THE MENTAL GAME
In a sport where you lose more often than you win, a ‘win or learn’ approach can keep your game heading in the right direction over winter
Your seven-step plan to golf success.
The drive to win is a characteristic we recognise in most professional golfers. But it tends to make us think in black and white terms.The language around tournaments doesn’t hold back on this, either. ‘Win or lose’. ‘Second is first loser’. ‘Go big or go home’. While they look great on a banner or sound impressive in a TV interview, these phrases are actually very unhelpful for club golfers because thinking at those extremes means that if you don’t win the monthly medal it’s easy to head home feeling like you’ve failed and thinking your day out on the course was completely wasted.
In purely statistical terms, with over 100 golfers in many tournaments, a ‘win or lose’ approach gives you a less than 1 percent chance of finding satisfaction. A ‘win or learn’ approach, however, means that even if you have a shocker where nothing feels like it has gone to plan you haven’t wasted your time. And you don’t just need this after each tournament. You need it after each season. Do you want to look back in 2022 and think that 2021 was a write-off – or do you want to see how it led to you improving your golf? Endof-season analysis is an opportunity to reflect on what went well over the year, what could have gone better and what changes you will put in place. It helps you set the right goals and makes it clear which new processes or practice sessions will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Ideally, you should do this after a little break from competition. If you do it too soon you carry too much emotion into it. This matters because your brain is hyper-attuned to negativity. This purposeful evolutionary design places three times more emphasis on bad experiences than good. It means we can learn from past mistakes and react quicker to potential threats. But since the threats on a golf course are more about our ego and less about being chased by a tiger, this negativity simply causes us stress and misery. And if you already think negatively about your golf performances then your confirmation biases simply validate your unhelpful preconceptions. To break this cycle you need to keep your hand in over winter – either in the gym, or on the putting green. Having a proactive analysis of your season to set you up for the future gives your practise a purpose. It gives you elements to work on so you can focus on what you want to achieve in the next year.