Mental Golf and Golf Psychology

Before you enter any competition, you increase your chance of success by having a good understanding of your opponent. Before undertaking mental training of a golf team, a coach will increase his or her probability of success by understanding what he or she is up against.

It has been claimed many times that "Golf is 90% Mental" when competing against golfers of equivalent mechanical skills. If this is true, why does the mental game of golf receive the least amount of attention and practice by most golfers and many golf coaches?

The answer can be found in the facts that most golfers lack an understanding of how their mind processes information and how the mind/body connection works. Plus, many golfers don't develop the self-discipline or mental-discipline that is a very visible requirement of physical demanding sports.

A good example of this can by found by comparing golf to swimming. Both golf and swimming are individual sports. In golf, the goal is to get the ball in the hole with the least number of strokes. In swimming, the goal is to swim your distance in the least amount of time. The winner is decided by who completes the goal with the least number of strokes for golf or in the least amount of time for swimming.

If a golf coach watched a swim team go through its daily practice routine, he or she would witness the swim coach pushing his team through a grueling workout that leaves his swimmers both physically and mentally exhausted. What allows a swim coach to be able to push his swimmers to physical and mental extremes while a golf coach can only ask his or her players to work harder at improving their mental game?

Golf coaches are at a disadvantage compared to swim coaches and coaches of other physical demanding sports when it comes to determining if their players are working on developing their mental-discipline because they are not mind readers.

Swimming requires an individual to keep pushing his body to go faster and faster. This requires tremendous mental-disciple. Swimming by its very nature demands both physical and mental effort. All a swim coach has to do to determine if his swimmers are increasing their physical performance and mental-discipline is to look at how fast their bodies are moving through the water and time them with a stop watch.

The clock doesn't lie and a swimmer can't get away with dogging it. Otherwise, the swimmer will eventually get cut from the team by the coach and be replaced by someone who will push his body and mind to excel. As a result, a swim coach can almost predict his team's performance when it's time to compete.

Golf requires an individual to keep improving his or her mechanics and to play in the present one shot at a time. This requires tremendous and more complex mental-discipline. However, all a golf coach can generally see is his player's mechanics when he hits the ball. The coach can only guess at what is going through his player's mind.

As a result, many golfers get away with neglecting to work on improving their mental game because their coach is not a mind reader and doesn't have a mental training program that helps him solve this dilemma. Unfortunately, this one sided approach allows many golfers to have good mechanics during practice that too often don't hold up during competition.

Old man golf makes a special effort to do his best to keep mentally weak golfers honest. A golfer may fool himself or his coach by thinking he can get away without working on his mental game, but he can't fool old man golf. Just like a swimmer can't fool the clock or his coach.

I'm sure that many coaches will relate to the comments of Rob Mangini, a former assistant men's golf coach at Arizona State University: "If you are interested in improving your game, I would highly recommend helping your head as much as you are helping your swing. What makes me laugh is you see golfers spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours on their golf swing only to walk around the golf course with a ten cent head. Believe me, your mental approach is every bit as important as your physical approach".

Unfortunately, many golfers don't even realize that they are walking around with a ten cent head because they don't have an understanding of what goes into developing a strong mental game and the mental-discipline it requires. "The Mental Keys" will definitely help your players to lower their score, if they use them.

About The Author: Michael Anthony is the author of the unique and highly successful mental golf training program THE MENTAL KEYS to Improve Your Golf. He has helped thousands of Golfers to improve their game and lower their scores by showing them how to get a firm grip on their mental golf game

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