Why a noisy brain can destroy your game
The most crucial six inches in golf isn’t the transition between backswing and downswing, or the contact between club, ball and turf. It’s the space in your head. Stuart Hood explains and extols the benefits of a quiet brain.
How badly do you want to get better at golf?” asks the doctor, a knowing smile emerging across his face. “That’s the key. How badly do you want to play better golf and how afraid are you of actually reaching your true potential?”
Dr Bob Rotella is sitting in his office, going through a process he has addressed a million times before. The guinea pig today is Golf Australia. We simply want to know how important is the mind in golf – and how easy is it to become mentally stronger.
As the world’s foremost sports psychologist, Dr Rotella has the answer. His teachings have made a difference to some of the biggest names in American football, basketball and baseball, but he is most famous for his work in golf.
In addition to inspiring professional golfers, including Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington, Nick Price, Rory McIlroy and Tom Kite, to more than 300 PGA Tour titles and 74 majors, his book Golf
Is Not A Game Of Perfect is the top-selling sports psychology book of all-time. His instruction has enabled millions of golfers of all levels to improve. So for him, the question we ask has a simple answer. “How badly do you want to get better at golf? And how big a part does fear or doubt play when you need to perform?” he repeats. “By which
I mean, are you willing to admit that when you’ve played in a tournament or medal, you’ve had doubts or fears in your mind that have held you back from reaching your true potential?”
To properly understand how to improve as a golfer, we need to understand how the brain actually works. The human brain has two sides. The left side is your ‘conscious’ brain, the right side your ‘unconscious’ brain. Despite the numerous technicalities involved in swinging a club, in golf, conscious thought is actually your biggest enemy.
“People play best when they have their head in a very quiet, very clear place,” says Rotella. “The ideal scenario is leaving your conscious brain in the locker room and playing with just your eyes and your instinct. All you really have to do is look at where you want your ball to go to the exclusion of all else, because your subconscious knows that you are playing golf and want to hit the ball at that target.”
Dr Rotella describes this as being “unconsciously competent” and compares it with driving a car. “Nowadays, most people talk on the phone, with a passenger or listen to music when driving,” he says. “They are not really conscious of the driving; yet somehow stay in their lane. How? Because their subconscious mind is controlling that side of the process for them. People have no problem turning their driving over to the subconscious, but turning their golf over to that side of the brain proves much harder.”
If that golfer sounds like you, it’s not your fault. “The problem is we go to school and almost all of our educational experience teaches us to have faith and belief in using our conscious brain,” explains Rotella. “Then you attempt to play golf, where you need to use the right side of your brain, and that feels very uncomfortable because the right side is quiet and this lack of noise can make you feel like you are not trying or caring.”
You’d assume this is what marks out the amateur from the pro, but you’d be wrong. Not even the game’s top pros are able to master their mind 24/7/365. “Everybody makes mental errors,” says Rotella. “The best players just make them less often.”
Happily, we can all improve our mind. “Provided you’re willing to search for your true potential you will be able to make changes regardless of how old you are.”
To do this, Dr Rotella suggests you concentrate on the following six key areas.