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Putting Out of Your Mind

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Overview

This old adage is familiar to all golfers but is especially resonant with Dr. Bob Rotella, the bestselling author of Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect and one of the foremost golf authorities today. In Putting Out of Your Mind, Rotella offers entertaining and instructive insight into the key element of a winning game -- great putting. He here reveals the unique mental approach that great putting requires and helps golfers of all levels master this essential skill.

Editorial Reviews

The previous generation of golf stars were reluctant to admit to visiting a "sports shrink." But by raising the competitive bar, players like Tiger Woods and David Duval have sent countless professional and amateur golfers to the couch in an attempt to discover if their minds are keeping them from winning the big ones. Writing here with Cullen (Why Golf ), former University of Virginia sports-psychologist-turned-consultant Rotella applies his popular, well-respected methodology to the stroke that wins tournaments. According to Rotella, good putting has less to do with mechanics than attitude: golfers who can empty their minds of any thought other than making the putt, follow their pre-shot routine faithfully and believe, will improve their putting. The book is lucid, well-paced and enlivened by anecdotes of golf champion Jack Nicklaus's selective memory ("He was able to block from his mind all the missed putts. He kept and replayed the memories of made putts"), by an introduction by veteran pro Brad Faxon and by a foreword from Duval. All lovers of the game will benefit from bringing this book to the green. (June 5) Forecast: Rotella's two most recent titles Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect and Golf Is a Game of Confidence have been sports-title bestsellers, spawning a huge sideline in calendars and other paraphernalia; this title should continue the trend. Expect it to be placed point-of-sale at the pro shop. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Bob Rotella

Dr. Bob Rotella was the Director of Sports Psychology for twenty years at the University of Virginia and is now a consultant to many of the world's leading golfers as well as to some of the top golf organizations in the world, including the PGA of America, the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, and the Senior LPGA Tour. A writer for and consultant to Golf Digest, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Free Press

Filesize

332.69 KB

Number of Pages

224

eBook ISBN

9780743216739

Excerpt from: Putting Out of Your Mind by Bob Rotella

As the last twosome approached the 72nd green of the 1998 Nissan Open, not many people in Los Angeles gave my friend and client Billy Mayfair much chance to win. Tiger Woods, playing a group ahead of Billy, had just birdied the final hole to take a one-stroke lead. Tiger was charging. He had birdied three of the last four holes.

The Nissan Open that year was played at Valencia Country Club, and the 18th hole was a long par-5. Billy had not birdied it all week and he did not reach it in two strokes on this occasion. He hit his three-wood into a bunker to the right of the green. But Billy then hit a nice explosion shot to about five feet. He made that putt to force a play-off.

Even then, it was all but assumed that Tiger would win the play-off, which began on the same par-5. Tiger hits the ball much longer than Billy, whose length off the tee is about average for the PGA Tour. Even those who understood that good putting is much more important than length off the tee found reason to favor Tiger: Billy Mayfair has a very unorthodox putt-ing stroke, the kind of stroke that television commentators love to criticize, love to say won't hold up under pressure.

That putting stroke was what initially brought Billy and me together.

Billy grew up in Phoenix. From the time he started playing golf, he enjoyed putting. He had little choice. His parents weren't wealthy and when they dropped him off at a municipal golf course called Papago Park, they couldn't give him money for greens fees or range balls. The only thing a kid could do for free at Papago Park was putt and chip around the big, crowned practice green.

So Billy did, five days a week after school. He developed into a very good putter. Even though he never hit the ball enormous distances, he won a lot of junior tournaments. He won the U.S. Public Links. He won the U.S. Amateur.

He did all of this with the idiosyncratic putting stroke he'd developed at Papago Park. Billy did not take the putter straight back and bring it straight through the ball. He drew the club back outside the target line -- the line he intended for the ball to travel as it left the putter blade. As he started his forward stroke, it looked as if he would pull every putt to his left. But at the last instant, Billy straightened his blade until it was perpendicular to the target line. And he made a lot of putts that way, even though the purists who saw him insisted he was cutting the ball, coming across it from right to left.