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As I begin to think about the possible subject matter for my next article I often run over in my mind some of the questions I get asked when I teach. The ones that stand out are those that I hear repeatedly, and each answer could easily take up a few pages of text. Instead of taking the detailed approach to a few questions, I thought I might give shorter, more condensed answers to more questions, sort of a People Magazine approach, or the approach I would be more likely to take if I were on the phone with someone and wished to end the conversation in a timely fashion. As always, I don’t claim to be the definitive source of knowledge when it comes to golf: these answers are opinions gleaned from decades of competitive golf and teaching, and are snapshots of what you would hear from me were you to come to me for a lesson.
How do I take what I’ve just learned and use it in the tournament I’m going to be playing in three days from now?
Don’t force it. If the information is new and you know it will take some practice time to ingrain it then you will probably not be able to incorporate it in such a short time. What you should do in the time you have before the tournament is to focus on the general ideas of the lesson and try to come up with a key or two that are simple to think about and blend in with what you were doing before you acquired the new information. The key word here is “general”. Try not to be too detailed in your attempt to incorporate new swing thoughts. For example, you may have learned quite a bit about how to take the club away, including wrist movement, shoulder movement, weight shift, head movement, leg action, etc., but your swing thought for competition should be no more complicated than “straight back”, and it would be much better if you pictured it and felt it than if you explained it to yourself in words before you started your swing.
What do I do when I’m coming down the stretch of a tournament and I have a history of screwing up?
If you can say “I always screw up coming down the stretch”, it means that you have played well enough in the past to have put yourself in position to choke. Every time you blow it at the end after playing fairly well you have a chance to learn from the experience. If you’ve ever read anything about golf you know what you are supposed to do. Everything should go along exactly the same. The idea is to take yourself out of the situation and just keep hitting the ball until the round is over. Go through your routine on every shot. Forget about how you stand and what it would mean if you finished well. Think about hitting the shot you are facing, not about how you have to make pars or birdies to win. This is a difficult task, but until you master this you will have trouble finishing. When you don’t finish well and you feel you’ve played your best, get up the next day and start practicing. You just need to get better.
How much do I need to practice?
More. I rarely meet anyone who practices enough. There’s not enough time in the day to work on all the shots you need in a round of golf. However much you practice now, adding more time will only help to make you better faster. Of course, it goes without saying that your practice needs to be effective to be productive, but that is another subject.
If I have a tournament coming up and I’m not playing well, should I withdraw?
That’s a tough call to make. Back in the early 80’s I played in many mini-tour events, and if I wasn’t playing particularly well it was tough to think about that $400 entry knowing that I stood a good chance of not making a check. All the tours had strict rules regarding withdrawals, because everyone who wasn’t playing well wanted to bail out. I did pull out of a few, but after a while it occurred to me that it wasn’t a good idea to make a habit of that. Sometimes withdrawing is the right thing to do, especially if you’re injured, but otherwise it is probably better to buck up and go ahead and play. I tell my students all the time that the only way to know if what you’re working on works is to test it under the pressure of competition, and if you don’t play, you don’t learn anything. If you can’t take playing poorly, it is unlikely that you will ever excel under pressure anyway, since golf is a game where disappointing losses greatly outnumber joyful victories.
How can I become more confident?
Many people say that confidence breeds success. My opinion is that success breeds confidence. And if there’s one thing that breeds success it is hard work. If you want to put it all into an equation it would go something like “hard work = success: success = confidence: confidence = more and greater success.” Don’t expect to feel confident the first time you play yourself into a situation you’ve never been in before. At that point you are going to rely on your practice and preparation, go through your routine and try to trust your technique. You may fail miserably. Then you wake up the next day and practice some more so that you can get there again. Now at least you have some experience, and you hopefully have some ideas about how to handle the situation. So you try again, and again, and sooner or later you are going to experience some success. After that, when you get into the “choke zone”, you will have a few positive experiences to draw from. This is the nature of confidence: you build it up slowly and fortify it with more positive experiences, and you try not to let the failures, of which there will still be many, whittle it away.
How can I get over a bad hole or a bad shot?
