MENTAL SPOTLIGHT

Don’t Make Hard Game Harder:

Nine Rules Reduce Failure Factors

Practice will always be the most important ingredient for success. But there is something else you can do that will enhance your chances of success—eliminate factors that might be expected to lead to failure.

            Dr. Peter Cranford, a pioneer in applying psychology to golf, offers nine suggestions to help reduce your likelihood of failure:

1. Avoid playing too many different sports. If you divide your practice time among many sports, you run the risk of devoting too little time to any one of them. To paraphrase an old saying, you may make a reasonable showing in several sports but be a true success in none. This is not confidence building nor as personally satisfying as being recognized as truly competent in one given sport.
2. Don’t play with better players all of the time. It is going to be difficult to succeed in terms of winning matches if you constantly play with better players.
3. Avoid playing with people who make you anxious. If you are tense, embarrassed, or feeling a need to impress someone, you are not likely to play your normal game. This is likely to lead to failure.
4. Don’t play when you aren’t feeling well or are preoccuplied with something else. If you are not able to concentrate on golf because you are concentrating on other matters, your performance in golf is likely to suffer.
5. Stop playing when you are getting nowhere. The mere fact that you are getting nowhere indicates that already failing, and the frustration that is likely to occur from confronting constant failure can only increase the likelihood of further failure. Take a break, take a lesson, but don’t keep frustrating yourself by doing the same fruitless thing over and over and getting nowhere. If there is one rule that holds in life, as well as in golf, it is: If you are doing something and it is not working—quit doing it and try something different.
6. Beware attempting shots that you “don’t have in bag.” If you haven’t practiced a given shot, then you haven’t learned it. And when you try something that you haven’t learned. You are likely to fail. Golf legend Ben Hogan allegedly practiced new, experimental shots months and months before ever using them in an actual round of serious golf
7. Don’t give overly generous handicaps to poor golfers or refuse adequate handicaps from better golfers. If you do either, you are likely to fail because you are stacking the cards against yourself.
8. Be careful about increasing betting when you are down. If you are down in the match, you are already in the process failing. To increase the betting might only compound the problem by increasing you motivation. Motivation does not redirect behavior; it simply energizes it in whatever direction it is already going. If you are already failing, playing poorly, and losing a little money, you don’t want to energize that failure, play worse, and lose a lot of money.
9. Beware of accepting “gimmes.” While such so-called gifts may lead to immediate “success.” It is a tainted success. More importantly, accepting gimmes deprives you of practice on short putts, which may subsequently lead to failure when the chips are down and you have to make the short ones.

In conclusion, enhance your success via practice, and reduce your failure by not unduly (excessively, overly) penalizing yourself of making things harder on yourself than golf already mandates. Work hard to develop your game, but then give yourself a fair chance to succeed.

This article is from the book “The Complete Golfer: Physical Skill and Mental Toughness” by Dr. Tom Dorsel, the sport psychologist.