Golf : The Mind Game

Whether you're a world-class palyer or a weekend  enthusiast, improving your golf game begins with  your mind. You may be amazed to discover what  happens when you free yourself from overthinking you  shots and let your unconcious mind play the  game.



Now acclaimed sports counselor Dr.  Marlin Mackenzie provides more than 30  situation-specific exercises to help you deepen your  awareness of your emotional and intellectual barriers.  You'll learn to capitalize on your inner resources  to play up to your potential.

People pay dearly to play golf. They wear the most expensive shoes in their closet, and they kill grass with implements that can run over a thousand dollars a set. Some pay a small fortune to determine where to play golf—and with whom. At those prices the civilized sport becomes an investment. Yet nearly all golfers, from humble hackers to elite touring pros, in dogged pursuit of enjoyment—and par—rarely invest as much as a thought on what will help them more than any hunk of high-tech equipment:
 
Their own minds.
 
I propose to change that. In this book I explain the ways your mind, more marvelous than any computer, can be tapped to improve your golf. Wouldn’t you prefer feeling the ball jump from the sweet spot on your club, flying long, high, and straight rather than short, skidding dubs? Wouldn’t you prefer more matches won and fewer payoffs at the 19th hole? Sure you would.
 
What I offer is a practical, down-to-earth system that uses the mind and emotions to regulate skills in golf—and it works, whether you’re a weekend enthusiast or a world-class professional, a 30-handicapper playing from the white tees or a scratch player. The system works because it quiets the conscious mind and engages your unconscious resources. An active conscious mind acts like the hazards on the golf course—trapping, drowning, or blocking balls from their flight to the cup because you’re thinking too much about your swing while playing. My techniques get you to do all your thinking about your swing on the practice tee so that your mind stays out of your way as you swing on the course.
 
Although golf is a complex mind game, it’s also supposed to be fun. So are the exercises in this book. In Part 1 I describe the fundamentals of the mind game—how your mind operates, how to deepen awareness of your mental processes, and how to improve your game by capitalizing on your inner resources.
 
Part 2 contains descriptions of specific techniques, about thirty in all, that can be applied to your method of thinking and the unique way you respond emotionally to competition. These techniques are designed to help you achieve better concentration, heightened motivation, consistency of performance, increased self-confidence, recovery of lost skills, and more enjoyment. A few of them focus on the mobilization of energy when tired, faster healing after injury, and pain control.
 
I’ve coined a word that describes my perspective of how the mind works—Metaskills. It refers to the interaction between emotions and thoughts that regulate skillful athletic performance, most of which are out of conscious awareness. After years of coaching and thinking about the unity of mind and body, I became dissatisfied with the methods of coaching that stressed conscious thought. The methods are okay up to a point, but they don’t fully represent what superb athletes really do in their minds to control their behavior.
 
To eliminate my dissatisfaction I studied psychology and counseling in a search for knowledge that I knew existed although I did not know exactly where to look. Finally, I decided to go to the source. I asked athletes directly how they used their minds and emotions to develop and control their skills. My training as a master practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) provided me with the knowledge to ask the right questions and the refined skills to uncover their conscious and unconscious processes.
 
I then created counseling techniques out of what the athletes told me. I combined their information with what I’d learned from psychology and from my coaching experience. To refine my metaskills techniques I worked directly with eighty elite athletes (male and female, ages eight to thirty-five) in eleven sports over a two-year period. The model that evolved has been working successfully for about seven years with all kinds of athletes. This book contains those techniques that are most appropriate for golfers.
 
The psychological perspective that I emphasize is one of understanding how golfers, at every level, regulate their performance, not why they don’t play well. Believe it or not, you already possess all the necessary internal resources for playing better golf. The trick is to uncover them and put them to work. Trying to figure out the reasons why you don’t hit the ball well is counterproductive. This kind of thinking taps and reinforces negative stuff in your mind, the stuff that makes you continue to swing badly and feel worse.
 
The mind games in this book were designed to swing your golfing mind from conscious control to automatic pilot. The ultimate goal is to have your unconscious mind in complete control during competition, except for conscious planning of each shot before addressing the ball. Seldom will there be a need for conscious application of any metaskills techniques while playing a match. If you’ve learned them well, they’ll “kick in” automatically, just as your golf swing automatically follows a grooved pattern.
 
While this is not a workbook, it nonetheless should be a learning companion when practicing the skills taught to you by your golf pro. For quite a while don’t leave home for the driving range without it. Treat it as a learning manual to help you use your mind and emotions to get what you want. Read Part 1 carefully and do the exercises presented there. This will make the rest of the book more meaningful. After doing the Sherlock Holmes Exercise and learning how to “anchor” your internal resources, read Part 2 casually. Then study and use the appropriate techniques in Part 2 when something in your game, or temperament, needs to be retuned or cleared up.
 
Not every lesson is for you. The final chapter, “The 19th Hole,” contains information about how to identify your outcomes and guides you in selecting appropriate metaskills techniques to achieve them. However, I encourage you only to pay attention to the crucial elements of your swing you want to improve. I’m a firm believer in the notion, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. ”
 
Setting aside mental-practice time is essential for learning my metaskills techniques. Merely reading this book is not enough to determine its effectiveness. Do only one exercise at a time. Learn how it works and determine if it fits your mental style. Judge for yourself the validity of a technique in relation to the quality of your performance and the degree to which you achieve each specific outcome.
 
My writing partner, whose love of golf once compelled him to play nine holes in Scotland while waiting for a rental car, experienced brainlock trying to use too many of my exercises at once. He learned, the hard way, the importance of exploring one technique at a time. The less you think about while swinging, the better your performance.
 
What eventually became useful for Ken was the concept of effort control described in Chapter 8. He applies that concept to lag-putting and those short putts which, when missed, can result in putters flying through the air like helicopter blades. The most valuable parts of the book for him were the ones that dealt with performance expectations and mood changes.
 
Which ones will be most useful for you? Happy exploring.