Well 2010 is over and I spent a few minutes today reflecting on the past year. More to the point, I have been thinking about my golf game in 2010. This is the first year that I truly kept stats on most (over 90%) of my rounds in order to really help diagnose my game. First let’s look at the numbers and then try and decipher their meanings. [Read more →]
In the last five years, I have recommended one golf book over any other – “Putting Out of Your Mind” by Dr. Bob Rotella. It truly changed the way I think about putting and my putting ability. After spending years thinking I was a bad putter, I now approach every putt positively and I consider myself to be a great putter. That book made me change the way I mentally approached putting which ultimately made me change the way I thought about my putting ability.
Well, I have a new favorite golf book. I recently read “The Golfer’s Mind” by Dr. Rotella and it has changed the way I approach every shot. I can’t recommend it highly enough to all serious golfers, no matter your skill level. This is not a new book, as I think it was published in 2004, and it is available in most book stores or online here.
The nice thing is, unlike making a physical change to your golf swing, making a mental change can lead to immediate results. You don’t need to spend hours beating balls at the range, just spend a few hours reading and you can see great changes in your game. I personally saw the immediate effect this book can have this weekend. I gave the book to one of my golf buddies to read as I thought he would truly benefit from its principles. He was already a good player, carrying a 7 handicap, but he tended to get in his own way on the course, especially if things started to go bad. I hoped that the book would help him to stay in the moment and capitalize fully on his talent. He read it last week while on a business trip. We played on Saturday and he accomplished two milestones during the round. First, he shot under par for nine holes for the first time in his career, and, more importantly, he was able to finish the day even par, another first in his career. He credits the book for helping him focus on every shot and maintain a calm during adversity.
According to Dr. Rotella, he wrote this book because many of his students expressed a desire to have a handbook to refer to once they had stopped working with him directly. For that reason he put together a very easy guide to the ten principles he teaches for his former students, and for those of us who can’t afford to hire him for private counseling, to refer back to as a refresher. An excerpt from the book after the jump: [Read more →]
One of my golf buddies is truly on the verge of a breakthrough in his golf game. I have been playing golf with him for a few years now and in that time he has really made some significant strides in his game. I remember in the beginning I always thought that he had a good swing, but he tended to mismanage his game during a round and would end up costing him a lot of strokes. He inevitably would end up turning a bad shot into a bad hole, or worse, into a few bad holes. He hadn’t really learned how to limit the damage of a bad shot. He also tended to dwell on the bad swings which would always lead to worse swings.
Over the last few years we have played many rounds together and I have really seen a remarkable improvement in his course management. His swing is also better and I think he is hitting the ball with more confidence today than he ever has. He has told me on more than one occasion that his goal is to beat me on the course. Although I took that as a compliment, I think your goals should focus on your game and not mine. He beat me earlier this year for the first time and I think that has prompted him to create a more appropriate goal – to shoot par or better. [Read more →]