You don’t need to read this to have a good golf year in 2021. I mean … it’s not rocket science. Stay fit, focus on enjoying your game, and keep your wedges sharp, and you’ll have your share of positive moments on the links.

But chances are you’re reading these words because, in your heart of heart’s, you want something more from your game in the upcoming season. There’s a level of play within your reach that’s somehow remained beyond your grasp … and you want to grab it … now.

So here’s the bottom line: Do the exercise below, and you’ll be adding a primary ingredient to the golfing cake you most want to bake.

But first … let’s reconnect with Part One of this article. It discussed how each of us is guided through life by a personal story — a subconscious script full of memories from your past — and suggested you manage your memories in a way that purposefully highlights your best moments. If you haven’t read Part One, I recommend doing so here because it leverages your golf history in a way that enables you to get the most from what follows.

And when you’re ready, let’s move into the future by focusing on the conscious mind — in other words, let’s examine the importance of what you think and how you think it in relation to achieving goals.

The Left and Right Brain

Basically, we think our thoughts in one of two ways; analytically or imaginatively. Perhaps you’ve heard the terms Left brain and Right Brain before … but the essential idea is this: We can think in a logical, analytical manner replete with rational arguments about why something’s right, or something’s wrong (the Left Brain), or, we can think in ways that are intuitive, imaginative, and deeply connected to emotion (the Right Brain).

Here’s what’s important for an avid golfer to know: Traditional goal setting is mostly an analytical activity. We logically choose a target, then plan a path to achieve it. It’s good stuff, but it’s not great stuff because it doesn’t produce the passion and persistence required to create a breakthrough performance on a personal level. What I’ve found more powerful for my clients is a goal-setting process that’s mostly about imagining.

Please note I’ve used the word mostly twice in the previous paragraph because I want to underline this truth — we think analytically and imaginatively simultaneously. I’m not telling you to disregard or discard logic and engage in a flight of fantasy. I’m saying this — to get the maximum from goal setting, place the majority of your mental effort on the intuitive, imaginative, creative side of the equation.

Here’s An Example

Perhaps an everyday example will be instructive here. Let’s say you’re driving home one evening, and the idea of pizza for dinner pops into your mind. You consider your options and choose vegetarian toppings instead of meat lovers because your partner prefers the former, and you’re good with both. The process only takes a few seconds, and while you rationally weigh your options, your mind will conjure up images. But the mental pictures will be fleeting, and you won’t immerse yourself in any of them. In the end, if there’s not enough feeling in your thinking, you won’t call home to make the suggestion, and your attention will quickly move on to a different topic. In such moments, you’re using both left brain and right brain thinking, but the weight of your mental energy is mostly on the side of your logical, left brain.

But what if you placed the majority of your energy into imaginative thinking and immersed yourself in the pictures unfolding on the screen of your mind? What if you pulled into a parking lot and shut off your car, then closed your eyes and imagined yourself at home, reaching out to open the lid on a still-warm pizza box? And what if, in your mind’s eye, you separated a slice, gave it a close look, and brought it up to your mouth … pausing for a moment to savor the smell? And what if your mental imagery was so vivid you felt the heat of the crust in your hand … and as you taste that first bite … well … you know what pizza bliss tastes like, don’t you? Now that inner experience would feel different, wouldn’t it?

In the latter example, you’re giving most of your mental energy to imaginative thinking. And the more you create a sensory experience in your mind’s eye — as if it was actually happening — the more likely you are to call home with a strong recommendation for pizza tonight.

Going Beyond Normal Goal Setting

You see … what you rationally think influences what you do, but what you vividly imagine powerfully influences what you do. And that’s why I’m not helping you set a goal in the traditional sense of the word. Regular, run-of-the-mill goal setting isn’t intense enough to take you where you want to go.

Besides, in all likelihood, you already know how to set SMART goals. There’s nothing wrong with establishing goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. They make good common sense … and, in my experience, are well-suited to managing front-line employees in a business context. However, to fulfill your golfing potential, you’ve got to lean on your right brain. Just as you must be creative to get up and down from a tricky lie, you must creatively use your imagination — on yourself —if you want to be the best golfer you can be.

