The Mental Golf Blog

I made reference to the Tour Tempo system in a previous blog post but I’d like to explain a little more about it and how I think it has helped with my game and I’d like to expand a little here on the mental golf advantages that it brings.
In the famous book The Inner Game of Golf by Timothy Gallwey he develops a swing thought of “Back - Hit” that silences all other thoughts and fully frees up the body to hit the shot. Tour Tempo introduces a similar swing thought with the added extra that is carefully timed to get you swinging in the optimum tempo to hit good, long and accurate golf shots. The system includes a CD that you can transfer to your iPod or MP3 player to use at the range or on the course in practice.
I have incorporated that swing thought into my pre-shot routine before swinging almost as a trigger to initiate the swing.

For more information and my further experience of the Tour Tempo system see my web page here or click on the book cover image.

Never have I been so pleased to have played so poorly! Let me explain. I recently was due to play a course that I knew very well but hadn’t played for quite some time and as I had been working on my mental game I decided to formulate a pre round mental plan. This involved creating a strategy for playing each hole, physically writing it down and reading it over and over, reinforcing the plan and visualizing how it would pan out.

I worked backwards from the green identifying the best angle to approach the green and where I wanted to position the tee shot. From this I planned the safest quarter of the green I wanted to target.

Obviously I wasn’t to know what the weather was going to be like but in general I adopted a conservative plan. The course has a number of tight, tree lined fairways and OOB so opted to play safe a number of times from the tee with Utility club and irons.

The idea was to write this down as a positive strategy for each hole.

As I had recently refined my pre-shot routine I incorporated this as I visualized going through each shot in my mind according to the plan over and over again.

When the day of the round arrived it was beautiful weather so my hopes were high of executing the game plan and playing and scoring well. What a disappointment, I hit it absolutely garbage particularly with the driver only hitting 2/9 fairways. This put a lot of pressure on approach shots and consequently only hit 7 GIR. Fortunately recent short game practice paid off and I scrambled pretty well (60%) and only had 28 putts.

I did though stick to the plan which I was very pleased about and two of the more cautious planned holes yielded birdies after positioning tee shots with Utility club and iron. So the good news was that despite a poor striking performance I ground out a reasonable score ending up playing to my handicap of 6.

As I said before it feels weird to be so upbeat about playing poorly but I was pleased to have had the discipline to stick to the plan and I firmly believe this was the reason I managed to get it round in a respectable score.

Part of the inspiration for putting the plan together came from a book I have been re-reading
Smart Golf: How to Simplify and Score Your Mental Game by DeDe Owens, Ed.D. & Dan Kirschenbaum, Ph.D. is a much underrated mental golf guide.

Technorati Tags: Pre-Round Mental Preparation, pre-shot routine, smart golf, visualization

Following a previous post regarding the pre-shot routine being a mental routine I have recently been having some success with the Tour Tempo system developed by John Novosel and been looking to incorporate it into my routine. You’ll need to go to their website to better understand how and why this works so well but there are swing rhythms to replicate within the system and I have now been successful in fitting the rhythm into my routine.
A particular swing thought I have had for a while is to return to the ball at impact replicating my address position. I realise that with the speed of the swing and weight transfer that that is impossible but as a mental image it helps.
So at present my pre-shot routine looks like this;

• I stand behind the ball and identify a target on the horizon
• I visualize the flight and trajectory to that target
• I identify an intermediate target on the ground in line with main target
• Whilst behind the ball I rehearse a swing replicating the impact position
• Step into address position checking Grip, Alignment, Ball Position & Posture
• Mentally chant the Tour Tempo rhythm
• Swing through the ball to a high, balanced “Pro” finish

So far it is working very well, I feel more able to block out distractions and I’m now refining to make the routine automatic and repeating.

Technorati Tags: golf pre-shot routine, pre, pre shot, routine, shot, tour tempo, visualization