Instruction

Dr. Bob Rotella: My 10 Rules On Mental Fitness

Published

12 years ago

Dec 4, 2011

By Dr. Bob Rotella
With Alan Pittman
Photo by Walter Iooss Jr.
June 2009
Written by Golf Digest

01 Believe you can win.
I still remember my first major, the 1985 city championship in Charlottesville, Va. Back then I didn’t play a lot of golf, but I wanted to see how good the players in my town were. I shot in the 80s and finished third from last. When I got done, I decided to follow the leaders so I could see how my game compared. After watching them for 18 holes, my evaluation was this: They hit it farther than I did. They hit it straighter. Their bunker play was fantastic. And they chipped and putted better. But I left there believing that if those guys could win, so could I. I worked on my game, and over time I got better, including one winter when all I did each day after work was hit bunker shots. Eight years after I first competed, I made a 12-foot putt on 18 to win my city championship.

02 Don’t be seduced by results.
How can Trevor Immelman get to the 18th green of the final round of the 2008 Masters and not know where he stands? It’s called staying in the present, and it’s a philosophy I teach all the players I work with. It means not allowing yourself to be seduced by a score or by winning until you run out of holes. Instead, you get lost in the process of executing each shot and accept the result.

Before Trevor teed off on Sunday with a two-shot lead, he decided he wouldn’t look at leader boards. He had a plan: Pick a target, visualize the shot and let it rip. As Trevor walked up the 18th fairway, Brandt Snedeker put his arm around him and nudged him to walk ahead. Trevor told me it was the first time all day he allowed himself to think about the outcome. After marking his ball, he asked his caddie how they were doing. His caddie said he had a three-stroke lead over Tiger. Trevor said he went from being quiet and calm inside to thinking, How can I not five-putt this?

03 Sulking won’t get you anything.
The worst thing you can do for your prospects of winning is to get down when things don’t go well. If you start feeling sorry for yourself or thinking the golf gods are conspiring against you, you’re not focused on the next shot. When Padraig Harrington won the British Open in 2007, he got up and down for a double-bogey 6 on the last hole to make a playoff after knocking two balls into the water. Padraig told me he had a level of acceptance that earlier in his career he didn’t have. He said it never entered his mind that he might blow the tournament. His only thought was getting his ball in the hole so he could win the playoff.

04 Beat them with patience.
Every time you have the urge to make an aggressive play, go with the more conservative one. You’ll always be OK. In a tournament, the rough is thicker, the pins are tougher, and the greens are faster. The moment you get impatient, bad things happen.

The best example of patience I ever witnessed was Tom Kite at the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Kite had been 0 for 20 in U.S. Opens until then. On Sunday, wind gusts reached 35 miles per hour, but Kite didn’t get flustered. On a day when a lot of players didn’t break 80, Kite shot even par and won by two. In tough conditions, stay patient and let others beat themselves.

05 Ignore unsolicited swing advice.
Not too long ago, I was working with this player who was struggling. But a couple of strong finishes had him feeling better. At the next tournament he makes, like, eight birdies in the first round. Now he’s feeling really good. He stops by the putting green to hit a few, and a player he knows walks up to him and says: “I don’t know what you’re doing with your putting, but that’s not the way you used to set up.” A few minutes later another player comes over: “You don’t have your eyes over the ball the way you used to.” Now my guy doesn’t know what to think. He went from making everything he looked at to being a mess the next day.

You’ll have lots of well-meaning friends who want to give you advice. Don’t accept it. In fact, stop them before they can say a word. Their comments will creep into your mind when you’re on the course. If you’ve worked on your game, commit to the plan and stay confident.

06 Embrace your golf personality.
Some players like Anthony Kim love to socialize on the course. Others like Retief Goosen keep to themselves. The key is to find what works best for you. The toughest player, mentally and emotionally, I’ve ever worked with is Pat Bradley, the LPGA Tour Hall of Famer. She was like Ben Hogan — she didn’t talk to anybody when she played. She told me she didn’t have time to chat with players because she had an ongoing dialogue with herself. I still remember the day she called to tell me she was done. She’d been on the range before a tournament giving tips to other players. Later, on the first few holes, she found herself chitchatting with her playing partners. “I can’t play golf this way,” she told me. “I’m done. I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish.”

