Golf Tip
Presented by Dr. Robert Winters, Camp Director
Golf Tip: Mental Toughness Training at Home!
The most challenging aspect of golf is consistency. Staying focused on the course is crucial to playing your best round. Consistency starts with mental toughness, which is a skill we can work on each day. Mental toughness, like physical fitness, is a skill honed over time. Here are three ways you can practice your mental toughness right now!
Practice self-confidence - Belief in yourself is key to building trust and self-confidence. It allows you to know that you have the right skills to handle anything that happens on the golf course. A fundamental component to becoming a top golfer is to believe more in your ability than believing in the talent of others that you play against. The golf hole is the same size for you as your competitor. Forget about everything else and focus on playing your best round. Remember, all you can do is all you can do…but that is often more than enough
Be patience in everyday life -Playing with patience and composure ensures that you will play with a level head. It helps you to maintain a good rhythm, tempo and stick to your strategy. Playing with patience helps you 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!
Practice a positive attitude – Great golf begins and ends with a player creating and maintaining a great attitude. A positive attitude is the best emotional fuel for your best golf performance. The key to any top college, PGA or LPGA players’ success is their ability bounce back after times of trouble and poor shots. Keeping upbeat and positive will turn your momentum towards a positive pattern of play. If you are playing poorly, use your self-talk and visualizing to turn things around. Always look for the positive in your golf play, and never getting down on yourself about poor shots. 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!
Practice now!
Imagine yourself in front of a panel of judges and arguing for why you are going to play some amazing golf this year, or even a day at the golf course. I want you to talk about the coaching you received, the mindset you have, maybe the case that you finished last year playing your best golf ever.
At the end of this argument you want the panel of judges to look at each other and say “I believe them. I believe that he or she is destined for great things on the golf course.” When you are finished doing this, you are not really trying to convince a panel of judges, but yourself. This will remind yourself that you deserve to be experiencing great things, and your practice on the course will pay off.
For golf instruction and more tips like these, check out our Nike Junior Golf Camps!