Category Archives for "Articles: The Mental Game"

The Dreaded Slump

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

It all starts to break down, slowly at first, so that you hardly notice, a bad round, followed by another. Just a few shots higher, but that feeling of control is slipping away. The shots aren’t as solid, there are more trees in the way of your imperfect drives, the putts are lipping out instead of in.

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Just Trust It?

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

How many times have you heard or been told, especially after a poor shot, to “just trust it”, or “just swing the club and don’t think about it so much”? Quite a few, I’d be willing to bet. Think back on how that advice affected your next shot, or series of shots for the rest of that round. Perhaps you started hitting it better, at which point you might have come to conclusion that mindlessly swinging was the way to go, and that complicating matters with swing thoughts was detrimental to your ability to strike the ball effectively. You probably…

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Thinking About NOT Thinking? THINK AGAIN.

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

“…When you throw a ball to me, without thought, my hands go up and catch it. When a child or animal runs in front of your car, you automatically apply the brakes. When you throw a punch at me, I intercept and hit you back, but without thought. ‘It’ just happens. ‘It’ is the state of mind the Japanese refer to as “mushin,” which literally means “no-mind”. According to Zen masters, mushin is operating when the actor is separate from the act and no thoughts interfere with the action because the unconscious act is the most free and uninhibited. When…

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The Mood of The Warrior

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

“One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act”… “There is no power in a life that lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. But once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and survives in the best of all possible…

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The Mental Game: On Playing Bad

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

“Things just go from bad to worse, Starts like a kiss, and ends like a curse.” Jim Carroll   There is no way around it: no matter how good, bad or indifferent you are as a golfer it is inevitable that you will play bad. And what do I mean by bad? Well, if we check the Thesaurus we will find a number of other words to describe it- awful, terrible, dreadful, appalling, shocking, ghastly, horrific, dire, and unpleasant. One or more of these synonyms may appeal to you, but the truth of the matter is that the feelings engendered…

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Wayne D. Meets The Sport Psychologist

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

I would love to make hundreds of dollars an hour just talking to people about golf. I think my problem would be, and my wife could back me up on this, that I couldn’t fill up an hour with talk about how one is supposed to deal with the difficulties of the game, or, if I could last an hour, by the time the next confused soul regaled me with the same laments I would be pretty much fed up. She used to think it was a total lack of compassion, but now she just refers to it as “being…

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Golf is NOT a Game of Confidence

By Wayne | Articles: The Mental Game

You might be wondering, after reading the title of this article, whether or not there was a typo in the wording. “Doesn’t he mean the opposite?” you might suppose. Isn’t it an accepted fact that confidence is everything to a golfer, and that without it you are destined to fail? It would certainly be against the grain to suggest that confidence is not a good thing, but that is not what I am going to postulate here.

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