Here you might note that I’ve yet to ask you to identify your specific goal or goals for 2021. And you might be wondering … how can I accurately imagine a goal I’ve yet to set?

Well … good question. And here’s the answer. I don’t want you to begin this process using analytical thinking; I want you to end there.

You see … if you begin with left-brain logic, your ego will want to worm its way into the process. Chances are you’ll sell yourself short because of a fear of failure, or you’ll get carried away by some grandiose idea of who you “should” be. After decades of coaching clients, I’ve come to trust that imaginative, intuitive thinking will always surface a truer, more meaningful image of what you can achieve.

Therefore, let’s establish your primary goal for 2021 by relaxing, letting your thoughts drift imaginatively into the future, and discovering what your subconscious mind intuitively knows is possible for you. In the same way that you make more putts when you instinctively trust your line, and you’re not over-thinking the stroke required, I invite you to find a quiet, uninterrupted space and let your mind go where the questions lead.

Ok … enough explaining … time for creative visualization.

Step Three (continued from the previous article)

• Begin by taking a few minutes to relax your body and mind. Inhale slowly … and exhale fully. As you breathe deeply, consciously relax the muscles in your shoulders.
• When you’re comfortable and at ease, close your eyes and let your thoughts move forward into the future … to a specific moment in time … an upcoming event/tournament/round that will be especially important to you this year …
• See yourself playing a hole, from tee to green, as if you watched yourself in a YouTube video. It could be the first hole, the final hole, or any hole in between. What’s important is this …   ask your imagination to let you watch yourself playing the golf of your dreams.
• Make a mental note of what you see. Notice your body language, gestures, facial expressions. Watch yourself go through your pre-shot routine, your set-up, and your swing. Watch how you respond to each shot and putting stroke.
• Watch for as long as it takes to see yourself walking off the green with the hole completed.
• Now rewind to the very beginning of the hole, and this time, step inside the image and live it as if it’s happening now.
• Where does your attention go during your pre-shot routine?
• Where does your attention go during your in-shot execution?
• Where does your attention go during your post-shot response?
• Note how it feels to be doing what you’re doing at this moment.
• Finally, with your mind still connected to this imagery, ask yourself this question,

— What’s my goal for 2021?

• Open your eyes, grab a pen, write down your goal, and a logical plan to get there.

Whether your goal is external (scoring record/handicap/tournament win) or internal (state of mind ), or both, the key is trust. Deep down, you know it’s your heart’s desire, and you also know, with 100% commitment, it’s possible for you to achieve.

Step Four

• Repeat Step Three on a daily basis.

Mental strength is comparable to physical strength. If you hired a world-class trainer, and he/she designed the perfect fitness program, you wouldn’t do the workout once and never go back again. You know you’ve got to pay a price today to achieve something meaningful down the road. And the price, on the mental side of the game, is time and attention.

You don’t need to sit cross-legged, light candles, and put yourself into a trance for an hour. But you do need to take a few minutes — regularly — and imagine living inside the golf of your dreams. It’s a small investment because once you become familiar with the process, Step Three will take less than five minutes to complete. Yet, it can bring a game-changing return.

Let me close by stating the obvious: As with anything worthwhile in life, transforming your golfing aspirations into reality isn’t easy or inevitable. And getting one thing right won’t be enough, on its own, to guarantee success. It really is comparable to baking. You’ve got to include all the right ingredients, in the right measure, at the right time … and you’ve got to set the oven at the right temperature and time things just right. It’s part science and part art. And with that said, all I can promise is this — commit to practicing the process I’ve described, and you can be absolutely assured you’ve added a quality carrot to your carrot cake.

All the best

Kent

The new year is almost here (thank goodness), and avid golfers at every level of the game will be thinking about what they hope to achieve in 2021. The process, for some, will be so invigorating they’ll make a game-changing or life-changing resolution. And for many, it will mean a firm commitment to goals aligned with the golf of their dreams.

It’s great stuff, and it’s a mental effort that’s absolutely required if producing better results on the golf course is important in your life. But, as a mental coach with decades of experience, here’s three words you need to hear before you start moving toward a future featuring better play and lower scores … not so fast.

