Clearing the mind

I heard something interesting yesterday on a Golf Smarter podcast. PGA pro Seth Glasco was discussing how we golfers tend to get in our own way mentally by overthinking.

He pointed out that this is easy to do in golf since the golf swing is one of the few athletic actions where we have time to think about the action. There are a few other examples of this in sports - the serve in tennis and the foul shot in basketball - where the ball is stationary and the athlete initiates the action. But these athletic actions are atypical. In the typical athletic act - catching or throwing or kicking - we are reacting, and as a result we have less time to think and if we're at all athletic we tend to perform well in these situations.

Of course the problem with having time to think is that we can think of all the things that we can screw up. Witness Shaquille O'Neill at the free throw line, or the many times we've observed a tennis pro double fault at the least opportune time in a match. Or witness your average golfer on the first tee - especially when others are around to observe.

Or, witness your "driving range pro" who is unable to take his game to the course. As Seth Glasco points out, that's because on the practice range the golfer is able to simply swing away without worrying about where the ball ends up, wherease on the course he sees all of the trouble in front of him - the water to the right, the bunker and trees to the left - and if he thinks about all of this then he tightens up and hits lousy shots.

So the fact that we have all of this time to think before our shots is one of the things that makes the game so hard. Unfortunately, there's really no way to not think at all, but what we can try to do is to think positively, and to focus on staying loose and athletic as we start the swing. We want to get as close as we can get to a reactive athletic move when we start our swing.

I know that when I play my best golf I'm doing exactly that. When I'm most confident in my game I'm not thinking about hitting the ball in the water to the right or the trees to the left, I'm thinking about nothing but striping it exactly where I want it to go. I feel loose and I actually know as I set my tee in the ground that my golf shot is going to be a good one. I just visualize the shot, take a practice swing or two to feel the swing that I'm going to put on the ball, then just step up and swing.

So my swing thought for my round tomorrow is going to be exactly that. I will not start my swing until I have cleared my mind of all negative thoughts and am thinking only of hiting the great golf shot that I visualized.