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002729 Visit since
| Learning
the game - Part 5 | by Peter Gray
October
28, 2002. |  I
have now taken you step by step through the basic strokes you need to perform
in order to get from the tee to the green. Just to recap, they are: the drive,
the second shot, the approach shot and the put. Is that all there is to it, you
may be asking. The short answer is: "No - not by a long shot!" The
reason for this is that golf is the quintessential example of "mind over
matter." Clearly it is not a game where physical ability is the most important
thing. If you took all the old men suffering from prostate problems, bad knees,
failing eyesight and muscular degeneration off the golf course in a single day,
there would hardly be anyone left out on the course. Much the same thing might
occur if you banned golf-carts, since most of the oldsters could not totter along
for more than three holes if you paid them. . Golf
is all about what is going on in your head. The first requirement, you will be
told, is "confidence." "You must feel confident about your ability
to make the shot," every golf guru advises. No one will tell you, however,
where you can go to buy a bag of the stuff. How can you tell a newcomer to make
a shot "with confidence"? It is like telling a first-time gambler who
has bet and lost thirty times in a row at roulette: " Now pay attention!
Put your last hundred bucks on number three - and do it with confidence!"
Frankly, telling a beginner to play with confidence is a classic case of putting
the cart before the horse. If one is still at the stage of averaging seven strokes
a hole - only a person who was delusional would lay claim to approaching his shot
"with confidence." It is a fact that many of
the leading players of the world resort to psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual
healers or, in the most desperate of cases, bartenders - in search of what? Confidence!
They have earned enough money to fly around the world in their own Learjet - and
they still need someone to give them more confidence. So what chance have I got?
The next exhortation you will hear deals with the need to "stay focused."
To hit a ball well you have to put everything else out of your mind. It seems
to me the only sure way to achieve this would be to have a selective lobotomy.
Until you have tried it, you can have no idea how impossible it is to empty your
mind of everything except that little white ball in front of you. If I were to
list the number of ways you can be distracted on a golf-course, it would stretch
from here to St. Andrews and back. However, I will give you just a few instances,
so you can get a general idea.  You
should note that distractions come in three distinct groupings. There are distractions
that are strictly personal - originating in either your mind or your body. There
are external distractions, caused by things around you. And there are distractions
deliberately foisted on you by other players - especially if they stand to gain
a dollar if you flub your shot. Examples of the first
group: (a) You have a sudden fear that you have succumbed to Alzheimer's because
you cannot remember the number of balls you have already lost this morning, (b)
The nervous tic in your eye is getting worse, (c) you should have stopped at the
toilet three holes back. Examples of the second group:
(a) a man repairing the fairway less than a hundred yards in front of you has
taken one look at your practice swing, shrugged and turned his back on you, (b)
you mistake the sound of a plane taking off for the rumble of threatening thunder
in the distance, (c) a mosquito has just flown up your pant leg. Examples
of the third group: (a) " Watch out folks! This is Peter's hole-in-one hole."
(b) " Weren't you playing a Pinnacle ball when we started this hole?"
(c) "Man, look at the ----- on that woman!"
I have heard it said that players like Tiger Woods do not aim at their ball -
but at one particular dimple on it. That's obviously what "focus" is
all about. I can pass on a few tips about how to achieve it. One player advocates
playing over in your mind a special piece of music that will help the tempo of
your swing. I tried that once with "Colonel Bogey." True, it helped
me hit a good drive -but I could not get the wretched thing out of my mind for
the rest of the game. It really loused up my putting.
A common piece of advice is: " Visualize the shot you want to make in your
mind's eye before you play it." The suggestion is that once the rest of your
body has admired the shot your brain has conjured up, it will be inspired to copy
it exactly. The trouble with this advice, as far as I am concerned, is the marked
difference between imagination and reality. Sure, I can stand by my ball and happily
imagine the required shot as a good golfer would play it. But who would ever feel
helped by imagining the kind of a shot I am realistically able to make? To imagine
that ahead of time would simply be depressing and thus counterproductive.
Just occasionally, however, I must admit it works. Like the time I imagined the
way I would reach the green on the island hole at Punta Mita would be to first
make a lucky bounce on the rocky causeway between the tee and the island. No one
has ever believed for a minute that I executed that shot exactly the way my brain
had imagined it. But I swear it is true.  Of
course, the better you are as a golfer, the more freedom you have to visualize
the next shot without descending to mere fantasizing. I like it very much when
I play with someone who is so confident of his shot-making ability, that he will
declare in advance how he is going to pull off a tricky shot. It is like Minnesota
Fats saying: "And now, the eight ball into the right middle pocket off the
left cushion!" If my friend pulls off the shot I am enchanted at having been
let into the secret before hand. If it goes terribly wrong I have the satisfaction
of being able to say: " I guess the best thing would have been to just knock
back onto the fairway." Beginners, you see, rarely get a chance to offer
advice - so we have to grab every opportunity that comes long!
Golfers talk about "being in the zone." This is the ultimate mental
state that enables a golfer to play almost supernaturally well. Achieving this
level of pure focus and concentration traditionally requires hours of sitting
in the lotus position or on a bed of nails. Fasting and abstinence from sex are
sometimes said to be of help. Preferred locations include caves, mountain-tops
and deserts. Golfers, on the other hand, have to achieve this Zen-like state with
no help whatsoever. No seclusion, no chanting, no self-mutilation allowed. You
have to admire that. For most players, "being in
the zone" happens only a few times in their playing lives. It is as if they
had dreamed the dream of a perfect game and then gone out the next day and re-created
it hole for hole. The good news is that there is a "zone" within the
reach of every golfer. We all live for the day we will play a round of golf that
is so much better than our normal game that it will seem like a minor miracle.
Hell, I may even break a hundred one day! Archives
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