Aside from staging a few tantrums every now and then, Tour pros rarely get frazzled on the course. That’s because many of them have complete focus and control of their thoughts during competition. And you can too, if you follow some of their wisdom.
Veteran PGA Tour pro Ian Poulter, for instance, advises you to keep your head clear. “I just don’t let things affect me during a round of golf,” he says.
“I don’t carry a shot from the previous hole. It has no need to enter my brain, because that’s just wasted energy. A great or poor shot means nothing.”
That said, you can size up your first putt, as you’re coming up to the green. “If you roughly know the line of your putt, you can gauge where the putt will move as you’re walking up and approaching the shot,” he says.
Fellow Tour veteran Ricky Barnes admits that he has a lot of crazy thoughts run through his mind during a round. But all the time, “I’m trying to stay relaxed,” he says.
“If your shot is good, then under-react. If it’s bad, don’t over-react. That’s a great mindset, and something my caddie and I have been trying to work on the past year. I don’t play my next shot ahead in my head. Maybe walking up to the ball, I’m trying to assess it, or feel the wind…walking up I’m taking everything in.”
Barnes adds that if you get over the ball and don’t like the way the hole sets up or is shaped, or feel uncomfortable with the club you’re about to use, then change the club to something more comfortable.
“That’s what I’ve learned the more years I’ve played as a pro, to do that,” he says. “The worst thing is to say afterwards ‘I knew that was going to happen,’ as opposed to knowing you made a physical error. You can take physical errors, but mental errors are tough to swallow.”
LPGA Tour player Ryann O’Toole is a self-described perfectionist. As a result, she claims she’s perfected her pre-shot routine, to control the way she thinks before and after any shot. However, she also realizes that other factors are uncontrollable.
“Look at the things that you can control,” she says. “Can you control if the ball hits something on the way to the hole? No. Can you control if a putt lips out? No. So make that key.”
In other words, keep your cool when something bad happens to your game.
Finally, if the wheels fall off during a round, heed the advice of LPGA Your pro Sandra Gal: “First, try to figure out why it happened. It’s mental. Next, be thankful for what you have and that you’re playing golf. That appreciation makes you happy and gets you back to hitting better shots.”
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