You simply have to focus on the next shot. The idea in golf is always “how can I make the lowest score from here?” You may have just shanked an easy lay-up shot into the weeds from a perfect lie in the fairway. You were two under par for the day for the first time in your life. You can’t believe what you just did. As you think about it you are a mixture of furious and despondent, and all the bitter disappointments that golf serves up are flashing before your eyes. And do you know what? None of that matters at all. You cannot let any of those feelings affect what you do next. When you find your ball the only thing that matters is to look at the shot facing you and figure out how to play in from there. It may be the wisest choice to take an unplayable and go back where you were and hit it again. Sure, you may lose two shots, but if you make a par for a double you will still be even for the day and doing fine. You may have a shot to pitch out sideways or backwards and there may be a smaller opening for a more aggressive shot toward the green. You must think clearly about what you want to do, then make your decision and commit to it. If you decide on the risky shot make sure you take into consideration what will happen if you don’t pull it off. Sometimes you just have to take your lumps and get out with limited damage. If the hole goes from bad to worse you still have to collect yourself and work hard around the green to save whatever shots you can. You can never hit any shot in anger or disgust. Take your time and grind it out, then forget about it on the next tee. All players must learn to do this for the entire round if they are going get to the next level.
I can’t seem to win. What do I do?
Keep practicing, and keep entering tournaments. You can’t get better if you don’t practice, and you can’t win if you don’t compete. Fuzzy Zoeller won a senior event and it was the first tournament of any kind that he had won in 16 years. I thought that was an incredible fact, certainly surprising if not almost unbelievable. I mean, Fuzzy is a great player. Over 16 years you’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 tournaments without winning. But he kept playing, and practicing, and he finally won again. Don’t ever get the idea that winning is easy. It’s not, and some pretty good players never win at all. You just have to keep grinding it out, doing your best, and let the chips fall where they may. Some day you’ll keep playing shot by shot and when it’s all over you’ll look up and find that you’ve beaten everyone in the field.
My swing always reverts to old habits when I play. How do I get the changes I’ve been working on to stick around when I compete?
In order to incorporate changes in your game into tournament play you need to practice a lot, and that practice has to be designed to prepare you to use the things you are working on when you play for real. One very important aspect is your set-up routine, especially the time it takes for you to look up at the hole for the last time, then look back to the ball and take the club away. When I practice I hit each full shot with the exact routine (without walking back behind each shot) that I use on the course. If I want to incorporate new movements or positions into the swing I spend time in the mirror, or on drills, or working in hitting stations with shafts or impact bags positioned to force me to move myself or the club a certain way, or by segmenting the swing (starting from different pre-set positions). This type of work is essential to make sure that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, as opposed to just hitting balls with an idea in mind hoping that I am accomplishing my goals. When I hit full shots, however, I want to make sure that my routine is the same as I will use on the course so that I will force myself to take what I am working on and organize it in my mind; if I do that, the thought or image, otherwise called the “swing key”, will fit into the time between the last look at the target and the initial takeaway. If I have a few things to change, and I can’t seem to put them together, I know that I need to practice more (more repetitions make something new more familiar and thus easier to focus on, which allows the mind to hold that thought and still get to a later thought), or if I don’t have the time before I am scheduled to play, I know I need to simplify my thoughts. Most times you can’t get to all the things you want to accomplish in your swing. At that point you are going to have to decide what you want to try to do, and let some of the other items just do what they do. You cannot force yourself to swing perfectly, and if you try to do too much it is usually a disaster. Pick a couple of important things to focus on, work them into your routine, and take them out to play.
What can I do to improve?
Work harder. If you think you are a hard worker, be a harder worker. Work on every shot you can possible face. Play as much as you can. Work out every day. Seek out the best help you can find or afford. Apply yourself fully, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you are doing everything you can when you are probably not.
What are my chances of making the Senior Tour? The regular Tour?