Reconsider the Past Before Conquering the Future

A burning desire to achieve your dreams is an essential aspect of success, but it’s not the whole equation. Before you envision becoming a more consistent ball-striker, carding the lowest rounds of your life, or see yourself holding a coveted trophy, it’s vitally important to take your eyes off the future long enough to establish an empowering picture of your past.

Truth be told, I learned this the hard way. In my early days as a coach, I focused exclusively on the future. I was enthused about goal-setting, planning, and visioning. I’d help my clients map out their desires, identify obstacles on the path, and develop strategies for overcoming each. The results for my clients (and in my own life) were good … but not great.

Fortunately, having the opportunity to coach pro athletes and senior executives inspired me to study the workings of the subconscious mind … the part of us that maintains our habits, filters our experience, and more to the point of this article, establishes boundaries on what we can be, do, and have in life. And from this study, I learned that the memories we prioritize — whether wittingly or unwittingly — shape our future efforts.

Here it’s helpful to think about memories as creating chapters in the ongoing book of your life. Whether it’s your personal life, your career, or your golf game, it seems important for the subconscious mind to have the next chapter logically follow the one(s) previous.

Now, if you’re like the rest of us, you made great shots, mediocre shots, and terrible shots last year. You had great rounds, mediocre rounds, and brutal rounds. You enjoyed a hot streak or two, and likewise, fell into a slump or two. And like the majority of golfers, you’re probably inclined to emphasize your worst swings and your worst rounds. You’ll mentally highlight miss-hits more frequently, and feel them more intensely, than your best moments.

It’s not your fault. Being quick to identify problems and threats is an evolutionary aspect of human nature that’s enabled us to survive and thrive. But the tendency to emphasize the negative and downplay the positive can make things difficult when it comes to achieving your most meaningful goals — in fact, it’s a genuine stumbling block — because the subconscious mind tends to make this year’s dominant emotions the ongoing themes in the next chapter of your life. And no matter how much you want things to be different, if most of your mental energy was given to disappointment, frustration, or anxiety on the golf course last year, your script will, in all likelihood, fundamentally remain the same in 2021.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself or witnessed it in others. When we set a goal that’s outside the arch of our current story (or self-image, if you prefer), we invariably sabotage the achievement of that goal. We get injured at the wrong time, resurrect a bad habit or create a new pattern of behavior that distracts from our best effort, or choke when the big moment is at hand.

But just as your future isn’t set in stone, neither is your past. You can, and should, shape your perception of what happened.

Manage Your Memories

If you purposefully highlight your best moments from 2020, and you set goals aligned with the arch of that story (even if your new goal is a significant stretch), you’ll move forward with a deep feeling of confidence. You’ll feel as if you’re meant to achieve this level of success … as if destiny was somehow at work. There will be obstacles and setbacks. You won’t suddenly go from consistently choking in tournaments to being as cool as Brooks Koepka under pressure. Yet somehow, someway, you’ll notice an internal shift in your attitude, and your efforts will bring you closer to, if not directly on, the bullseye of your desires.

Let me repeat: Before you decide on a future goal, it’s essential to manage your memories in a way that sets the stage for the improvement you desire.

I’m not talking about constructing a fantasy and hypnotizing yourself into believing it. No matter how much editing I do with my story, I’m not going to qualify for the Champions Tour next year. And you won’t be sleeping in Butler Cabin on the eve of the Masters. So this isn’t about trying to convince yourself that you’re one of the best golfers in the world when you’re not the best golfer in your county. It’s about becoming deeply convinced — via the truth of your own experience — that you have what it takes to author a story about the future that improves upon, and perhaps dramatically improves upon last year’s results.

Here I want to be very clear. I strongly suggest that you actually do the following exercises. Don’t gloss over this work. As the old Nike slogan said, “Just Do It.”

Simply reading the remainder of this article — even if you happen to agree with what I’m writing — will not yield anything beneficial for your game. Application is the key.

So grab a pen and paper, set aside 30-60 minutes of undisturbed time, and give the following your undivided attention. Hey … it takes what it takes. And besides, your game is worth it!

Step One

Make a list of your best golf moments of 2020.

