In his book 'Understanding the Golf Swing', American teaching legend Manual De la Torre describes his superb approach to the mental side of golf. I'm tempted to reproduce his words verbatim, but I'll attempt to sum it up in the hope that you might want to get hold of a copy of the book yourself. I thoroughly recommend it. De La Torre says 'Everything we do in life is done with some form of mental control. Without proper mental attitude, mental control and mental direction (conscious or subconscious) there can be no physical performance.'
'Muscles do not move on their own; they need to be stimulated in order to move. They have no brain, no mind, so they cannot have any memory. They simply do what they are told to do through our mental processes. To produce a certain specific movement, they must not only be stimulated for movement, but this stimulation must be directed so the muscles produce the movement desired. This direction and stimulation can only come from one source - our mind.'
Mental Attitude
According to De la Torre, there are three types of mental attitude golfers tend to adopt; positive, negative and corrective. A positive attitude is the one all golfers should cultivate, because it concerns itself with what the golfer should do, without any concern for doubts or possible failures. Knowing what to do and having total faith and trust in it, brings about a strong positive mental attitude, and a marked reduction in fear and anxiety. "This is what I will do, when I do it, I hit a perfect shot - my only concern is to execute it. "
'To have good, (positive) mental attitude, first of all we need understanding. Understanding of what we must do in order to produce a movement with the club that will propel the ball towards the desired target. Once we know this, the next step is to believe in it, have faith in it, and trust it. Without this trust the desired results will never be achieved.'
Needless to say, the other two mental attitudes are to be avoided. However, I will describe them here so you can identify them in case you ever start to slip into them, and hopefully avoid letting them take hold.
The golfer with a negative mindset always feels afraid and expects bad shots from his swing. He is always afraid that 'something bad is about to happen.' Rather than thinking about what he is going to do to make something good happen, they are concerned with not doing something, so that bad things don't happen. (If you haven't read the article about fear, please go and read it now.) So the player never has a plan of what needs to be done in order to succeed, since the plan is to prevent bad things from happening. In our normal life, no one makes a list of things they don't want to do today, or goes to the shop with a list of things they don't want to buy. We go with a positive attitude, with ideas of what we do want.
The other attitude is the corrective mindset. This golfer is always changing his swing as a reaction to the previous shot. When a shot is hit which is not satisfactory, the swing is blamed, and a change has to be made in the next swing to correct the next shot. Most players do not understand how the swing works, so the diagnosis is rarely correct and another problem may be created. As in the case of the negative attitude, consistency of performance is impossible, as the player is attempting something different on every swing.
"Players are constantly trying to groove their swing, but they never develop a grooved swing, until they first groove their thoughts through mental discipline...... This groove must be as narrow and as deep as possible, so it is extremely difficult to slip out of it. Once we have established this groove, our mind will provide the same stimulus to the muscles over and over again, so that through familiarisation it becomes easy for us to be repetitive in our actions."
When you know what it is you are doing, and how you are going to do it, you reduce the fear of the unknown, and you establish the positive mindset so crucial to playing your best golf.
Mental Direction
No matter what our abilities as a golfer, we all hit good and bad shots relative to that ability. When we hit a bad shot, most golfers first reaction is to blame the swing. Very rarely will the golfer question the mental direction he was giving to his body to produce that swing. If we set ourselves the task of driving to the supermarket, but somehow we end up at the golf club, do we blame the car and take it to the garage? It wasn't the car, but the mental direction that was at fault, and most of the time the same is true with our golf shots. In my experience, from my own game and of others, it is a lapse in mental direction which more often is the cause of bad swings and poor shots. The muscles that swing the golf club need the correct stimulation in order to produce the required movements. If your mind is not providing that direction and stimulation, then the result is unlikely to be what we were hoping for.
The absence of mental direction, or a change in that direction, is the reason so many players hit the ball well on the range, or in a lesson, but then cannot take those good shots out onto the course. The capability to make the swing is still there, but the mental direction has changed. Instead of the mind being closely focused on what is required to make a good swing, it becomes distracted by thoughts of the score, or distance, or the hazards or playing partners, or a dozen other things. Everything we learn is with one purpose in mind. To perform on the golf course so our scores are what we would wish them to be. There should be no change in mental direction when we go from the practice ground to the golf course. You must continue to direct the muscles in the same way.
We are perhaps at our most susceptible when we are hitting the ball well during a lesson or practice session. As De la Torre says, the idea that "I have it now" is a dangerous one, because it is the first sign of what he calls "the deterioration in the mental direction". The player starts to produce a movement with little or no conscious thought, believing perhaps that 'muscle memory' will take care of the swing. Unfortunately, the muscles have no memory, and while they may perform adequately for a time, soon variations begin to creep in. Even more damaging is the vacuum that this lack of correct mental direction leaves, usually to be filled by thoughts which do nothing to help us hit the ball where we want to hit it.
As Manuel De la Torre says, "No one, professional or amateur, can produce a swing through reflex and subconscious alone and have it last. If this could be accomplished, touring professionals would never get off their games or miss a shot, yet they do. In spite of the hours of practice and the rounds they play, their golf swing must be produced with with good awareness and strong mental direction."
So, to play our best golf, regardless of whether we are on the practice ground, playing a social round with friends, or playing the 18th hole in a round which means a lot to us, our mental approach should be exactly the same.
1. Know what your basic concept is; what you want to do. (Positive mental attitude).
2. Produce that concept through strong mental direction.
3. Be aware that you are doing what you want to be doing, while you are doing it, (this is focus, or concentration). You didn't do it, unless you know you did it. Observe yourself! Be aware!
If you know your swing, observe yourself, and remain aware of producing that swing, you will not allow any strange interferences to creep into the movement.
Awareness
If there is one are where most golfers could improve it is in being truly aware of what they are doing while they are doing it. Most of the time their heads are full of extraneous thoughts and distractions, with the task of setting up the body and hitting the golf ball left to the subconscious mind. Often, when I ask a student what he was thinking of at a certain point in the set up procedure or the swing, he can't tell me. In order to provide the mental direction that the muscles need to perform properly, you need to be aware of what you want to do, aware of what you are actually doing, and aware of how the two match up. The body can perform on a subconscious level, but it is much more efficient when full awareness and attention is given to the task at hand, allowing the subconscious to operate in the background. If the conscious mind is distracted by negative or irrelevant thoughts, the subconscious has to run the whole show, rather than operate on the level of fine detail and fine tuning at which it excels. Remember, if you did it, but you didn't know you did it, or know how you did it, you haven't done it. Observe yourself with full attention. Be aware!
Turning theory into practice
The biggest problem most golfers face is not not knowing what to do, it's doing it. We all know we need to hold the club correctly, and after some tuition, most of us know how to do it. So why do we not do it? We have the knowledge. The areas that most people start to lose it on are their mental attitude, having strong mental direction, and weakest of all, have awareness of what they are doing when they are doing it. We seem to be so distracted by the task of hitting the shot (or by thinking about the result) that we 'forget' to do what we need to do in order for that shot to be a success.
With these principles and problems in mind, it is vital that we build a pre shot sequence to help ensure we adhere to them whenever we swing a club, whether it is on the range or on the golf course.
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