Getting a grip on golf's mind games

Book Extract: Sports Psychologist Dr Bob Rotella is guru to some of the biggest names in golf. In an extract from his latest book, The Golfer's Mind, he suggests how to tackle the game's mental challenges.

COMMITMENT

Here ' s a riddle I like to use with players (with apologies to vegetarians): "What's the difference between the pig's relationship to your bacon-and-egg breakfast and the chicken's relationship to it?"

The answer is that the chicken is involved in the breakfast. The pig is committed to it.

I use the riddle because commitment is an essential part of every great player's mindset. There are, in fact, two distinct types of commitment that every great golfer displays. The first is commitment to each shot. The second is commitment to a programme of improvement.

On every shot, a golfer must have an image in his mind of how the ball will travel, and of the club and swing he'll use to get it there. Then he must commit to that image, decisively. Otherwise, he can't hit the shot with a clear mind, and without a clear mind, the body is far less likely to produce a good swing.

Commitment means a narrow focus, a complete certainty about the shot, an unwavering mind, an absence of doubt, closure, and clarity.

Failure to commit can be just a bit of doubt or uncertainty. It could be that thought that wants to enter your mind as you address the ball: "Maybe I should cut a 6-iron instead," or "What if the putt runs six feet past the hole?"

If such thoughts plague you, it could be because you're not devoting enough time in your pre-shot routine to observing all the factors involved in a given shot. If you're addressing a putt and you suddenly notice the grain running away from you, and you didn't account for the grain when you were behind the ball, then your pre-shot routine was flawed. If you suddenly decide that your alignment is not good, that you're not aimed at the target, it could be that you're not being meticulous enough in your pre-shot setup. You need to address those issues in your pre-shot routine. You also need to back away from this particular shot until you can feel completely committed to what you're doing. Indecision will negate talent and skill.

Commitment is absolutely essential in difficult conditions like rain and wind. If you're not committed and decisive under those circumstances, you have no chance. The wind challenges your commitment. It gusts; it abates. It's easy to start changing your mind. In most cases, that's a mistake. You're better off following through with the shot you committed to, than you are trying to outguess the wind or wait for it to die down.

You've also got to be committed to the process of improvement. This can be different things for different players. If you're an amateur still struggling to break 90, it can mean following a schedule of lessons and practising a few times between lessons. It can mean working every day on fitness. It can mean honestly evaluating the weaknesses in your game and turning your attention to them.

If you're a professional, your commitment may manifest itself in different ways. You already know the basic skills, though you may still have a commitment to honing your game and to attending regular sessions with a particular teacher. You also might have a fitness regimen that requires daily effort. If you have a teacher, you need to be committed to that teacher. You need to listen to him and only him for advice about your swing. You need to stick to the plan for improvement that you work out with your teacher.

You have more time than the amateur to practice, and you need a practice regimen. But at your level of development it's important to understand the distinction between being committed and trying to look committed. A player who is committed to the regimen that will make him his best understands that the quality of his practice may be more important than the quantity of his practice. He understands that working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, may not always be helpful to him. Indeed, that much time on the range can make a player stale and sloppy, especially just before a competition. For most players, it's ideal to taper off in practice before a competition, and to spend more practice time playing golf than hitting range balls. Players who understand the sort of commitment I'm talking about do everything that's necessary to prepare themselves. They do it efficiently. Then they do something else.

Some players are too concerned with demonstrating to others that they're committed. They are certain to be among the first on the range and the last to leave. They may spend a lot of that time schmoozing with other players. They may spend a lot of it mindlessly beating balls. But the media and the galleries think they're committed to improvement. They're not. They're committed to projecting an image.

A commitment is easy to make and hard to keep. If this were not so, more people would have scratch handicaps, taut waistlines and sufficient money in their 401(k) plans to retire at age 55. I find that people who keep their commitments tend to have an optimistic outlook. Their optimism buoys them when progress is slow or nonexistent. They're always thinking of reasons why they'll be successful in the long run. They believe that if they keep plugging away, something great will happen for them. People who are pessimistic tend to get discouraged in the face of adversity and give up.

Be an optimist!

THE RHYTHM OF THE GAME

One of the great American amateurs of the last century, Bill Campbell, says he once learned a valuable golf lesson from Sam Snead. Campbell grew up in West Virginia, and when he was a teenager, he used to play pro-ams with Snead. One day he noticed that Snead whistled while he was walking the fairways. He asked Snead about it.

"Not only do I whistle when I'm playing golf," Snead said. "I always whistle a waltz."

Snead may have just liked waltzes. But there was something more to it. He recognized that the slow rhythm of a waltz would help his golf game. In those days, before videotapes and slow motion were widely available, golfers did not pay as much attention as they do today to the intricacies of swing mechanics. But they were keenly aware of rhythm and tempo.

I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the great players I've met from Snead's era had musical abilities. In those days, they'd often entertain themselves in the evening by gathering around a piano and singing. Most of them were great dancers. Rhythm and tempo were part of their lives.

Even today, when I talk to players privately, many of them will say that when a tournament is at stake and they don't want to mess themselves up by thinking of mechanics, they will think about rhythm and tempo. They're looking for a feeling of flow.

