“I just had to trust it”
How often have we heard that from a professional who hit a wonderful shot under pressure on the last hole of a tournament?
But what does “trusting it” mean?
Trusting it means executing the shot “without thought”. You let your subconscious mind take over and let all of those hours of practice take charge.
The execution of the shot takes place with only the image of your intended target/line in your mind.
This is easy for me to sit and type and I will admit that it is a little harder to master. However, it is certainly possible, once we overcome a few things.
Firstly, we are wired to see “what’s wrong”. In the game of golf this leads to over analysing and ultimately over criticizing ourselves.
I must, once again, make this clear: golf is much more than the mind. There is a time and a place to analyse and critique our swings. This is usually under the guidance of a PGA Professional during practice.
Start doing this on the golf course and you can be causing problems for yourself. The tension you create through this “on course analysis” will lead to you losing sight of your specific targets and robbing yourself of your natural rhythm.
Think of it this way, imagine that you were on a walk with your family and you came across a small puddle that you had to hop over. Let’s say it’s 3 feet across. You would walk up and hop across without breaking stride. Now let’s say you have to make a simple 3 foot hop across a gap but the gap is 10 storeys up! You’d start to analyse and think about your step, your pace and probably hesitate. That “lack of trust” in something that can be done automatically would lead to poorer jumping technique compared to when you hopped the 3 feet without thinking.
If you’re anything like I used to be, you may come up against the fact that trusting it feels like you’re disrespecting the difficulty of golf and you should, in fact “think hard” and use your conscious mind. The fact of the matter is there will be some sort of imperfection in your swing at any given time. Thinking technically about that whilst on the golf course won’t help and will often hinder.
You need a critical eye during practice to work out what’s going wrong, sometimes even slow-motion video recordings. Thinking you can work it out mid-round is often a mistake. This is why the best players in the world still have coaches and send the videos of their practice sessions when they’re not around.
The intention for every shot should be to trust it. Mark yourself on that.. Literally, take a pen a put a tally mark on the back of the card every time you trust the shot. You cannot make a fair assessment of your golf game if you swing with doubt.
If you find yourself facing a situation with water left and Out of Bounds right and you start to doubt your driver, pick a club that you can make a free swing with, that you trust.
This level of trust needs to be decided upon BEFORE you hit the first tee. Once you start to pick at a thread of doubt it can all unravel pretty quickly. Ultimately, you’re trusting yourself. You’re trusting yourself to enjoy the round, stick to your routine and implement your plan. Leave the mechanical quick fixes in the car park and bet on you!
This won’t guarantee your best golf every round, but it will make it a heck of a lot more likely than playing with doubt.
I hope this helps my friends!
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