07 Have a routine to lean on.
I tell players to follow a mental and physical routine on every shot. It keeps you focused on what you have to do, and when the pressure is on, it helps you manage your nerves. A pre-shot routine helped Curtis Strange win his first U.S. Open, in 1988. Afterward he went home and watched the tape with his wife and kids. He told me they kept commenting on how cool and calm he looked. Curtis said to me: “I’m thinking, Who in the world are they talking about? They can’t be talking about me. I couldn’t get any moisture in my mouth. My heart was jumping out of my chest.” Curtis said he had so much emotion in his body it was unbelievable. He was working his tail off just to stay in the present, hit one shot at a time and not think about what it would mean to win the U.S. Open.

‘It’s easy to build up a tournament into something so huge that you can’t play.’

08 Find peace on the course.
When you practice hard and admit to yourself that you really want to win, it’s easy to build up a tournament into something so huge that you can’t play. I’ve seen amateurs not used to competing arrive two hours before their tee time and try to rebuild their golf swings. They become panicked practicers and try to perfect every area of their game. They get themselves so tied up in knots it’s ridiculous. Tour players do this, too. I’ve seen guys come to Augusta, rent a big house and invite their family and friends. When Thursday comes around, they start worrying: What if I miss the cut and disappoint everyone? The golf course has to be your sanctuary, the thing you love, and you can’t be afraid of messing up.

09 Test yourself in stroke play.
I’m a big believer that stroke play is real golf. I know lots of people who are good in matches who can’t play a lick at stroke play. But most guys who are good at stroke play also thrive in matches. When you have to count every shot, it’s a tougher game. Too often guys go out as a foursome and play “our best ball against your best ball.” That has its place, but stroke play makes you mentally tough.

10 Find someone who believes in you.
The greatest thing I’ve got going for me is my ability to believe in other people’s talents. I can see people doing things they can’t see themselves doing. Every champion needs that. Hogan once told me he considered quitting the game several times early in his career because he didn’t think he was providing for his wife the way he should. But Valerie wouldn’t let him quit. She knew he’d never be satisfied until he won majors. Having confidence in yourself is important, but it helps to have someone who believes in you, too, whether it’s a spouse, a friend, a teacher, or even a sport psychologist.

Read More http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2009-06/bobrotella_10rules#ixzz1fd83pFcL

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: My top 5 practice tips

Published

2 weeks ago

Sep 22, 2023

Terry Koehler

While there are many golfers who barely know where the practice (I don’t like calling it a “driving”) range is located, there are many who find it a place of adventure, discovery and fun. I’m in the latter group, which could be accented by the fact that I make my living in this industry. But then, I’ve always been a “ball beater,” since I was a kid, but now I approach my practice sessions with more purpose and excitement. There’s no question that practice is the key to improvement in anything, so today’s topic is on making practice as much fun as playing.

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved the range, and always embrace the challenge of learning new ways to make a golf ball do what I would like it to do. So, today I’m sharing my “top 5” tips for making practice fun and productive.

Have a mission/goal/objective. Whether it is a practice range session or practice time on the course, make sure you have a clearly defined objective…how else will you know how you’re doing? It might be to work on iron trajectory, or finding out why you’ve developed a push with your driver. Could be to learn how to hit a little softer lob shot or a knockdown pitch. But practice with a purpose …always.
Don’t just “do”…observe. There are two elements of learning something new. The first is to figure out what it is you need to change. Then you work toward that solution. If your practice session is to address that push with the driver, hit a few shots to start out, and rather than try to fix it, make those first few your “lab rats”. Focus on what your swing is doing. Do you feel anything different? Check your alignment carefully, and your ball position. After each shot, step away and process what you think you felt during the swing.
Make it real. To just rake ball after ball in front of you and pound away is marginally valuable at best. To make practice productive, step away from your hitting station after each shot, rake another ball to the hitting area, then approach the shot as if it was a real one on the course. Pick a target line from behind the ball, meticulously step into your set-up position, take your grip, process your one swing thought and hit it. Then evaluate how you did, based on the shot result and how it felt.
Challenge yourself. One of my favorite on-course practice games is to spend a few minutes around each green after I’ve played the hole, tossing three balls into various positions in an area off the green. I don’t let myself go to the next tee until I put all three within three feet of the hole. If I don’t, I toss them to another area and do it again. You can do the same thing on the range. Define a challenge and a limited number of shots to achieve it.
Don’t get in a groove. I was privileged enough to watch Harvey Penick give Tom Kite a golf lesson one day, and was struck by the fact that he would not let Tom hit more than five to six shots in a row with the same club. Tom would hit a few 5-irons, and Mr. Penick would say, “hit the 8”, then “hit the driver.” He changed it up so that Tom would not just find a groove. That paved the way for real learning, Mr. Penick told me.

