Chapter 12 - The Mental Side Of Golf

Trust your swing An experiment in post-hypnotic suggestion Don't worry Shrug off the bad shot The competitive test Keep attacking

Here and there in the course of my analysis of the technique reference has been made to the mental side of golf a game which will always attack your nerves and exploit your imagination if you allow it to.

Various estimates of the extent to which golf is mental as distinct from the purely physical have been expounded in locker-room and in print. Some pundits, amateur and professional, have even maintained that golf is as much as seventy-five per cent mental.

I do not propose to venture an opinion on a matter which must vary according to the make-up and the outlook of the individual. But of this I am convinced. No game throws out a stronger challenge to the temperament of the player. Some face this challenge and beat it, but others never quite come to master their emotions and in consequence never achieve all of which they are capable.

X may have a fine method but a suspect temperament. Y may be ideally equipped temperamentally but his technique will show obvious flaws. Both X and Y will meet with a certain degree of success, but neither will attain the standard which could have been his if he had overcome his weaknesses, of temperament in the case of X, of technique in the case of Y.

The instructor, like the doctor, can only prescribe so far. Just as the doctor must have the co-operation and the will to get well of his patient, so the golf instructor requires perseverance and determined effort on the part of his pupil.

The teacher of golf can do best for his pupil by helping him to acquire a sound and lasting method, making sure that he understands what he is trying to do and why and warning him against allowing other considerations, temptations and fears to encroach upon the overall objective of reproducing the shaped swing and the timed delivery which, unaided, will do all that can possibly be done in dispatching the ball from point A to point B.

That is why I set out to equip a pupil with a shaped swing and a good delivery, a technique which will give him full confidence as soon as he steps up to the ball if only he will realize it.

The top players put their trust in their swing, particularly the great ones. It is true that when that swing is not working at its best they have to buckle down to "scrambling" their figures, but no one knows better than they themselves that they cannot "scramble" indefinitely. Maybe they will get by for one round or part of a round in a 7 2-hole tournament but they must get it working smoothly again without delay if they are to stay in the race.

The immortal Bobby Jones, the Emperor as he was known, fought a tremendous battle with his temperament for some years. That he eventually mastered it was due as much as any other factor to the confidence he placed in his own ability to swing the golf club.

Here let me tell a true story about a man who was placed in my hands for a mere half an hour at my school a few years ago.

What happened in this remarkable golfing episode not only clearly confirmed the effectiveness of my teaching method. It also demonstrated what can be accomplished out on the course when the imagination and the whole of the mental process are under control.

The control, in this case, was exercised from outside. It was an experiment in post-hypnotic suggestion aimed at discovering how a player would perform when the mental doubts, fears, and anxieties were divorced from the physical side of the game by specially undertaken measures.

Here was a man, once a 3 handicap golfer, whose game had deteriorated over a period of years through lack of time and the demands of other interests.

An earlier experiment, when he had submitted to post-hypnotic suggestion, had proved inconclusive because of serious flaws in the physical side of his game, that is, of course, his swinging of the club.

So he was brought along to me, and my task in the space of one thirty-minute lesson was to re-shape his swing and give him a delivery. I was able to do this notwithstanding the limited time available, and before he left me he was hitting well-struck shots in my net with the instruction and the confidence it had produced in him fresh in his mind.

I had no further part in the experiment, but I learned later what happened when he played his round of golf next day.
First he was told by the hypnotist that he would have no difficulty in remembering what I had told him and what it felt like when he was swinging the club the way I had made him swing. He would be able to do exactly what I had told him for the first nine holes and the last five.

For four holes midway through the round, the tenth to the thirteenth inclusive, the remembering would be left entirely to him. In other words his mind would be released from the hypnotic control.

Next day on the High course at Moor Park, he hit his full shots for the opening nine holes well nigh to perfection. Note that in the half-hour lesson I had had time to deal only with his long game and when he was on the course next day his short approaches and his putting let him down at times.

Then he came to the four "de-controlled" holes where his game collapsed entirely. But with the last five holes to play  those five holes which the hypnotist had told him he would play well he struck the ball straight and far, reaching each green in the regulation number of strokes.

