“Wherever you are; be all there.” Jim Elliot
Golf is filled with potentially challenging things to understand & ideas that are hard to grasp.
“Living in the Present moment” isn’t one of them.
However, such a small % of golfers actually do it. If you think about it, it should be the easiest thing to work on because we are ALWAYS in the present moment. Well, our body is anyway. The mind is a complicated beast. In an instant it can be re-living a bad shot from 3 years ago or picturing what it will feel like to hit it out of bounds on 18.
Unlike many Sports, Golf is littered with “spare time”. Your walk from the tee to the fairway, waiting for your buddy to escape the trees, waiting for the group in front and more. This means that the possibility of the mind to drift away from the present moment is increased.
Without practice and conscious thought it is inevitable that your mind will fill the voids replaying films and images of the past and the future.
From a personal point have view, this has taken some work. I am an inherently positive and enthusiastic character and I will often catch myself saying something like “I’m going to Birdie this Par 5”.
Although this may seem like a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude), it is NOT PMG (Present Moment Golf).
I have to stop myself because if I am stood there, Driver in hand, thinking I am going to make a Birdie, I am already thinking 3-4 shots in the future.
To be truly in the present moment, you can only focus on the shot at hand. The most important shot is the next one.
To be truly playing present moment golf, you are not analysing why you had “such a bad front 9”, that’s in the past.
You’re not figuring out how many Bogeys you can still have to beat your best score, that’s in the future.
My first ever Professional Client as a Mental Game Coach had a smooth, rhythmic swing that made offline shots look impossible. However, he had this challenge where he would hook the ball off the 1st tee in competition. On further conversation, the more that this happened, the worse it got. It meant that every time he was on the 1st tee he wasn’t present. He was thinking about the times he’d hooked it previously (the past) or worrying about what would happen if he was down the left side on this hole (the future).
If you’re truly in the present, you’re not worrying about anything. As a result, the worries aren’t affecting your body/swing.
My client managed to rip it down the middle that first day after we worked together but here’s what’s even more impressive. He scored well from hole to hole, present from shot to shot but on the 15th a few shots that did not go to their intended target resulted in his first double bogey of the day.
The temptation here to leave the present moment was huge. That’s the impressive part. Rather than letting the double cost him a top 20 finish, we focused back in on the next shot and then the next shot after that, until it the ball was in the bottom of the hole on 18 and a top 15 finish was secured.
The beautiful thing about Present Moment Golf (and many other aspects of the mental game) is that, unlike a lot of the physical attributes, we can get just as good as the professionals.
If you’ve read this far then you are obviously a golf fan and you are already aware of the fact that the history of the game is filled with tales of players who’s mind started to drift to their name being on the trophy only to become unstuck.
In Tiger’s “comeback” Masters win of 2019 you could see a steely focus on the present moment. Strolling up the last hole, all of the fans thought It was a done deal. Not Tiger. Present Moment Golf. Then when he tapped in the final putt, that is when we saw the outpouring of emotion and him experiencing what it all meant.
It is perhaps telling that many of the stories from the very best Golfer’s in the game involve how “staying present” was such an asset to their greatness. This also points to the fact that it’s not easy. No golfer has ever been present all of the time and it is yet another skill in golf that needs to be consistently worked on just like all of the others.
Being absorbed by the present moment is a lot easier if your mind is calm. If you were absolutely certain that you were going to play a great round, have an awesome year or win the competition then your mind would be less likely to overanalyse the past or be concerned about the future. You need to strive for playing “as if” you had that level of certainty.
Just like Tiger, play Present Moment Golf until the ball hits the bottom of the cup on the 18th.
Yes, you’d like to score well and win…
Play present moment Golf and those things will happen more often.
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