“Golf is played on a five-and-a-half-inch course. The space between your ears.” Bobby Jones said that nearly one hundred years ago and it remains as true today as it was back then.
Golf is very much a technical game but the reality is that a bad mindset is more punishing than an inside takeaway. Without the correct fundamentals in the brain, it won’t tell your body how to correctly perform what it has learned.
The very best in the game employ highly-skilled psychologists to ensure they reach and maintain their goals and utilise their expertise just as much as a swing coach. With that, here are five tips and tricks to get you into a better state of mind and help you play better golf.
1. Stay In The Present
This is often seen as a cliché within golf, and sport in general, but it is perhaps the most fundamental piece of psychological advice in bettering performance.
At any given time during a round of golf, your focus must solely be on the present moment. Whether that be a tight tee shot or a short putt, your sole focus must be on executing that shot to the very best of your abilities. Your score and how you performed on previous holes is irrelevant to the task at hand.
Once the mind has been trained in this way, you will learn the art of relaxed concentration. This is where the focus becomes more intense but in fact, it requires less and less effort as it becomes a subconscious process. This is why the very best in the world always look relaxed and are able to perform to a high standard in the most pressured environments.
2. Focus On What You Are Trying To Do
As you are preparing to hit a golf shot, your focus must be on what you are trying to do and not what you are trying not to do.
So often, amateur golfers exhaust themselves with panic and worry that they are physically incapable of making a good golf swing and inevitably put themselves in the position they so desperately wanted to avoid (or worse.)
A good golf shot is the by-product of a good thought process. That’s not to say you should blindly ignore hazards rather, acknowledge and…
..
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Golf Monthly RSS Feed…