I have related this story to underline the results to be obtained by relying implicitly on the swing once you have given it the essential shape and fitted a delivery to it.

I am not suggesting for one moment that aspiring golfers everywhere should reach for the telephone and call up the nearest hypnotist. Let us keep golf in a proper sporting perspective and not take it into an esoteric realm where one man will contrive to beat another by three up and two to play purely because he is the better subject of the two for post-hypnotic suggestion!

This experiment was undertaken purely to show how much more simple it would be to learn and progress if imagination and fear could be firmly kept under control.

It clearly succeeded. It confirmed what I already knew from my years of teaching experience that no man can do better than his swing and his delivery will allow. Too many, too often, cramp and distort the swing by letting the imagination run amok.

Now let me tell you of the trouble which beset a better golfer, an American professional named Art Clark, who came over to this country soon after the last war and met with moderate success.

While over here he placed himself in my hands. Art Clark was not in the top flight of American pros, but he was desperately keen, and, I am afraid, rather too much of a perfectionist. It was this that held him back.

I was able to do a good deal to advance his game but I never quite got through to his perfectionist's mind that the bad shot must be accepted, shrugged off and forgotten. If he could have disciplined himself to accept this philosophy he could have gone to the top for he was a fine shot-maker.

But no matter how well Art Clark might be playing, as soon as he hit a poor shot, maybe it was well struck but nevertheless one which missed the target, he started to worry the worst thing any golfer can do.

We cannot all be Bobby Lockes, but I often wonder where Art Clark might have gone with Locke's remarkable concentration and outlook.

Another perfectionist was the late Philip Scrutton, British Walker Cup player, who, notwithstanding his many brilliant stroke play returns, never did himself full justice in match-play.

Scrutton too was a worrier, and he allowed a sharp thrust, or a lucky break by his opponent, to break his own concentration. In such circumstances he could never give his undivided attention to his own game.

What I want to put across to you is that no man, however gifted a striker of the ball, is a machine, though Henry Cotton in those peak years of 1935-7 came as near to this un-scaleable height in his play through the greens as any golfer I ever saw or heard of.

The bad and the indifferent shots, the unexpected thrusts of a match-play opponent, are bound to come in the course of a round. One's reflexes will inevitably play tricks now and again. But the hole you have just played is done with. Another hole, with a fresh challenge, awaits you on the next tee. Go to meet it in the right frame of mind, or it is odds on your dropping another stroke perhaps more.

Always your refuge, when the imagination threatens to overcome self-discipline and when you feel the tension mounting, is the picture of the shape of the swing which you have stored in your mind. Only through this mental picture can you feel and sense the position of the club head at the various stages of the movement.

Go on to the first tee of any golf club any Sunday morning. What do you see? A weird conglomeration of styles, the snatcher, the floppy-wristed fellow who fans the ball, the player as tense as a petrified rabbit waiting for the stoat to strike and, of course, the "bell-ringer". This is the player on the back foot at the finish of the swing pulling his hands up and down like the man on duty in the belfry.

I have seen more than one struggling player, swing blacked out soon after the start, whose hand-control was so sadly lacking that the club-shaft dropped on to the back of his neck at the top of the backswing. I well remember someone remarking that So-and-so only needed to insert a razor blade into the club-shaft to decapitate himself!

It does not require a golf student of any great knowledge or experience to sort out the Sunday morning rabbits from the tigers. The former far outnumber the latter.

Too many of these players lack a shaped swing. They have no mental picture of their intention other than a burning desire to thrash or steer the ball down the first fairway. They build up tension in mind and muscle even before they launch into the backswing, and endeavor to overcome their fear of what may happen to the shot by applying brute force or manipulation to the club head.

If you have a clear idea of your intention through a mental picture of the shaped swing you can concentrate on re-etching that picture without being plagued by doubts and fears about what is going to happen when the ball leaves the tee-peg.

Let us go back to the early pages of this book for a reminder of Archie Compston's mental approach when he walked on to the first tee for an important round in America feeling stale and jaded. He simply kept faith in his swing, the shape of which had matured with his years of training and experience, and concentrated on the delivery of the club head at and through the ball.

