feels like this."  As we talked, it became apparent that Seve's game had gone sour when he tried to change from the intuitive, imaginative and ball-oriented attitude of his youth to a mechanical, swing oriented approach.

A sincere desire to improve had prompted him to do it, but he had found that it was not easy--and perhaps impossible--to go from being an artist to being a scientist.  People are always giving unsolicited lessons and tips to leading professionals like Seve.  They want to take some of the credit for his successes.  In his desire to win an Open, Seve bought the idea that he needed to restructure his swing, to make it more mechanically flawless.  He forgot that course management, a stellar short game, good putting and patience win Opens.  Of these, the only quality he might have lack was patience.  The trouble was that all of this work on the swing changed his attitude toward the game.  Now, if he hit a drive into the rough, his mind did not click into thoughts of how to get the ball through the trees and into the hole.  It clicked instead into thoughts of swing mechanics.  He felt that he understood his swing now, and he should be able to fix it on the course and make the next shot great.  It didn't work.

"If I hit one bad shot, I started trying to do all things my teacher had been telling me about.  Things just got worse and worse,"  he said.  Eventually, he added, the tendency to think mechanically had infected his short game.  He stopped winning tournaments and, after a while, he stopped enjoying the game.  In a corner of his mind, Seve knew what had gone wrong.  He understood that he couldn't think of all those swing changes and still hit the ball.  But then he discovered that it was not easy to go back to the old, instinctive way of thinking on the course.  I told Seve that he had to find his way back to the old Seve.  He had to learn again to trust his athletic ability.  He had to recapture the attitude of the young Spanish caddie, navigating the golf course with a handful of cast-off clubs, inventing shots to get the ball into the hole.  I talked to him a little about how the body and brain work best together when an athlete simply looks at a target and reacts to it, rather than thinking about the mechanics of his movement.  That struck a chord with Seve.  I was only telling Seve something he had realized himself at some level.  He knew he had to recapture the confident focus on the hole that had characterized his best golf.  He knew he had to go back to being an artist.

"I know what you tell me is right," Seve said.  "I know I have to go back to being Seve.  But be patient.  It's going to take a while.  I think I will.  But now I have these thoughts in my head and I can't get rid of them."  He told me that when he stepped on a golf course where once he had felt completely in control, he now felt lost and in jeopardy.  "It feels," he said, "like I'm stepping on clouds and I'm going to fall through."  My conversations with Seve reminded me of how a player can get lost trying to improve.  It's not enough to decide to get better and to be willing to work hard at it.  A player has to judge carefully whether the improvement nostrums he's being offered are right for him.  Some players with a more natural mechanical bent--the scientists--might have been able to incorporate the changes that Seve tried to make in his swing without losing the ability to trust their mechanics on the golf course and remember that the objective is to get the ball in the hole.  But others, who play by feel--the artists--can hurt themselves trying to do it.  Even such a golfer as Seve needs to find a teacher who recognizes that too much mechanical advice can be harmful.  This is all the more important for amateurs who play once or twice a week.  They need to keep their swings simple and their confidence high.  They must learnt to resist the kind of temptation that can lead to loss of confidence, temptation often garbed as well-meaning advice.  Most golfers assume that once they learn how to think confidently, they can fiddle with their mental approach to game.  They believe they can always go back to the attitude they once had.  But, as Seve learned, it's not always that easy.  I think Seve is on his way back.  He's recognized his problem and he's dealing honestly with it.  Periodically, I scan the European golf results to see whether he's broken through and started winning again.  Recently, I noticed that he had.  As long as he has his dreams and his passion, I expect that he will keep coming back.

"When your parents bought you toys as a kid, you didn't ask how to play with them, you just played with them.  Get back to playing the game."  -Bubba Watson

Chapter 16 Conservative Strategy, Cocky Swing
Not many people remember what Arnold Palmer's effort to drive the 1st green at the US Open in 1960 produced in the first three rounds: one par, a bogey, and a double bogey, thanks to drivers hit slightly awry.  In other words, Palmer was three over par for the 1st hole when he started the fourth round.  The final birdie he got by driving the green meant that he had played the hole in +2 for the tournament.


