Improve your mental golf game.

Many golfers recognise that our mental state and strength are incredibly important when looking to play our best golf.

In many sports you’re required to think and react to your situation or surroundings in a matter of seconds - your natural instincts take over, and everything you’ve practiced or trained yourself to do comes to the fore.

This couldn’t be further from the scenario we find ourselves in as golfers.

For starters, we stand over a non-moving ball, with lots of time to prepare and think about what might happen. We also have time walking the fairways and watching our playing partners play their shots. All of these moments provide us with a significant opportunity to think about and reflect on our every move.

So, how can we use the time we have a turn it into a competitive advantage and strengthen our mental golf game?

To help, we’ve put together three simple tips on how to use the time you have on the golf course more effectively and harness your mental strength to improve your game:

Visualise and feel what you want to happen, not what you don’t

This is something we often see from some of the best tour pros in the world. If you watch Jason Day closely, you’ll notice that he stands back from the ball and closes his eyes before each shot. Or if you watch Tiger, he makes slow, intentional swings whilst looking out at the hole in front of him.

In both instances, whilst the approach is slightly different, both players have the same goal. They’re trying to clear their minds of anything other than visualising and feeling the exact shot they want to play.

Far too often, instead of thinking about what we want to happen, we’ll think about what we don’t want to happen or where we don’t want our ball to go - which is a mistake in itself.

Try using one of these visualisation and feel techniques, or try to find a technique that works for you, to help clear your mind and visualise the best version of your golf game.

Develop a complete pre-shot routine to help you focus on the right things

What happens in the period of time before you play your shot can arguably be as important as the shot itself.

To play your best golf, and hit the shots you want, you need to be able to swing freely and fluidly. Over my years of teaching I’ve heard just about everything that a golfer can think about during those all important moments before they play their shot.

By having a pre-shot routine, you’re essentially creating a series of repeatable, familiar motions that will help you really focus, and and free yourself up to make your best swing.

The pre-shot routine can be broken up into two parts, the conscious and sub-conscious. In both of the examples above, both Jason Day and Tiger are going from the conscious to the sub-conscious part of their pre-shot routine.

To start, they’re actively thinking about the best type of shot to play in the circumstances. Your conscious thought should factor in the best club, flight and shot shape taking into consideration the lie, wind, landing area, pin position etc. This will create a clear intention for the shot.

Now you’ve got that clear intention, you want to begin to visualise and feel the shot you want to play, before stepping into the ball and executing that shot. Creating the image or holding on to the feeling of the shot (from your rehearsal swings) will instruct your sub-conscious mind on how to move your body during the shot.

Next time you play, try logging each time you successfully go through your complete pre-shot routine, and execute the shot you intended to play. Doing this will move your focus from your score, to something that is in your control.

Make peace with the fact that you’re going to make mistakes

How many times have you started with a disastrous first hole and you’ve let that ruin your whole round? Or you’re playing nicely, but after working hard to build your score, a mistake leads to double bogey or worse?

This happens to all of us, but it’s about learning to bounce back from these situations by re-framing your attitude.

One way to do this if you’re playing a course you’ve played before, is to turn your attention to great shots you may have hit on that hole in the past. This will take your attention away from what’s just happened and help you re-frame your attitude in a positive way. Or if it’s a new course, focus on some of the great shots you’ve hit that day, and play the next hole with that in mind.

And if you’re tempted after a bad hole to over analyse your swing, which many of you will, turn your attention back to your routine. Analysing your swing is for the practice range, or a lesson, not for competition rounds. When you step up to your next shot, ensure you head straight back into your routine.

—

Much of this is easier said than done, but it’s about finding what works for you and your game, so use these simple tips as a starting point and adapt them to suit.

If you’d like to enquire about booking in for a lesson with the Lee Shepherd Golf Academy, our on-course lessons are the perfect environment to talk about the mental side of golf, your pre-shot routine and course management. To book today visit our academy page.