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Consider the free throw. As with the tee shot in golf, nearly everything—the ball, the height of the basket, the distance—is constant, except the movement of the athlete. If you watch the best free-throw shooters, you will notice two things. First, they have routines that they follow on every shot.
In much the same way, a golfer who fears failure—as most amateurs and many professionals do, at least some of the time—tends to think about how he takes the club back, how far he turns, how he cocks his wrists, how he starts the downswing, or other swing mechanics. Inevitably, he will tend to lose whatever grace and rhythm nature has endowed him with, which leads to inconsistent
shotmaking with every club, from the driver to the putter. This suggests a most important principle: You cannot hit a golf ball consistently well if you think about the mechanics of your swing as you play.
the human organism performs a task like the golf swing much better if the athlete looks at a target and reacts rather than looks, thinks and reacts.
But the time to worry about swing mechanics must be limited, and the place to worry about them is the practice tee and only the practice tee.
On the golf course, you have to be like the good free-throw shooter who eyes the basket and lets the ball go. You have to be like the person who walks across the balance beam without thinking about how to walk. You have to believe that you’ve practiced the golf swing enough to have faith in it. To put it concisely:
Before taking any shot, a golfer must pick out the smallest possible target.
LOCKING YOUR MIND onto a small target will help you deal with looming hazards. The brain tries to be an accommodating mechanism. It will try to send the ball in the direction of the last thing you look at or think about.
If your last thought before striking the ball is “don’t hit it in the pond,” the brain is likely to react by telling your muscles to hit it in the pond.
Next, pick the target. Most players do this standing behind the ball. Some do it standing next to the ball. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the target be small and precise.
This preaddress phase of the routine is the time to deal with any problems that might be caused by an unusual or unfavorable lie. If the ball is on a downslope, an upslope, or the side of a hill, take a stance next to it, take a practice swing or two, and determine the adjustments in the flex of your knees or the tilt of your shoulders you will have to make to cope with the lie. Think them through at this stage because you don’t want to have them occur to you as you prepare to hit the ball. If your lie is flat, of course, this step isn’t necessary.
Then the most important part of an exemplary routine begins. It’s deceptively simple: Look at the target, look at the ball, and swing.
The idea that underlies this fundamental principle is the same one behind trusting your swing. Your brain and body work best together when the brain reacts to a target. Once you have completed your setup and locked onto your target, further delay can only be an opportunity for unwanted thoughts and distractions to disturb your concentration and pollute that pure and unconscious reaction.
low scores depend on how well a golfer plays once the ball is within about 120 yards of the hole.
a weekend player’s short game can save pars and turn double-bogeys into bogeys. A solid short game can turn a hacker who can’t hit more than a weak banana ball off the tee into a player who shoots in the low 80s or high 70s.
If you’re not spending 70 percent of your practice time on shots from 120 yards in, you’re not trying to become the best golfer you can be.
If you’re 260 yards from the green and you can only hit the ball 230 with your fairway wood, it makes no sense to hit that wood if your favorite approach shot is a wedge from 100 yards. Hit a 6 or a 7-iron, then hit the wedge.
To become a good putter, you must make a commitment to good thinking. You have to fill your mind with thoughts that will help you, not excuses for poor putting. You have to decide that, come what may, you love putting and you’re glad that every hole gives you a chance to use your putter, because that’s where you’ve got a big advantage over all the players who dread putting.
There is a way of thinking that can help you get the speed right. For a downhill putt, tell yourself that you want the ball to barely make it over the front lip of the cup on its last rotation. For an uphill putt, you might think of hitting the ball so it strikes the back of the cup as it goes down.
the longer a player stands over the ball before he hits the putt, the more likely he is to allow the intrusion of mechanical thoughts or doubts that will corrupt the pure, simple interplay among the target, the brain, and the nervous system.
The idea is to let the conscious mind step aside and let the subconscious react to the target. Think when you’re behind the ball. Don’t think when you’re over it. Do.
On long putts, the biggest fallacy I see players falling for is the three-foot target. This is an imaginary circle with a radius of three feet and the hole at the center. Some teachers suggest a player facing a long putt should try only to get the ball inside this circle. This makes no sense. Think about an archer or a pistol shooter. They shoot at an artificial target with a bull’s-eye and concentric outer circles. But no matter what the distance, they always aim for the bull’s-eye. It gives them the biggest margin of error. Even if they miss it, they’re likely to hit something on the target.
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The question you must ask yourself is not whether you’re sinking your putts. The proper question is whether your attitude is giving your putts a chance to go in.
If it is, you should be encouraged by missed putts. Sooner or later, since you’re doing everything right, putts will start to fall. The law of averages, if you’ve just missed a few, suggests it will be sooner rather than later.
Fear causes golfers to try to guide or steer the ball, rather than swing freely. That doesn’t work. Swinging freely makes the ball go straight. Swinging carefully causes disasters. To play his best, a golfer has to feel that once he’s aligned himself and picked his target, it’s as if he doesn’t care where the ball goes. He is going to trust his swing and let it go.
In truth, while length off the tee is desirable, it’s not nearly as important as keeping the ball in play and chipping and putting well,
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.
A golfer chokes when he lets anger, doubt, fear or some other extraneous factor distract him before a shot.
First, stay in the present and keep your mind sharply focused on the shot immediately in front of you.
avoid mechanical thoughts, such as the tempo thought Palmer allowed into his mind. Instead, strive to become looser, freer and more confident.