Suppose he had decided to play the hole differently that week, hitting a 2-iron off the tee and setting up a wedge into the green.  He would, most likely, have done no worse than par each round.  Quite possibly he would have sunk a birdie putt or two.  He wouldn't have needed to close with a 65 to win.  The 1960 Open was one of the first to demonstrate an unfortunate truth: listening to television golf commentators can be hazardous to your game.  Television producers want the broadcast to be exciting.  They want the drama of bold, reckless shots and swashbuckling players.  So when they see a player gamble the way Palmer did, they glorify him.  People listen to the broadcasts, and they get the idea that bold, reckless shots pay off.  They don't.  At least not often enough to make them worthwhile.  The key to a successful strategy and a confident swing for golfers at every level is, instead, quite the opposite.

Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the shot Arnold Palmer would hit, nor even the shot you think you ought to be able to hit.  I teach a conservative strategy and a cocky swing.  You want to play each hole in such a way that you're confident you can execute each shot you attempt.  That gives you a cocky swing, which is another way of swaying that you swing aggressively, that you swing with trust.  It produces your best results.  The opposite approach would be a bold strategy and a tentative swing.  A bold strategy would have you attempting shots you are not confident you can hit.  That leads very quickly to tentative swings, and tentative swings produce bad shots.  Bad execution of bold shots produces very high scores.    

Playing the par five, 18th hole at the 1992 US Open, Tom Watson hit a 3 wood onto the fairway and then a 7-iron leaving him a full 9-iron to the green.  The broadcast crew, expecting his second shot to stop much closer to the green, thought momentarily that he had flubbed it.  Of course, he hadn't.  Normally, he said later, he laid up closer with a 5-iron.  But earlier in the round, he had partially mishit two short fairway sand-wedge shots.  He wanted a full 9-iron into the green because he didn't think he would feel confident with a wedge, particularly a partial wedge.  He was perfectly content to leave the wedges in his bag until he had a chance to do some post round practice and restore his confidence with them.  So he altered his strategy slightly to give him the shot he wanted.  But he altered it in the conservative direction.

Game Plan
If your objective is to shoot the best score you can, you might do well to remember why Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Nick Faldo hit lots of 1-irons and 3-woods off the tee.  Even if the longest club you can hit confidently onto the  fairway is a 5-iron, you'd be better off using it if your purpose is to score.  This doubly true on short par 4s.  A good architect will tempt a player on one of these short holes to hit the ball a long way, thinking to drive the green or set up a very short second shot.  But the architect, if he's good, will build lots of trouble into the hole where even slightly errant drives would land.  The smart choice is usually to hit an iron or fairway wood off the tee leaving a full wedge for the second shot.

Every game plan, of course, must be tailored to the individual's strengths and preferences.  It must be based on an honest appraisal of a player's skills, and it can change from year to the nexxt, or one round to the next depending on changes in those skills.  I would never prescribe to a player the strategy he or she ought to use on a given hole.  If one of my players told me he just felt better hitting the ball down the right side at the 10th hole at Augusta, that would be fine with me.  My concern is that the player has a plan, that he believes in the plan, and that he follows the plan.  Work through the hole from teh green back to the tee.  This can help you make an informed decision about the club to use off the tee.  If he merely stood on the tee without a plan, he would probably decide to bust his driver as far as he could, given the length of the hole.  But by working backward and planning a strategy, he might come to a different conclusion.  If he can hit a fairway wood or even a 3-iron somewhere into the fairway, he has only a comfortable mid-iron left to his lay-up position.  Always weigh the risks against the rewards.  (see Raymond Floyd's book).

Between 120 and 170 yards is a gray area for most professionals.  they must consider the wind, the speed of the greens, how they feel, and the potential penalty for a slightly missed shot before they decide whether to aim for the pin.  If the penalty for missing is likely to be no worse than a routine bunker shot, a professional might go for the pin.  If the penalty is a wet ball and a stroke penalty, he'll probably aim for the middle of the green.  From 170 yards out or farther, I advise professionals to always shoot for the fattest or safest part of the green regardless of where the flag is.


http://www.golfchannel.com/media/morning-drive-dr-gio-valiante-061813/
It attacks rhythm, then tension, then the golf swing.