NO MULLIGANS, NO GIMMIES, NO MUFFELETTAS

Have you ever actually listened to the litany of expletives to which a golfer will treat himself after a bad shot?  Why, the air turns blue with language that would make a sailor blush.  Or, consider the odd sayings during the course of a round, such as, "I knew I was going to do that" or "I was thinking about that," uttered after a 30-foot shank into a water hazard!  How about, "I always do that," after a particularly ugly near-whiff following a decent drive.  I remember a fellow once saying to me, after he’d struggled through the first few holes, “I spent 43 years working construction jobs to learn all these curse words, and I’ve used them all up in 3 holes.”  Golfers even have numerous acronyms for their mishaps.  To wit:  FUAB - Foul-up after Birdie, RBS - Rotten, but satisfactory, USA - U still Away.  When you get right down to it, duffers have more old wives tales than old King Henry the Eighth.  One such myth – the one about your average score being pre-programmed so that if you shot an abnormally low front nine, you’ll make up for it on the back nine, thereby returning to your “normal” score – actually contains some truth as we’ll see later in chapter 5.  These involuntary curses and beliefs represent the behavior that destroys our game.  Golfers, we’ve got to stop beating ourselves up!

Well then, if confidence is what we're lacking, how do we get it?  That, friends, is easier said than done.  I heard one of the TV commentators say that if you look up "confidence" in the dictionary, you'll find Tiger Woods' picture there!  One must admit that Tiger has it with a capital "C.”  This great golfer’s background reminds me that the simplest way to success in any endeavor is choosing your parents with care.  Tiger's Dad taught him discipline and started his golf training at an extremely early age, and his Mom seems to have instilled in him a strong inner peace.  If, however, you've slipped a bit in the parental selection process, you're going to have to find another avenue to pursue.

Second, in addition to our physical practice, we must practice really believing that we will “become what we think about.”  Most professional golfers now utilize the services of sports psychologists to help them with the mental part of their game.  Granted that there’s a bit more pressure involved when a pro is trying to hole a $200,000 putt than there is when we are struggling through a $2 nassau.  However, in both cases the golfer to a large extent places that pressure on himself through his mental processes.  So, we’re not so different from the pros when it comes to needing to control our thoughts.  Well, how do we duffers, aside from spending our kids’ college money on professional help, manage to insure as much as possible that our thoughts remain positively zeroed in on our game plan?