Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

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I think having faith and believing that things are ultimately in God’s hands is very close to trusting your ability in sports such as golf. When a golfer is in the right frame of mind, he’s confident that he can produce the shot he sees with his mind’s eye. He trusts that the skills he has ingrained through practice are going to work for him if he just lets them and doesn’t try to guide or steer the ball. But at the same time, part of his thinking is acceptance of whatever happens to the golf ball once he hits it. He knows that because he’s a human being, not every shot will come off the way he intends it. He knows that because golf can be a capricious game, his ball is sometimes going to take a weird hop into the woods. He knows he can only do his best and wait to see what the outcome is.” Dr. Bob Rotella is a world-renowned sports psychologist who works with some of the best golfers in the world including Tom Kite, Brad Faxon, and Davis Love III. He works with these players to sharpen their mental game, using confidence and imagination to play the game of golf. Dr. Rotella works to find certain situations and games to help fix the problem in a players confidence. Rotella works to make sure the player has fun on the golf course while playing at the fullest potential. He also uses simple conversations where the student will learn the answer to their problem using Dr. Rotella's good use of common sense. Dr. Rotella's way of approaching the game has inspired and improved many players, and the next could be you.

Performance process goals involve things like staying in the present moment, accepting whatever happens as it happens, underreacting to everything, being unflappable, and totally trusting in your skills during competition.” You cannot hit a golf ball consistently well if you think about the mechanics of your swing as you play.” This is all the more important for amateurs who play once or twice a week. They need to keep their swings simple and their confidence high. They must learn to resist the kind of temptation that can lead to loss of confidence, temptation often garbed as well-meaning advice.” The most interesting “golf” advice I took from this book (the below starred* paragraphs are filled with more advice from this book too) was the authors analogy on trusting your golf swing. He states, paraphrased, that you can walk on a 2x4 that’s flat on the ground. You trust your walk. But, raise that 2x4 forty feet in the air, and you become wobbly, you distrust your steps. You already know how to walk, trust it and go across the 2x4 - it’s the same either way, but your mind isn’t. Much like a golf swing, learn to swing then trust it. When you think about the swing, it compounds the error. There’s also a time and place to work on your swing, and it’s not on the course.I told him it would be harder for him to achieve great things in golf than it would be for his school's basketball players to achieve great things in their sport, because he would have to do it himself. He would have to set his own goals higher than his team's, and commit himself to achvieving them. It would be an individual quest, and sometimes a lonely one.

Golfing potential depends primarily on attitude, how well he chips and putts, and how well he thinks. Ch 4 describes a basketball shooter who is cold throughout the game, but hits the winning shot through self-confidence that he’s overdue due to the cold spell. Tinkering with shooting mechanics would have had a worse outcome. Weekend players start tinkering instead of trusting their swings. The latter might surprise them in the way the brain and body will respond to do things right, when it matters most.Rotella, a renowned golf psychologist, not only gives solid psychological advice--he also shares intimate stories about encounters with fellow scholars and his more famous clients: Brad Faxon, Fred Couples, Tom Kite, etc. Exceptional people, I have found, either start out being optimistic or learn to be optimistic because they realize that they can’t get what they want in life without being optimistic.” You’ll encounter many obstacles on the golf course, and this book is designed to prepare you for any situation.

once learned, don't think about the mechanics of draw or fade. simply execute. your body will produce the swing required.There is a section where Rotella specifically talks about how socioeconomic class and other factors should not be used as excuses for the level of golf skill, and that it is the mentality that truly matters. I agree with this to a degree, but in my experience, golf is predominantly filled with wealthy white people, and that is for a reason. Golf is such an expensive sport to play, and there are still so many unsaid barriers that prevent diversity. To disregard these societal factors is extremely concerning to me, especially considering that they play an important role in shaping an individual's mentality to begin with. Golf has become much more competitive and systemized since this book was written, so every advantage a player has matters. There are also times when Rotella slips into using exclusively male pronouns when describing general players, which I found to be disappointing. Dr Bob Rotella is one of the hottest golfing performance consultants in the world today. Unlike other performance consultants, Rotella goes beyond the usual mental aspects of the game and the reliance on specific techniques. Free will is a golfer’s greatest source of strength and power. Choosing how to think is a crucial decision. The loss of focus on four or five shots a round makes the difference between great golf and mediocre golf. The book is written in a conversational format, meaning it will be easier to understand than overly formal books filled with overcomplicated technical jargon.

On the first tee, a golfer must expect only two things of himself: to have fun, and to focus his mind properly on every shot Ch 3 stresses that fear of failure on the course — not trust & confidence — causes one to think about the mechanics of the swing instead of being fluid and natural. That reduces consistent shotmaking. Only train the swing mechanics during practice, then trust it on the course. Focus on targets and strategy, and forget correcting flaws & mechanics. Envision the desired shot, and trust the body to deliver. Golfers need selective memories, retaining the memory of great shots and forgetting bad ones. Selective memory helps a golfer grow in confidence as he gains experience and skill. If someone in that category asks me whether he should keep going, I don’t have an answer. I have questions. The most basic is, “Are you sure you’ve honored your commitment?” By that, I mean to ask whether the client has done what he set out to do, which is to make the strongest possible effort to become as good as he can be by creating and fulfilling performance and preparation processes.”permit yourself to enjoy the good shots. you'll remember them better this way. Just forget the bad ones. No one gets to the top alone. A golfer needs a good swing coach and a spouse, family, and friends who believe in him and encourage him.”