A good, gentle rhythm can be very helpful. A few years ago, when the US Open was held at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, I took my dad out as my guest and arranged a round at the San Francisco Golf Club. My dad had never had a caddie, but for this round he had one. He was, naturally, nervous about it. In the middle of the round, I noticed he was chewing a big wad of gum.

"Dad, what are you doing with all the gum?" I asked. "My caddie gave it to me," Dad said. "He said chewing gum relaxes you."

A little while after that, I spoke with Riley Blanks, the daughter of an old Virginia basketball player, Lance Blanks, who is now the director of scouting and a colour commentator for the San Antonio Spurs. Riley was a budding tennis star. Lance had once arranged for her to meet Michael Jordan. With a chance to ask Jordan anything, she asked him what he thought about during a time-out. "What did he say?" I asked. "He said he just thinks about chewing his gum," the girl replied.

I'm not trying to endorse either the waltz or chewing gum. But Jordan's answer brought to mind some meditation techniques that are designed to calm and clarify the mind. They have you focus on your heartbeat or your breathing. Chewinggum or whistling a waltz can serve the same function. If it establishes a good, languid rhythm, so much the better.

HOW WINNING HAPPENS

There are two ways to win in golf. You can win a tournament. You can win the battle with yourself.

I want my clients to have dreams, even big dreams. When a player tells me he dreams of winning many, many times, of racking up major championships, I say, "Great." Those kinds of dreams are powerful motivations. But I want them to understand that winning tournaments is a matter of both skill and chance.

I want them to understand that tournament victories happen in all sorts of odd ways, and they have to be ready for all of them. Very rarely does a player win because for four consecutive days he kept striking pure three-irons to within a few feet of the flags. More often, it's a matter of figuring out ways to get the ball in the hole at critical moments even when you're not hitting it as well as you'd like. I think of Adam Scott at the 2004 Players Championship. I suspect he never dreamed that he'd win a big event like that while hitting his approach to the 72nd green into the water. But he stayed calm, chipped his fourth to the correct tier on the green and holed his 10-footer to win by a shot. He got the job done.

Quite often you win because someone else falters and opens the door for you. Just as often, you play very well and lose to someone who played just a little bit better. I think of Padraig Harrington at the same event Adam Scott won.

Padraig played beautifully that week; the birdie putt he sank on the final hole was masterful. He told me afterward how pleased he was that he'd eliminated every other thought from his mind except his target and stroked the putt freely. Indeed, he'd done that throughout the tournament.

Padraig was a winner in another sense, and the only sense that a player can ultimately control. He got his mind in the right place on nearly every shot he played. You can win every time you play golf if you can do that.

It's easy for sportswriters or commentators to deride this idea, to suggest that there's something less than manly about a player who's satisfied to finish second, or 10, or 35th if he knows that he did everything he could to perform as well as he could. The writers who push this idea, like to quote Vince Lombardi as saying, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." I had a cousin named Sal Somma who knew Lombardi, and from him I know the story behind that quotation. Sal played for New York University against Fordham in the era when Lombardi was a member of the offensive line called the Seven Blocks of Granite.

Later, Sal became a high school football coach, one of the best in the history of New York City schools. His teams at New Dorp High School played the single-wing, and they were powerhouses at around the same time Lombardi was a very successful high school coach at St Cecilia's in Englewood, NJ. They stayed in touch through the years, even after Lombardi became a legend with the Green Bay Packers and that quote became part of his legend. My cousin asked him about it.

Lombardi said he had first heard the expression from a losing coach at Vanderbilt, Red Saunders. He wasn't sure what Saunders had meant by it. But Lombardi said he had never meant to denigrate another human being about winning or losing a football game. He was talking about making the commitment to winning, the commitment to excellence. He saw winning as an attitude, a state of mind, a level of commitment rather than an end result. He told my cousin that sometimes his teams might lose a game by a touchdown or two, but if he thought the team had made the commitment and given it their best, he would be the first to pat them on the back in the locker room and tell them what a great job they did. On the other hand, there might be times when he felt they were the better team and they lost because they didn't give a full commitment and their best effort. Then, he'd be the first to kick them in the butt and tell them so. The point is that Lombardi was about the commitment to excellence. He wasn't about the final score.

If you make that commitment to excellence and honour it throughout a tournament, then you're a winner in the battle with yourself. You'll also win some of the tournaments.

The Golfer's Mind by Dr Bob Rotella is published tomorrow by Simon and Schuster, price £14.99

If you play today . . . 10 tips

1 Play to play great. Don't play not to play poorly.

2 Love the challenge of the day, whatever it may be.

3 Get out of results and get into process.

4 Know that nothing will bother or upset you on the golf course, and you will be in a great state of mind for every shot.

5 Playing with a feeling that the outcome doesn't matter is almost always preferable to caring too much.

6 Believe fully in yourself so you can play freely.

7 See where you want the ball to go before every shot.

8 Be decisive, committed, and clear.

9 Be your own best friend.

10 Love your wedge and your putter.