Saturday 10 March 2012

Is your game in balance?


Who would have backed the 4 major winners this year? Charl Scwartzel, The Masters, Rory McIlroy The US Open, Darren Clarke The Open and Keegan Bradley USPGA. Interestingly enough the last 7 major winners had not won a Major before.

So how could it be that these “first time winners” did not include the names of any of the so-called “golden generation” of English golfers?

Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Paul Casey, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose and Ross Fisher, all failing to capture one of golf’s big four championships.

There is no doubting the ability of the aforementioned players. Between them they have won many tournaments worldwide and in Luke Donald and Lee Westwood players who have risen to be the No1 player in the world rankings.

It has always amazed me how winning Olympians have four years in which to prepare to get things right on a given week, day, hour or minute. The worlds leading golfer’s get four chances every year to win one of the career defining majors, yet this still proves too much for some.

Could it be the pressure of expectations that trips up these great players or the nature of the game of golf itself with so many imponderables or a combination of both?

We do know that to play our best golf we need to have balance. I don’t mean not falling over, but having our conscious mind, physical skills (subconscious mind} and self image (expectations) all equally aligned.

It all sounds so simple. How could it be that Luke Donald, the Worlds no.1 golfer missed the cut in The Open after winning the week before? There is no way his golf swing or putting stroke mechanics broke down that week. His physical skills or sub conscious mind have been trained to work incredibly well with years and years of practice and repetition. As a winner only days earlier you have to imagine that he felt pretty good about himself. What we do not know is what was running through his conscious mind during The Open week.

When you play with a quiet mind the physical skills that have been trained over the years just happen. They are not forced. When was the last time you missed your mouth with a folk? You may want to try thinking about putting the folk in your mouth next time you are eating and notice the difference. Subtle, but Championships are won and lost by such fine margins that maybe by simply having balance we give ourselves a better chance.

This is not to say we don’t need to practice or work on our games. Let me ask you two questions. How important is the mental side of playing golf compared to the physical/technical side? More or less than 50%?

How much time do you spend working on the mental side of your game?

I suspect that you will answer that the mental side of the game is important and possibly is more than 50% of the game.

So it really doesn’t make sense that you spend 100% of your time practicing on only the physical side of the game. What are you going to do to improve your performance? Check your balance.

No comments:

Post a Comment