Golf Tip

Presented by Dr. Robert Winters, Camp Director

Golf Tip: Five Mental Tips for Great Tournament Play

1. Great Golf Begins with a great attitude

Great golf begins and ends with a player creating and maintaining a great attitude. A positive attitude is the ultimate emotional fuel for optimal golf performance. The key to any top college, PGA or LPGA players’ success is their ability to persevere in times of trouble and poor shots and keep upbeat and positive and turn their momentum towards a positive pattern of good play. If you are playing poorly, use your self-talk and thoughts to turn things around. Always find something productive or useful that you can focus on versus getting down on yourself. It is important to remember that Tiger Woods became the most dominant player in the past two decades not just through his shot making ability, but his ability to keep his cool and turn things around in a positive direction via his competitive attitude!

2. Believe In Your Ability and Talent

Believing in yourself is fundamental to building trust and self-confidence. Believing in yourself allows you to know that you have the requisite skills to handle whatever happens along the way on the golf course. A key component to becoming a top performer is to believe more in your talent than believing in the talent of others that you play against. An important key to this is that you must let go of worrying about whether you measure up to others. Remember, all you can do is all you can do…but that is often more than enough!

3. Play your own game

Playing your own game is about playing to your talent and ability level. This is how you establish control over what you do and don’t do. It is about you understanding and knowing how to execute your shot according to your personal playing style. When you put more emphasis on trying to play like someone else or hit shots that you are not comfortable with, you are not playing your game. Playing within yourself is vital to playing consistent golf. Even though “play your own game” may sound like the ultimate cliche, it truly is a fundamental process to playing your best golf ever!

4. Play one shot at a time

Playing one shot at a time is staying focused in the moment and giving your absolute best effort into that single moment. It is about staying in the NOW. The single greatest mental mistake that juniors, college, PGA and LPGA players make is that they often get ahead of themselves and start to think about score, results, and the outcomes of the day, while they are still playing! It is a vital golf maxim that you stay in the moment and execute as well as you can in the present shot. The results at the end of the day will surprise you if you can play each shot as well as you can and then total them up at the end. Remember, the golfing day is about playing golf, not counting or tallying your scores. There is time enough for counting after the playing is done!

5. Play with patience

Playing with patience and composure insures that you will play with emotional balance. It helps you to maintain a good rhythm, tempo and adhere to your desired playing strategy. Playing with patience helps you to stay in the present moment and concentrate fully on the shot at hand. Tiger Woods and Brooks Koepka both credit their Mothers for helping them to develop levels of tolerance and patience while they were junior golfers. Remember, patience is confidence waiting to happen!

For more tricks and golf tips, come to one our our Nike Junior Golf Camps!