My “bonus” tip addresses the difference between practicing on the course and keeping a real score. Don’t do both. A practice session is just that. On-course practice is hugely beneficial, and it’s best done by yourself, and at a casual pace. Playing three or four holes in an hour or so, taking time to hit real shots into and around the greens, will do more for your scoring skills than the same amount of range time.

So there you have my five practice tips. I’m sure I could come up with more, but then we always have more time, right?

The Wedge Guy: Anyone can be a better wedge player by doing these simple things

Published

4 weeks ago

Sep 8, 2023

Terry Koehler

As someone who has observed rank-and-file recreational golfers for most of my life – over 50 years of it, anyway – I have always been baffled by why so many mid- to high-handicap golfers throw away so many strokes in prime scoring range.

For this purpose, let’s define “prime scoring range” as the distance when you have something less than a full-swing wedge shot ahead of you. Depending on your strength profile, that could be as far as 70 to 80 yards or as close as 30 to 40 yards. But regardless of whether you are trying to break par or 100, your ability to get the ball on the green and close enough to the hole for a one-putt at least some of the time will likely be one of the biggest factors in determining your score for the day.

All too often, I observe golfers hit two or even three wedge shots from prime scoring range before they are on the green — and all too often I see short-range pitch shots leave the golfer with little to no chance of making the putt.

This makes no sense, as attaining a level of reasonable proficiency from short range is not a matter of strength profile at all. But it does take a commitment to learning how to make a repeating and reliable half-swing and doing that repeatedly and consistently absolutely requires you to learn the basic fundamentals of how the body has to move the club back and through the impact zone.

So, let’s get down to the basics to see if I can shed some light on these ultra-important scoring shots.

Your grip has to be correct. For the club to move back and through correctly, your grip on the club simply must be fundamentally sound. The club is held primarily in the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. Period. The lower hand has to be “passive” to the upper hand, or the mini-swing will become a quick jab at the ball. For any shot, but particularly these short ones, that sound grip is essential for the club to move through impact properly and repeatedly.
Your posture has to be correct. This means your body is open to the target, feet closer together than even a three-quarter swing, and the ball positioned slightly back of center.
Your weight should be distributed about 70 percent on your lead foot and stay there through the mini-swing.
Your hands should be “low” in that your lead arm is hanging naturally from your shoulder, not extended out toward the ball and not too close to the body to allow a smooth turn away and through. Gripping down on the club is helpful, as it gets you “closer to your work.
This shot is hit with a good rotation of the body, not a “flip” or “jab” with the hands. Controlling these shots with your body core rotation and leading the swing with your body core and lead side will almost ensure proper contact. To hit crisp pitch shots, the hands have to lead the clubhead through impact.
A great drill for this is to grip your wedge with an alignment rod next to the grip and extending up past your torso. With this in place, you simply have to rotate your body core through the shot, as the rod will hit your lead side and prevent you from flipping the clubhead at the ball. It doesn’t take but a few practice swings with this drill to give you an “ah ha” moment about how wedge shots are played.
And finally, understand that YOU CANNOT HIT UP ON A GOLF BALL. The ball is sitting on the ground so the clubhead has to be moving down and through impact. I think one of the best ways to think of this is to remember this club is “a wedge.” So, your simple objective is to wedge the club between the ball and the ground. The loft of the wedge WILL make the ball go up, and the bounce of the sole of the wedge will prevent the club from digging.

So, why is mastering the simple pitch shot so important? Because my bet is that if you count up the strokes in your last round of golf, you’ll likely see that you left several shots out there by…

Either hitting another wedge shot or chip after having one of these mid-range pitch shots, or
You did not get the mid-range shot close enough to even have a chance at a makeable putt.

If you will spend even an hour on the range or course with that alignment rod and follow these tips, your scoring average will improve a ton, and getting better with these pitch shots will improve your overall ball striking as well.

Clement: Don’t overlook this if you want to find the center of the face

Published

1 month ago

Aug 30, 2023

Shawn Clement

ALIGNMENT MADNESS!!

It is just crazy how golfers are literally beside themselves when they are placed in a properly aligned set up! They feel they can’t swing or function! We take a dive into why this is and it has to do with how the eyes are set up in the human skull!

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