~ 3 best rounds

~ 3 best holes

~ 3 best drives

~ 3 best par 3 tee shots

~ 3 best fairway woods/hybrids

~ 3 best irons

~ 3 best recoveries

~ 3 best up and downs

~ 3 best lag putts

~ 3 best made putts

~ 3 funniest moments

~ 3 best times with friends

~ 3 best courses/settings

The secret here is letting yourself relive each moment.

Let your mind travel back in time. Be there once again. See what you saw. Hear what you heard. Make things vivid. Notice the beauty of your surroundings. Call to mind your playing partners. Hear the swish of your club and the sound of your ball on the clubface. See your ball flying toward its target. Hear the ball rolling around the bottom of the cup (or, in Covid times, perhaps softly hitting the flagstick).

Close your eyes, take your time, and inhabit each memory as if it was happening once more.

You aren’t fabricating events or twisting the truth. But you are selectively highlighting your best memories.

Give this exercise an honest effort, and you’ll convince yourself — at a deep level —that you have what it takes to hit great golf shots, make great putts, and play great rounds. It’s the key to developing the confidence required to play your best golf when it matters most.

Step Two

Now, make a second list.

~ 3 most difficult/disappointing moments

Everything in golf isn’t a bed of roses. If you played enough in 2020, there’s a chance you experienced a devastating moment where you blew an opportunity to achieve a meaningful milestone. Or perhaps you experienced a demoralizing slump, and if it lasted long enough, you wondered if you’d ever get your ‘A’ game back. Such “negatives” are an unavoidable part of golf at every level. But the real problem isn’t the fact they happened. It’s failing to learn from them.

Let me make an important distinction: When I talk about learning, I’m not talking about gathering more information or increasing your understanding. I’m talking about using your imagination. It’s mental images, not ideas, that exert the greatest influence on personal performance. It doesn’t matter if you’ve analyzed your mistakes enough to write a Ph.D. thesis. What matters, in terms of your future performance and results, is seeing yourself, in your mind’s eye, performing in a way that corrects your mental or physical mistake and re-writes the memory with a better ending.

The key here is reviewing pivotal memories still carrying a strong negative emotional charge.

Take the moments you just listed one at a time. As you call each to mind, use your imagination to stand back from the memory and make sure you can see yourself in it. It should be like you’re watching a video on the YouTube of your mind — and you’re in it. This will help you detach from the negative feelings connected to the memory and allow you to edit it in the same way a director of a movie decides a scene must be re-done.

In this re-imagined moment, be sure to watch yourself execute golf shots. Notice how getting the learning in your bones changes your pre-shot routine, your in-shot routine, or your post-shot response. Notice how changing what you do also changes the results of each shot. Notice if the change improves your score on the hole and your final score for the round.

Whether the shift is subtle or dramatic, your mind needs to identify the change as something you’ve already accomplished.

Now that you’ve done this important inner work…well…congratulations are in order. By spending time with step one and step two, you’ve re-written last year’s chapter of your golfing life in a manner that can and will empower what comes next. Well done.

And speaking of next, tune in again next week, and I’ll share a process that will build on the work you’ve done here and further enhance your chances of playing your best golf in 2021.

This past weekend, Viktor Hovland won the Mayakoba Classic — with a birdie on #18 no less — for his 2nd win on the PGA Tour. But it wasn’t his win as much as how he described his mental game that caught my attention.

In Sunday’s post-round summary, Viktor didn’t recite the usual mantras spoken by almost every Tour winner. In fact, his comments suggested he was able to succeed without getting into a zen-like trance that peacefully and powerfully anchored him into one shot at a time mode. Rather, Viktor said, “I don’t feel like I’m very good in those pressure situations … I was shaking there at the end … I don’t feel comfortable in those moments at all.”

Give a listen to Viktor’s actual words here:

Personally, I found Viktor refreshingly honest. And more. His words shone a light on what seems to be a fundamental tenet of golf psychology: To play your best golf, you must establish a calm and confident mental state and remain there for 18 holes.

It Ain’t Necessarily So

As a mental coach and an avid tournament golfer, I don’t buy it. In fact, I see it as a myth. And as evidence, I point to Viktor Hovland. If a peak performance mental state was essential for success on Tour, there’s no way he would’ve won at Mayakoba. By his own admission, he wasn’t in the zone on the back nine. He actually sounded like a guy who was closer to morphing into Jean Val De Velde than closing the door with a birdie on 18 … especially with Aaron Wise on fire and literally breathing down his neck until the final putt was holed. But despite his nervousness, Viktor got it done. He drained the final putt and walked away with the equivalent of over 10 million Norwegian Krone.

