Keeping Positive Focus
“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game.” – Jack Nicklaus
If any of you desire to shoot low scores….wait that’s all of us. As I was saying, for all of us who strive to shoot lower scores there is one thing that you must have, confidence in your ability.
One of the greatest muscles is our mind. Your mind will influence the rest of your body to do what ever you are thinking about. How many times have you stood over a golf shot and thought to yourself, “don’t hit it in the water!” Come on, I know you’ve said this before. What usually happens? You hit a great golf shot right into the blue abyss you wanted to avoid. Your mind does not distinguish between the do and the don’t. Your focus was on the water and that is what you influenced your body into producing.
No let’s take this example and give it a positive spin. Have you ever had the day where you just start making putts? No matter where you are on the green the ball just seems to keep finding the bottom of the cup. As you keep going you just keep visualizing the ball rolling over the edge of the hole and listening to the sound of the ball coming to rest at the bottom of the cup. You aren’t thinking about how hard to hit a putt, what break, what direction the grain of the grass is going…you just mentally see the ball going in and presto, the ball goes in again.
The greatest challenge that amateurs face is keeping the positive mental focus throughout a round. It is intermittent at best. Hence you see some good golf shots, and others that are best forgotten. How do you keep your focus on each shot? I have a little trick that can help you, it has helped several of my students in the past.
What you are looking for is something subtle that will initiate a response that you say to yourself, “Get focused.” And more importantly, that you do. On thing is to take your scorecard and when you are filling out the names of your playing partners prior to the round also write on the card “POSITIVE FOCUS” in big bold letters. Since you typically write down scores in between holes, when you see this it will act as a reminder of your task at hand. You will retell your mind several times during the course of the round that it needs to stay sharp, and on the task at hand which is hitting good golf shots.
Try this tip the next time you play golf and see if it helps you out. You might find that by reading your card, staying in tune with positive thoughts you will drop a shot or two from your round. It definitely helps me out, that’s why I do this every round of golf I play.