Golf Psychology Newsletter - Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

Welcome again to the Golf Brain newsletter.

I have just returned from a fascinating couple of weeks in Australia where I had the privilege of presenting to the Australian PGA in each of their states stretching from Western Australia right across to Queensland. As I finally touched down in Manchester at the end of my fourteenth flight in two weeks, I had time to reflect on the warmth and humour that I had encountered in Australia. The willingness to both seek out and share information amongst the pro’s was something I will never forget. We live in exciting times as we discover more and more about how the human brain works but we will only push back the boundaries by continuing to SHARE information and recognise that what we may have been convinced was the best way to perform MAY not be true.

For me in terms of golf nowhere is that more apparent than the whole area of practice.

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PRACTICE DOESN’T MAKE PERFECT

How many of you have experienced the extreme frustration of working really hard at your game and achieving absolutely NOTHING?

The feeling grows stronger and stronger as you put more effort into the game and get less and less reward. And, as many golfers have found, their game actually goes worse the more that they practice. Yet, we have all heard the theory that you should ‘work hard’ to improve by hitting hundreds and hundreds of balls. Well, for the majority of people I would say that the theory doesn’t seem to be producing much in the way of results.

In Australia, I heard a fascinating story of how the great cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman used to practice his batting by using a golf ball thrown against a wall and he had to hit the ball with a cricket stump!

What Bradman was doing was something that I have found is common in many other sports, namely, he was making practice MORE difficult than the game itself. After you can hit a golf ball with a stump I would imagine that cricket with a bat would seem relatively easy in comparison.

Yet, the way that we practice at golf is almost guaranteed to produce failure because it is so much easier than the real game itself. We stand on a wide open field (range) with a bunch of balls all from the same lie, with the same club, about as far removed from the real game as ice hockey is to badminton!

In many ways, practicing the way that we do breeds FALSE CONFIDENCE because we get very good at hitting the ball on the range but then cannot take this form to the course.

It could well be that if you take a completely fresh approach to your practice in the next twelve months, you could be in the envious position of putting in less time but receiving better results.

Remember the key concept : Make practice MORE difficult than the game itself. Here are a number of ways to do it.

• Play WORST BALL on a regular basis over 9 holes. Two balls each hole and you have to keep playing the worst shot until you get the ball in the hole.
• Practice putting to a small hole or even a tee peg. You will literally be ‘shaping your perceptions’ so that the hole will appear larger.
• Play PAR 18 around the chipping green. One ball, nine different locations. What score do you shoot?
• Practice with a partner and have him call a shot out on the range, high draw, low punch etc. How good are you?
• Hit 20 pitches from different locations, how many are inside 6 feet.

QUESTIONS

I heard Tiger Woods say recently that he doesn’t work much on the mental side of the game. If this is the case, then how come he is so good in that department?

I am sure a lot of you have heard of Butch Harmon? Primarily for the work that he did with Tiger Woods, yet how many of you have heard of Jay Brunza? Most of you will be shaking your head with a puzzled look on your face because it is a little known fact that Jay Brunza, a sports psychologist, worked with Tiger from the age of 12. Woods has said that he doesn’t work on the mental game but he usually follows this by saying that he doesn’t need to because ‘all the strategies are in place’. The message is clear for the juniors out there and parents, develop mental skills early because once they are in place they stay!

Q :

I am very successful in the work that I do as an Accountant yet my golf never ever seems to get any better. I am a complete perfectionist and the game just seems to baffle me more and more. What do I do?

Perfectionism these days tends to get a bad press, which is unfortunate because I absolutely insist that you keep your perfectionism in your work. I for one do not want my Accountant to be anything other than a total perfectionist in all aspects of his work.

So, your perfectionism in one context of your work is possibly your biggest strength, however, in another context, golf, it may well be your biggest weakness.

The following statistics concerning the best players in the WORLD on the USPGA Tour may allow you to back off yourself a little and change your destructive golfing perfectionism. They will :

• Will miss fairways at LEAST 20% of the time
• Miss 25% of the greens in regulation
• Will average AT BEST 1.7 putts per green

So, even the very best do not come even close to mastering the game. You may be able to build the best bridges in the world but to conquer golf is perhaps a bit much!

RESEARCH

Laugh a LOT!!!!

Norman Cousins (1989) reports that ten minutes of belly laughter can provide two hours of pain free sleep across a range of illness.

Edward O’Brien at Marywood University in Pennsylvania found that college students who had to give an impromptu speech had heart rates of 100 beats per minute while they were speaking, but those who watched an episode of the comedy ‘Seinfeld’ beforehand performed with heart rates of only 80 to 85 beats per minute.

The message is clear we need to LIGHTEN UP to ALLOW performance to emerge.