Having the ability to control your emotions effectively on the course is an important mental skill for golf performance.
Emotional control is a skill that, like many other facets of the game, can be learned in the practice arena.
Firstly, understanding your DNA is important. People will always perform differently under various emotional settings.
My advice would be to identify the emotional condition you were in during your best performances, and try and recreate these conditions moving forward. Trying to elicit this optimal state should be your goal every time you play!
However, most people don’t try and elicit their optimum state, and instead wish to work on the detrimental emotions, such as anger and frustration.
Try simulating some strategies during practice to help cope with the feelings and frustration and anger. Deliberately hit some poor shots and practice a strategy to help combat the feeling.
Some examples would be..
Happy Gilmore – “Going to a happy place”
Tiger Woods – “Using an imaginary 10 yard line”
James Parker – “Using my glove as a trigger”
These are just a few that spring to mind! But basically happy Gilmore started directing his attention to the “happy place” in his mind.
Tiger Woods uses his imaginary 10-yard line in front of the ball to let go of his anger and frustrations. Once he steps over this imaginary line he lets his negative feeling go.
And I, use my glove to remind me of when to concentrate and not. If I want to let go of a feeling I take my glove off quicker than normal. However, if I’ve struck a particularly good shot, I may leave it on a little longer than normal. Trying my best to remember how good it all felt!
Also, by learning some mental skills, the frequency of extremely poor shots should disappear, avoiding these negative emotions even more.
The best way to learn these skills is on the range. Simulate some poor shots and then practice your thoughts and actions. This then starts to lessen the emotional impact when it happens again in the future.
Once you’ve learned and experienced these new behaviors on the range. It would be a good idea to set goals during play on the course. Start out by allowing perhaps, 3 inappropriate emotional outbursts on the course. Obviously the goal is 0 outbursts.
Once you get to this level, start testing yourself in tournaments and competitions.
And please, as always let me know how you get on.
Sincerely,
“Your Game, Our Solution”
James: I live along the golf course of a (mostly) retirement golf community. Sometimes one of my contemporaries will burn the air with a string of epithets. Recently I saw one guy throw his club. Sixty/Seventy year old guys throwing clubs!? Nah…after 60 years of “golfing” I now mostly laugh at my golf flops. An occasional reprimand is allowed. I’m my happy place: “The Cathedral of Golf.” In the immortal words of my father, “THESE are the good old days!”
Well said Bob.
It all comes down to the process, and the process produces the results. If you can adopt a process for dealing with the negative emotions, and actually rehearse it on the range, you’ll cope easier when it happens on the course. The trouble when you start “chucking” your clubs is that negative emotion stays with you for a while afterwards, and WILL affect the next few shots you play. Have a routine, walk in, execute, deal with the outcome, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. It’s about the process – not the results!