The Golfer's Mind: Play to Play Great

Introduction: My Top Ten All of the rings and all of the money and all of the color and display -- they linger only in memory. The spirit, the will to win and excel, these are the things that endure. The quality of any man's life is the full measure of his commitment to excellence and to victory, regardless of what field he might be in.-- Vince Lombardi I teach the psychology of greatness. The way I teach it varies.When I first begin to work with a client, I like to arrange for him or her to come to my home in Virginia. We spend a couple of days together, some of it in conversation and some of it on the golf course. I get to know the client thoroughly. He is immersed in my ideas about using the mind to achieve greatness, about playing to play great, about bringing the best possible attitude to play and practice.After that, the nature of my contact with my clients may change. Some of them still like to come to Virginia periodically for a long session. But others prefer shorter talks on specific issues and problems that have arisen in their careers. I might meet them for lunch or dinner in a town that's hosting a golf tournament. We might chat on the putting green or the practice range. Sometimes we talk over the phone while he's in a hotel room and I'm at an airport.This book is akin to that second category of counseling sessions. In fact, it arises partly from them. When I talk to a player who says, "Doc, I'm having trouble trusting my swing," I review the fundamental ideas about the necessity of trust and why it helps a golfer produce the best shots he's capable of making. Players have often wished I had a book, a handbook if you will, that could serve the same function and reinforce those conversations. This is that book.If you're completely unfamiliar with sports psychology as I teach it and with its application to golf, you might want to consult one of my earlier books, likeGolf Is Not a Game of Perfect.It's my primer on how great golfers think.Often what I hear from readers of those earlier books is something to the effect that, "Your ideas were really helpful right after I read them, Doc, but lately they don't seem to work well." What that tells me is not that the ideas have gotten less effective. It tells me that over time, the reader has forgotten some of them. Or he's reverted to old ways of thinking, perhaps without realizing it.This doesn't surprise me. The players with whom I work individually are prone to the same problem. If the issue is trusting the swing for instance, they might be able to do it very well in the months after we have our initial session. It's one of the things I stress. But over time, a golfer is exposed to a barrage of contradictory ideas. People are telling him to think about the way his hands cock the club or the ratio between his hip turn and his shoulder turn. If he's a professional, he gets this sort of advice from renowned instructors on the practice range at Tour venues. If he's an average player, he gets it from magazines and television. Pretty soon, instead of trusting his swing and thinking about his target, he's thinking about pronation while he's on the golf course. He's trying to swing while his mind sorts through bits and pieces of conflicting advice. That's difficult to do.When this happens with one of my established clients, I review the essentials with him. This book is an effort to do the same thing for readers. It's a distilled version of what I teach.So often, in those telephone sessions, I return to ten fundamental points of good golf thinking. If Moses hadn't already copyrighted the name, I would be tempted to call them my ten commandments for playing great golf. I know that if a player adheres to them, he can find out exactly how low his skills are prepared to take him on any given round. Here they are:I. Play to play great. Don't play not to play poorly.II. Love t