Friday, December 22, 2006

Is Golf Making You A Mental Case?

With over 30 years of golfing experience I can say without a doubt that golf is one of the most mental sports to play. How many times have you been over a 3-foot putt with the mental image of missing it... and just last week you were making 3-footers like they were 1-footers.

Who can forget what Phil Michelson did on the 18th hole of the US Open this year. In my opinion he has yet to recover from it.

Putting is probably the most mental part of golf. Meaning, I think the putting game is most affected by your mind. Other parts of your golf game can be affected like driving and chipping, but putting in my mind (pun intended) is the one that can make or break your golf game.

There are a lot of golfers who are great ball strikers and I'm sure a good percentage of them could make a run on the PGA Tour if they only had the mental toughness in their putting game. These guys can drive a ball 300-yards down the middle of the fairway and get the ball on the green in regulation, but making the 8-footer for birdie or the 3 to 4-footer for par is a completely different story.

In comes
Golf Mental Mastery, which is a program I came across recently that's designed specifically to help golfers get past their metal blocks. It's designed to help a golfer keep their mental focus and to get past mental blocks like those 3 to 4-footers.

For most sports the 80-20 rule applies... where 20% of the game is physical and 80% of the game is mental.

All sports including golf require you to master the mechanics of the game to be good at it... and there are a lot of drills, teaching aids, coaches, trainers, etc... out there to improve your mechanics, but there are very few mental coaches, teachers, or mental teaching aids to improve your game.

The
Golf Mental Mastery is one such program and it's worth a look if you have a mental block in your golf game that's keeping you from taking it to the next level.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Golf is a mental game and it's enough to make the best golfers a little crazy. I've had my share of the putting yips. Good post.

PGA Tour Golf School