Perhaps there’s more to an effective state of mind than meets the eye …

With that said, let me invite you to consider a contrarian possibility.

Different Stroke For Different Folks

For some golfers, attempting to develop the standard suite of mental skills — becoming more positive, more decisive, more able to lock into your target, and trust your swing under pressure — is embarking on the wrong path. Simply because an approach is right for many players — and endorsed by PGA Tour stars — doesn’t mean it’s exactly right for everyone. In fact, I’d go as far as saying if you’re attempting to incorporate the wrong toolkit into your mental game, you’ll harm your overall golf experience and suck the joy out of tournament play.

Here I’m not suggesting I’ve got a solution for everyone. But if what I’m about to say hits the bullseye for you, what follows could offer you game-changing insight.

You see … if you tend to react to pressure the way Viktor Hovland did this weekend, the key to unlocking your A-game, when it matters most, is using your mind the way he did. To put it bluntly, you’ve got to stop trying to control or refine your mental state and learn how to execute golf shots despite what you may be feeling.

Let me explain by inviting you to reflect on a self-evident truth we all encounter every day of our lives — people are different. Some people are mechanically inclined and seem innately able to fix anything broken. Some people can’t hammer a nail. Some people are musically gifted, and some are tone-deaf. Some people (introverts) gain energy by being in solitude and lose energy because they feel stressed when part of a large group gathering. Some people (extroverts) get antsy being alone and feel energized and alive in a group setting.

When we take the concept of personal differences into the arena of sport, we can identify an important aspect of the mental game: Every athlete has unique subconscious characteristics that shape his/her athletic persona.

We All Have Different Motivations

For example, some athletes are driven to win. Some are driven to avoid losing. Some athletes are externally motivated and need feedback from a coach to progress. Some athletes are internally motivated, and their personal conclusions will always matter more than what any coach can ever say. In my work as a coach, I’ve noticed a third subconscious category that directly impacts your physical ability in pressure situations … some athletes are inclined to be performers, and some are inclined to be players.

A performer loves pressure. He or she naturally gets calmer, more engaged, and more focused when the heat is on. In fact, an athlete who is strongly inclined to be on the performer side of the equation will often require the big stage to inspire total interest and muster up their best effort. See Reggie Jackson and Tom Brady. In golf, look no further than Jack, Tiger, and up until his recent bout with injuries, Brooks Koepka.

A player doesn’t like pressure. He or she can often find “the zone,” but it typically happens in practice or less-meaningful competitions. On the big stage, such a player gets easily overwhelmed and often shrinks from the moment. After a choke job or two, they will seek help to overcome what is perceived to be an inner flaw. In golf, see Greg Norman at Augusta, and most recently, I suspect, Rickie Fowler.

Be True To Yourself

Here’s what you must understand: You can’t change the way you’re wired.

Now don’t get me wrong. You can leverage your strengths and change your habits. Every day, people make significant changes in the way they live their lives. But our subconscious tendencies are akin to our height, basic body type, and the color of our eyes. They arrive with us at birth and remain with us until the end.

If you’re wired to be a player, and you function in the mold of Viktor Hovland, you’ll be a player forever. Don’t fight it. Work with it. Just because you don’t relish pressure like Michael Jordan in his prime doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. It simply means you must develop mental skills that are right for you. Instead of trying to become someone you’re not, become the best you can be.

These four principles will help your cause:

1) Reject the Myth

Your mindset is a factor in your game, but how you think/feel isn’t a direct cause of your score. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of finishing a hole where you’ve striped it down the middle, hit your approach tight, and drained the birdie … and been standing on the next tee brimming with confidence … only to hack your subsequent drive into the crap.

Conversely, I’m sure you’ve been so frustrated with a run of bogeys that you’ve given up the ghost in disgust, only to find yourself hitting a wonderful shot or making a brilliant 40ft putt.

Good golf — and now and then, great golf — doesn’t require a perfect state of mind. You don’t need a flawless mental game any more than you need a flawless swing. As Viktor showed, you can feel nervous and doubt your ability to get it done … and … you can still execute golf shots down the stretch.

