BIRDIES & BOGEYS: COMPETITION JITTERS?
Focus your swing thoughts.
It’s late on a warm, sunny afternoon. You’re on the golf course with your caddie/cart driver/10-year-old son. You thought you could get in a few holes tonight before this weekend’s club championship. You feel good about your game, you are hitting the ball solid, and it’s going where you’re looking. You know this is the year you are finally going to beat that bigmouthed brother-in-law of yours.
Driving up to the 18th green, you grab your putter knowing your approach shot has given you a short birdie putt. “Can we get ice cream?” your son asks from the cart. “If I make this putt,” you reply. Knowing dinner is waiting, you don’t bother pulling the pin. It’s a 10-footer that, as you walk up to it, you notice will break a little to the right. You set your putter down and stroke the ball a little left of the hole. The ball takes a small turn to the right and falls directly into the center of the cup. You smile as you hear the gallery scream, “All right, ice cream!”
Fast forward. Now, it’s Sunday afternoon and you’re standing on the same 18th green. You’re faced with a similar putt — only this time it’s for more than ice cream. You can’t believe you’ve just doubled 16 and 17. You sliced the ball out-of-bounds on the 16th hole and you “never slice.” And after taking four from just off the green on 17, you admonish yourself: “What were you thinking?” Now, your seemingly insurmountable five-shot lead has evaporated, unlike the beads of sweat pouring from your body. The worst part is that, if you don’t make this putt, your brother-in-law is going to beat you again — and relive the experience ad infinitum.
You’ve looked at this putt from every conceivable angle and you still can’t decide what it’s going to do. You notice a crowd has gathered around the green to witness this “carnage.” Your practice strokes don’t feel quite right and you tell yourself, “Whatever you do, don’t leave it short.”
You hope the putt will break a little right, but you also remember vividly that you haven’t made a putt all day and the last two putts you had you pushed them both. Your arms feel disjointed and your hands are trembling. You place the putter down behind the ball … your mind screams … the putter jabs through the ball. You know before you look up that it’s not going in.
Let’s review our two scenarios. Same person. Same putt. What is the difference? Different situation? Maybe. Different perception? Probably. Different thought process? Definitely.
I’ve played professionally all over the world. I’ve played the PGA Tour and I’ve led the U.S. Open Championship. I know something about feeling the pressure.
Recently, I played in the Verizon Byron Nelson Classic, the Dallas stop on the tour. Because I hadn’t played in a tour event in several years and I had recently undergone shoulder surgery, I was somewhat anxious. But I made the cut and played the weekend. The moderate success I had stemmed from the plan I developed to combat my nerves. If you play golf, you know what I’m talking about — first tee jitters, the three-foot putt, a carry over water, etc.
The problem: improper focus. The solution: optimal thinking.
“Choking” is the result of poor decision making, or more precisely, the inability to commit to a single decision.
A common term in sports circles is “the zone.” Golfers who are in the zone are playing to their full potential. Decisions come easy. I believe that playing in the zone is the opposite of choking. Here’s why.
Let’s say you’re on the first tee. You’ve just come from the range where your warm-up was great. Every shot you hit was a nice gentle draw. Now, it’s show time. You tee your ball and look down the fairway. Your mind starts to go into overdrive with thoughts: 1. Water on the right. 2. New ball. 3. Impress the rest of the foursome. 4. Outdrive your cart mate. 5. Don’t top the ball. If you are honest with yourself, these might be just a few of the things you are thinking about on that dreaded first tee. So, with all those thoughts, why did you slice it in the water?
Think of it this way. When your mind and body are working at 100 percent, you are focused on only one thing. If you bring another thought into the picture, your focus must now be divided between two things (50 percent each). Each thought, act, wish you add to the equation further divides your focus. If you are thinking about five things at the moment of impact, then each thing you are thinking about gets 20 percent of your attention or potential. Therefore if you are playing golf with three, four, five, or more swing thoughts, then you are only able to achieve a fraction of your full potential.
For example, consider the short putt. Are you uncommitted on the line? Do you have the “what ifs” clouding your focus? Are you thinking about past misses? The fewer things you can think about, the better your performance will be. If you can narrow your focus to one thought (such as “start it at the left edge”), you will be using your full potential.
Unfortunately, the ability to turn that focus “switch” on and off is not an easy task. The mind is not a vacuum. If you try to “free your mind,” as some gurus like to say, your mind is not “free” but actually thinking about freeing your mind.
When I am playing and putting my best, I am not narrowing my thoughts from 10 things to one thing over each shot. Rather, I am thinking about just a few things and then disregarding all but one swing thought during the performance of a shot.
This might sound like some mumbo jumbo, but let’s diagnose the game of golf.
The score is controlled by where the ball goes. The club controls the ball. The body controls the club. And the body is controlled by the mind. Therefore, your score is controlled by your mind. If you can play golf with a quiet mind and limit your thoughts to just a few and then narrow your focus to one thought during your swing, you will be playing golf to your full potential. That will lead you to the zone.
So when you find yourself with that all-too-familiar feeling of choking coming on, it’s just that you’re thinking about too many things. When you are hitting balls on the range, your mind is thinking about just a few things, maybe just one swing key. When you are on the practice green, you just look at the hole and react. Therefore, play like you practice. And remember, you’re not really choking — your mind is just too busy.
When JC Anderson, now director of instruction at Hackberry Creek Country Club near Dallas, turned professional in 1985, he played overseas for four years and then on the PGA Tour, the Nike Tour, and the Buy.com Tour for 11 years. He is a golf commentator for CNBC and the Senior PGA Tour. He also has served as host of Inside the PGA Tour on ESPN and pursues a variety of golf assignments for Fox Sports.
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