What does the US Open have to do with your game? Well if you want to do well in your own club competition it could have a lot to do with your success. When you go to the driving range to work on your swing and pound ball after ball it’s only one small part of practise. This is what is called the practise makes perfect method. But if you have played golf for any length of time you know that it simply isn’t the truth; practise doesn’t make perfect! Practice makes permanent. So really you should be practising what is essential for you to play at your best. Your mental game requires equal awareness.
To play well with pressure you need to practice with pressure. When the chips are down and you need to hit the shot of your life, the self imposed pressure felt increases 10 fold for most golfers. The trial by fire approach to improving your inner game of golf toughness and performing under pressure is a haphazard method. Yet this is all most people know.
By entering more competitions and tournaments they have the false impression that this is going to improve their mental game and concentration skills. It just doesn’t work that way. So what do you think is the typical out come by following this method ? Most players don’t perform to their own potential in the key moments when everything is on the line because they lack the mental game preparation.
Then they merely chalk it up to knowledge and hope to get in the position to win again. They call this approach the natural way. Simply get in contention enough times and you’re bound to win. This is a very hit and miss mental game strategy. Well this might be true, since a player will succeed eventually if they give themselves enough chances.
I want to submit to you that the more times you are in contention and don’t win that what you are doing is increasing the likelihood of losing again, not of making winning easier. What the problem is; it’s a lack of mental game training. You have built a mindset of losing in your unconscious mind around not performing well under pressure. It will drive your behaviour (your thought processes and the swings you make under stress). You will without thinking reproduce the experience of losing that you are accustomed to.
It certainly is a hard pill to swallow but if you ever want to become more than just a mediocre golfer then mental game preparation can save you months, and even years for some golfers, of pointless inner chaos around pressure, performance anxiety, competitive stress and its influence on your golf game. Now what if you could reconstruct the pressure of the US Open in your practice sessions and then go and play with this mindset?
Now let’s say you have a mental game visualization routine that is filled with every imaginable pressure situation you could encounter. Do you think you would be perhaps a step or two ahead of your average player with the “natural” approach? You most certainly would.
By using visualization and actually feeling with your mind’s eye you can create the exact kind of pressure you would feel in competition. Your unconscious mind will absorb these sessions and add them to your mental game library and integrate them into your golfing self image. These become real events to your mind. With this methodology you are providing your mind and body with sensory specific information about what pressure is to you and how to play when it’s there.
This is in fact preparing your mind and body to perform in a desire manner when the anxiety of tournament play is present. Practise your mental game by imagining you are in the US Open and at the range hitting balls. Give yourself only one shot to hit your desired target. Create a scoring structure to monitor how well you perform this way. Increase the pressure by taking only one drive, then one iron, then a chip shot if you miss your imagined green with your approach shot. Pay attention to how well you perform this way.
If you want to accelerate your mental game improvement and begin to perform well under pressure then it’s critical you simulate pressure in your practice sessions . How else are you going to prepare for the inevitable? Do you honestly want to rely on the time worn routine of entering more and more tournaments and matches with the hopes of getting used to it? How much time money are you prepared to lose before you make the changes needed?
Take hold of your potential by developing a rock solid mental game. Your overall mindset on the course, your mental game toughness, your sense of clarity and inner confidence under the gun, and a list of other benefits will enter your game. Not just sporadically but for a lifetime. You will be amazed how the little things that used to distract you before no longer enter your mind.