2) Make a Distinction Between Thoughts and Emotions

If your subconscious tendency is to be a player, your challenge on the golf course isn’t dealing with your dominant thoughts. It’s dealing with your dominant feelings.

In other words, it’s emotions that threaten to overwhelm you, and it’s your method of handling emotions that stand between you and your best golf. The thoughts you think are along for the ride.

Of course, thoughts and emotions are interwoven. But make no mistake, the two are distinct internal processes.

3) Learn to Observe Your Emotions

Once you can successfully place your awareness on what you’re feeling instead of what you’re thinking, the next step is observing the truth of what happens when you begin to feel nervous, or anxious, or uptight, or afraid, or whatever word you use to describe your emotional experience.

Suppose you have an upcoming tournament; great. Use it to be a better inner observer.

If you don’t have an upcoming tournament to practice this awareness level, go back in your memory and call to mind the last time you experienced your emotions as a problem during a competitive round.

Relive the memory as best you can, and note how you sense your emotions in your body. Do you get sweaty hands? Are you feeling “shaky,” as Hovland described above? Does your stomach get queasy? Your throat gets dry? Whatever it is, simply become aware of it.

The idea here is observation … without judgment… and without the intention to change or alter what you’re feeling. The term in psychology is dissociation, and it means being able to step back and witness your inner experience mentally.

4) Change the Pattern

After you’ve become adept at observing how you feel without trying to change or eliminate your emotional state, it’s time to put trust to the forefront of your game.

Next time you’re in a tournament and notice yourself feeling nervous, it’s important to observe the feeling and talk to yourself in the 3rd person.

Here’s the internal dialogue I recommend. Say, “I’m feeling nervous right now, and I’m able to focus on my target and execute this shot. Or, “I’m noticing that I’m walking faster right now, and I’m able to focus on my target and execute this shot.” Or, “I’m starting to feel the way I feel when I choke, and I’m able to focus on my target and execute this shot.”

Notice this — your focus begins with the truth of your emotions and then moves onto what you see in the external world.

It’s essential to focus your awareness on your feelings first because, as a player, that’s your natural inclination under pressure.

Observe the feeling, or if you’d prefer different words, give the feeling some attention. Then, use the energy you save by not trying to control your emotions to shift your focus onto something outside your skin — preferably your target.

And don’t merely peer forward in the general direction of where you want you’re able to go. Look at your target the way a hawk looks at its prey.

Just remember — pay attention to your feelings first, or they’ll make you pay attention!

Conclusion

So there you have it … a process that’s honest about the reality and power of personal emotions and ends with a focus on the shot at hand.

If you’re a player, I hope you give the four steps above an honest consideration. And I also hope you can look back after a tournament that’s meaningful to you and say, in words resembling Viktor Hovland’s  at Mayakoba, “You know … I didn’t feel totally comfortable there at the end … and yet, I got it done.”

Like everyone else in the golf world, I was thoroughly entertained this past weekend as I watched many of the world’s best players try their best to win a Green Jacket. While I keenly observed their prodigious swings and marveled at their short game prowess, part of me remained on the lookout for subtle clues about what was happening on the mental side of the game.

Of course, DJ played great. And the fact that he overcame the ghosts of poor performances in previous majors undoubtedly made the win even sweeter. But for me, three other things stood out as reminders of what to do and not do next time I have a chance to tee it up.

Here I should emphasize I’m not looking to discover a secret psychological technique that will enable me to win on the PGA Tour … or even win another tournament at my club. I’m looking for insights to reinforce my fundamental purpose for being on the golf course — to enjoy playing, and play as well as I can, in that order.

With that filter in mind, let me share the three elements that leaped off my TV screen during the Master’s telecast:

Rory’s Self Commentary

I’ve got to admit; I’m feeling a bit sheepish writing these words … I mean … it’s Rory McIlroy for goodness sake, and if ever the golf gods crafted a swing on Mt. Olympus, it’s the affable Irishman’s. A relative hack like myself reflecting on what Rory should or shouldn’t do is a bit like making suggestions to Neil Armstrong about how he could’ve done a better job walking on the moon.

