Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Bob Rotella
Read between
June 26 - July 10, 2022
If a golfer has confidence in his short game—if he looks forward to opportunities to show it off on the golf world’s greatest stage—it helps him to accept calmly whatever happens on the course. It relaxes him. No shot, no mistake, is going to upset him. His short game is an emotional shield.
I simply reminded him to do the same things he always tried to do—stay focused on his targets, visualize his shots, commit to his routine, and accept completely whatever happened to the golf ball.
No matter what level a golfer plays at, the majority of his shots will be taken from 100 yards or closer to the hole. And every hole (barring holes-in-one and double eagles, which are so rare that they don’t matter) will end with either a putt or a short-game shot: a chip, a pitch, or an explosion from a bunker.
You’ve got to be optimistic. You must see yourself doing it well.
If that’s difficult for you to believe or accept, try to understand first that you are what you have thought of yourself and you will become what you think of yourself from this moment onward.
You have to be able to believe in yourself when no one else believes in you or sees exceptional talent in you.
the more important question is not how many strokes you took but whether you went through your mental and physical routine on every shot, whether you had your mind where you wanted it to be before every swing.
Every time you step onto a first tee in competition, you need to feel that all you have to do is play your game. You can’t do that if you think you’d rather be playing someone else’s game.
The winning athlete relies on subconscious memory.
The pitch to the green and the four-foot putt have a much better chance of being successful if the golfer can manage to execute them with his subconscious brain in control. I call this “getting out of your own way.”
When it comes to performing complex physical tasks, human beings do best when they learn the task, practice it diligently, then go unconscious and rely on subconscious memory to perform the movements under pressure. If the conscious mind becomes involved in the process, the body performs less gracefully and efficiently.
When I talk to golfers, I use words like “oblivious,” “nonchalant,” “indifferent,” “uncaring,” and “irrelevant” to try to get them to understand what I am driving at. Sometimes I will describe it as a “whiteout.” I use phrases like “see it and do it.” I talk to players about “going unconscious.” These words give a hint of what I am trying to convey, but only a hint.
How can I not have conscious thoughts but at the same time remember to react to my target? All I can say is that good players do it when they’re at their best. And I have seen many players learn to do it. Like everything else, it takes resolve and practice. You’re looking for a soft focus on the target, not a hard focus. Take a casual look at it. Make the target small, but not so small that you have to squint to see it. One way of getting out of your own way is throwing away expectations.
You look at the target, and then your eyes come back to the ball. You surrender to what you see. You surrender to your talent, your skill. You trust that your body will do what is necessary to send the ball to your target. You surrender to your subconscious and you accept that if you do that, you have your best chance to make the ball go where you’ve looked. Mark Wilson calls it “giving up control to gain control,” and he tells me that it’s the hardest golfing skill for him to master.
“I can’t play without a swing thought, Doc,” this player will tell me. A swing thought is a crutch. If you’re playing with a swing thought, you’re not going unconscious.
You already know a couple of the prerequisites. You’ve got to have a strong self-image. If you believe in yourself, it’s much easier to go unconscious. You’ve got to train yourself to be optimistic. You’ve got to love your game, especially your short game. You’ve got to make a commitment to the process of good shot-making and honor that commitment. You have to develop the discipline to trust the mechanics you bring to the golf course on any given day.
trying to give every shot the same equal and low level of importance, whether it comes in practice or on the last hole of a tournament.
The goal is to learn your address procedure so well that you don’t have to give it any thought as you play. Like your swing or your stroke, it should be governed by subconscious memory.
For 15 to 40 seconds or so, your focus must be completely on the shot, the target, and your routine.
But the common element of all effective routines is the importance of the target. Anything else can vary, but you must get your mind oriented on a target. It should be, however, a soft orientation,
Expectations build pressure; they’re not helpful.
On most shots and putts, there’s a steady rhythm to the last look at the target, the return of the eyes to the ball, and the beginning of the swing or stroke. Look at the target. Look at the ball. Let it go.
Regardless of how you get there, acceptance completes your routine. Your attitude has to be, No matter where it ends up, I am going to accept it, go get it, and score with it. You must feel that a new game of golf starts at the end of every shot.
No matter what level you play at, you’re going to take an average of 27 or more (quite a few more if you’re an average player) of your strokes with your putter during every round. That’s about twice as many as you’ll take with any other club. Thus, the fastest way to improve your scores is by improving your putting.
My experience is that a player can make almost any combination of style, grip, and equipment work if he believes in it. There is far less latitude on the mental side of putting. It is absolutely essential that a player sees the ball going into the hole and putts decisively. It is absolutely essential that a player has a sound, consistent putting routine. It is absolutely essential that a player gets out of his own way and goes unconscious.
Good players understand this, and they understand that the ball doesn’t have to go in to make a putt successful. They believe that if they made the putt in their minds and honored their process, it’s a successful putt.
Okay, I’ve seen it and I know where it’s going and no matter where it ends up, I am going to accept it, go get it, and score with it. Now that I know this, let’s just do the routine. They don’t win when they’re telling themselves, I’ve got to pure this. I’ve got to get it close.
Acceptance, as you know, is part of a sound routine for all shots, including putts. Whatever happens with a putt means very little to a player who understands this.
Your goal must be a routine in which you make every putt in your mind, away from the ball; then, once you’re over the ball, react indifferently to your target. Finally, you accept what happens.
Patience is golf’s most underrated virtue and perhaps the hardest virtue to teach. I see a lot of players, amateurs and professionals alike, who can be patient as long as they’re making huge steps forward. But as soon as the huge steps stop, so does their patience. To be successful, a golfer must learn to enjoy the challenge of improvement, to enjoy the journey. He must find pride in accepting the challenge. Rather than be frustrated by the journey’s length, he must dwell on how good it will feel to finally arrive. Then, when he does arrive, he must accept a second challenge, the challenge of
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Don’t use your practice and your hard work as a pretext for being angry and impatient. Don’t have the mentality, “I’ve worked so hard. I deserve to be rewarded.” When a player tells me that, my response is, “Oh, so you made a deal with the devil that if you practice a certain amount, he’s going to make you win?” It doesn’t work that way.
Most of all, you need to be certain that acceptance is part of your routine. Acceptance is essential to acquiring patience.
One of the best adages a golfer can follow is to always play with a conservative strategy and a cocky swing. That is, pick a shot you’re fully confident you can hit, then swing confidently. If a player picks a shot he isn’t confident about, his swing will reflect that doubt. Impatience leads to that mistake.
On the golf course, a player with a good mental game concentrates on what he can control and only on what he can control. He can control his own adherence to his routine, making sure that he does everything he can to make each shot a success. Thoughts about what might happen in the future only clutter the mind.
You must be secure enough to believe that if you play your best you will be a winner. You must understand that winning the battle with yourself is all you can do.
There’s nothing less rational than a player who never practices losing his temper when he hits a bad shot. If you never practice, don’t try too hard or care too much.