You can do no more than Archie Compston did that day. You can only apply your swing and allow it to do all that it can for you. What it is not capable of doing you cannot make up by other measures. No golfer is better than his swing plus the delivery.

The swing-shape is the primary consideration. It will take you some way along the road. Then the quality of the delivery defines your limitations.

There are lots of golfers, professionals and assistants, and amateurs in the low handicap bracket, striving to break through in tournaments. Many of them are what I call i£- or 16-hole golfers. This is because they cannot keep their delivery going long enough to take them through a whole round of golf under pressure. It is not quite good enough for the job, and sooner or later it lets them down.

You must put your swing and your delivery to the sustained test of regular competitive golf if real headway is to be made. Only by absorbing the atmosphere and reducing the tension by regular experience of competitive play can you give your swing and delivery a real chance to make the grade.

Take your time moving round the course and settling yourself for the shot you are about to play. This must not be misconstrued as advice to dawdle from one stroke to the next and then to fuss and fiddle before playing the ball. This is liable to do more harm than good. Remember what I have said earlier about working out for yourself a neat, concise, certainly not prolonged, drill in preparation for play.

You must attack and keep on attacking. A cricketer can make 50 runs, and those £0 runs will remain against his name whatever rash act he may commit in the next over.

How different with the golfer. He may be two or three under fours for fifteen holes and wreck his card by blowing up over the next three.

He cannot rest on what he has achieved. He must go on adding good golf to the good golf he has already played. He can best do this by keeping on the attack. Playing safe only leads to tentative golf, and before he knows it he is quitting on the shot and cutting off his swing as it enters the apex.

By attacking I do not mean you should crash your way round the course with a swashbuckling disregard for the risks entailed. Maintain discretion, your temper and your smoothness of swing at all times.

You are not withdrawing from the attack into a defensive frame of mind when you take an iron from the tee where a cross-hazard is likely to gobble up a well-struck shot with the driver. Taking an iron when such a situation presents itself is not playing safe. It is planning your assault on the hole and showing sound sense in club selection.

The attacking spirit must still be blended with the ability to make a calm assessment of each problem as it arises.

Never give up hope and allow your game to slacken after a bad hole or a run of slipped shots has led you to the premature belief that your chance of winning or finishing well up has disappeared. You do not know how the remainder of the field are faring or that your fortunes are not going to take a sudden turn for the better. And the winning score may well prove to be higher than you estimate.

In match-play sharp changes of fortune are common. You may find yourself several holes down. But if you seize the chance when it comes it may well turn out to be the start of recovery. And the player whose lead is being eaten away is under greater pressure than his opponent who is fast making up leeway.

Always keep in mind that you are not beaten, neither have you won, until the final putt drops into the hole.

Make up your mind to go on playing each stroke as it comes, giving your undivided attention to that particular stroke, regardless of what may have happened before or problems which may or may not lie ahead. In this way you will learn, with experience, the invaluable yet elusive art of stringing the strokes together, one of the subtle virtues in which players like Ken Bousfield excel.

Finally, I am often asked what should the player think of when he plays the shot.

Now, it should not be necessary for me to remind you that you cannot have a series of do's and don't's running backwards and forwards in your mind as you address the ball and move into the swing. This is the surest way to wreck your hopes of a good shot even before you start.

Many experienced players declare that they think of one feature of the operation and no more. I go along with them  up to a point.

For example, if you develop a tendency to hasten the movement from the top of the swing you can make sure that you smooth out the movement back to the ball by taking care to start the downswing with the slow gentle drive down with the hands and left forearm.

But heed this warning. Over-concentration on any one stage of the swing may lead to exaggeration with a consequent distortion of the swing as a whole. We are aiming at a smooth balanced movement all the way, and I maintain that when a flaw has been eradicated you must place your entire trust in the mental picture of the shaped swing and the delivery you have built into it.

The more you can discipline yourself to do this and keep doing it in spite of all distractions and changing circumstances the more natural it will become, both physically and mentally. The intention is formed in the mind. The muscles must be trained to obey, not to take charge.
I repeat once again. Your swing and the delivery you have fitted into it will do all that can possibly be done to give you YOUR peak performance. You cannot augment it in any way, but you can quickly turn the chance of success into failure by "thinking" a vague something else into the operation.

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