Nonetheless, I was taken aback when Rory dumped his tee shot on #16 into the adjacent pond, both by the shot itself and by his self-commentary, “that’s so bad.”

Now again, I’m looking at this from my perspective. I’m a club-level golfer, and I pay to play the game. And although I’m a mental coach, I don’t know Rory personally, so I can’t say whether his self-talk helped or hurt his cause this weekend. But I can say this with certainty … a pattern of negative self-commentary will drastically diminish the average golfer’s fun-factor and often inflate his score.

The lesson: After a bad swing, just shut up. Telling yourself it was a bad shot, or acting like Sir Nick and describing the faulty blow for all to hear, “I hit it fat … I hit it thin … I didn’t keep my head down” embeds a negative belief in your mind. If that belief gets reinforced time and time again, it will prevent you from fully enjoying your round and possibly posting a great score.

Bryson’s Ongoing Frustration

I certainly can’t blame Bryson for feeling bummed out about how things unfolded at Augusta. The clubs he was hitting into greens during his practice rounds had the golf world abuzz, and you wouldn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to conclude that anyone bold enough to suggest his par was 67 wasn’t lacking confidence and fully expected to bludgeon Bobby Jones’ sacred track.

Given his expectations, when things started to go awry during his opening round, Bryson predictably began a post-shot pattern that included looking up and shaking his head in disbelief. Note … Bryson barely verbalized his feelings … but because his body language was speaking loudly for him (especially on Saturday), words weren’t necessary. His mind would clearly get the message that the Augusta National golf course was treating him unjustly.

It’s a common behavior. Admittedly, I’ve done it myself when the wheels fall off my golfing bus. Look … I’m not saying responding to a missed three-footer with raised eyebrows is going to derail your round. But if you get into the habit of reacting to a missed putt or a bit of misfortune with negative body language, you’ll find it much harder to curtail negative self-talk, and the combination will make it very difficult to have fun … or play well.

The lesson: Although not putting words to negative emotions is important (see Rory above) and your playing partners will be grateful for your silence, refraining from complaining out loud is only half the equation. If you want to make your mental game into a strength, you must also refrain from habitually expressing yourself with negative body language during a round.

(I should point out that after the 3rd round, Bryson revealed he was feeling light-headed, and the feeling continued on Sunday. Some of his non-verbal responses could be attributed to not feeling well, but again, this isn’t an attempt to diagnose Bryson’s mental state. It’s simply using what I observed on TV to cast a light on the mental game of average golfers like myself.)

Tiger’s Post Disaster Response

To say the amazing Eldrick has given us a few exceptional moments at the Masters would be quite an understatement. But I loved what he did on Sunday afternoon because it’s something I can emulate. Next time I’m coming off a disastrous hole — and there will be a next time — I hope to handle such mental challenges with the dignity and positive focus he displayed.

To recap … there he was, the great man himself, in his element at Amen Corner, tapping in on the 12th hole for a ten! What a potentially embarrassing moment. What an inopportune time to card your highest score —ever — on the PGA Tour.

But what did Tiger do? Did he wallow in his misery, blame his caddy, the wind, or his back? No. He focused on the next shot, took one shot at a time, and recorded 5 birdies on his final six holes to finish in red figures. As he said afterward, “You’re alone out there … you have to figure it out … you have to fight … no one is going to pull you out.”

In other words, Tiger took responsibility, decided to move on, and did just that. He didn’t remain chained to #12 while he was playing the remaining holes. And although I’m not privy to his private conversations, I’ve got to assume he wasn’t lamenting to his caddy Joe Lacava about the tee shot he rinsed, the 3rd shot he rinsed again, or the 6th shot he hit from the bunker at the back of the green and rinsed once again, while he was waiting to hit his tee shot on #16. When it was over, it was over.

In the past, I’ve done the opposite. I’ve let bad holes keep me mired in disappointment or frustration … and I often watch many of my playing partners do the same after a blow-up hole.

The lesson: Every golfer can have a disastrously bad hole at any time. The moment your putt drops and the hole from hell is finished, you’ve got to let it be finished … because … if you can truly leave it behind, you open yourself up to the possibility of experiencing another one of golf’s eternal truths — every golfer can have a great hole at any time.