Looking at the history of the Senior PGA Tour the players who qualify, if they have not already had success at the PGA Tour level, come from only a few other pedigrees. These include being a winner at a high level as a club professional and continuing that success into the mid to late 40’s, being a consistent mini-tour winner, or being a top amateur and winning major amateur events, in both cases also retaining that level of play until just before turning 50. If you haven’t beaten most guys in your recent past, what makes you think you are going to beat better players now? It’s a nice dream, but when you look at the players who can’t even get a spot on the Senior Tour it should make you think twice about spending a lot of time and money and possible sacrificing other opportunities for something that probably isn’t going to happen.
As far as making the PGA Tour, few people have a clue as to just how good you have to be to even have a remote shot. First of all, you need to be able to beat me. And not just beat me once, but dust me on a consistent basis. I know that when I teach players who have an eye on possibly playing for a living I need to give them the correct concepts when it comes to understanding what the top level is and how to get there. It takes desire, dedication, determination, perseverance, talent, and money. You can have no weaknesses. If you don’t hit it really far, you had better be extra good at something else, and you have to be a good putter. If you have any putting issues, forget it. There are too many guys who can hit it great and can putt it as well. And once you get real good, you have to be tough. Golf requires toughness, and it will find any weakness you have, mental, physical, or mechanical, and kill you with it. I have nothing but respect for anyone who is an exempt Tour player, because I know what it takes to get there and to stay there. There are no weak PGA Tour fields. Every player out there is a great player, some are just that much better.
How can I become more consistent?
If you aren’t any good, you certainly don’t want to be more consistent. If I were a 16 handicap I sure wouldn’t want to shoot exactly 88 every time. I would much rather my scores go 91, 84, 96, 77, because I would then know that I was capable of shooting much lower scores, and my goal would be to improve my ability so that I could do that more often. The goal is to get better, and as you do, consistency, in the form of less dispersion between high and low scores, comes with it.
How should I divide up my practice time?
Spend time on everything. Make sure you don’t go for extended periods of time without touching any particular part of your game. Spend extra time on your weaknesses. When you hit balls, be sure to work on your driver every session, and try to hit wedge shots from 30 yards and up 10 yards at a time to 100 yards. Find a consistent way to practice your putting mechanics. Try to play by yourself so that you can practice shots on the course, especially off of hilly lies and around the greens. Locate a regulation green to pitch to. It is important to learn a sense of feel by watching the ball run out on the green. If your time is extremely limited it is better to hit different clubs for 5 minutes at a time and work through the bag than it is to hit an hour’s worth of 7-irons. And always try to give a minimum of 10 minutes to your putting, more if possible.
Should I get my equipment checked even if I am trying to change my swing?
Yes. Even if you don’t buy anything new or change any part of your present equipment, a good club-fitter can adjust your lofts and lies and perhaps change your grips, both of which can make big differences in your ball striking. Paying for a fitting is like paying the doctor for a physical. A good one is going to give you valuable information, and you are free to do what you want with it.
Should I lift weights?
Sure. I do a few upper body exercises with an 18 pound bar, such as curls, triceps extensions, upright rows, and chest presses, and with such a light weight I do around 75 reps with each. I use 10 pound ankle weights to do some leg lifts, and dumbbells for various other exercises. The two pieces of equipment that help replace heavier weights and still give you a strenuous workout are the Swiss exercise ball and the stretch cord. Learning how to use these in a core strengthening program is worth going to an exercise expert to learn, and these days it has become apparent that if you are going to approach your potential in the game you are going to have to become a better athlete, which means that you are going to have to work out and get yourself in shape.
Should I see a sport psychologist?
Sport psychologists are for people who need to see regular psychologists as well. If you can handle the vagaries of everyday life you should be able to use your common sense in your approach to sports, golf in particular. It is almost certain that whatever mental deficiencies you have in general will come out in force when you get into pressure situations on the golf course. There is nothing wrong with asking someone for advice, especially when it concerns something that has a great bearing on your overall demeanor. If you think a sport psychologist will help you get over some hurdle and be a better golfer and happier person, by all means give it a try. Just don’t forget to address your physical and mechanical deficiencies by taking a golf lesson, seeing a trainer and getting your clubs checked out. Those who think their problems are strictly mental are usually wrong.
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