Golf in Power Point

The book I read was called Your 15th Club by Dr. Bob Rotella. Throughout the book Rotella talks about the mental side of golf. He begins by telling us the truth. No matter what people think, golf is a rough sport not in the way football is. It is more like a war of attrition against your mind and your score, in the end, depends on if your head can stand the constant grinding from the course. Dr. Rotella also talks a lot about your sub-conscience and how it sees you. Your sub-conscience, if you will, is blind. So the only thing it knows is what you tell it. For example, if you tell your sub-conscience that you can never make a three-footer for a birdie on a casual round with friends then you won't be able to make one in crunch time when you need it. Next, is the chapter "Remember to Remember" which was all about taking the good shots you hit in a round and basically downloading them to your brain, but also you have to completely relinquish the memory of bad shots. Rotella then goes on to talk about the problem with trying to reach perfection in golf, he has this to say: "When a an ambitious, driven golfer falls prey to perfectionism, he is at risk in many ways" (61). All that means is that, a great golfer can be just that, a great golfer, without being perfect. It is in the strive to become perfect that a golfer starts he inevitable downfall. Now we move to the more mental aspect of the book.

About half way through the book Rotella starts to talk about playing the round in your head before you tee off, your conscience, sub-conscience, and how to train, yes train, your brain. First, seeing you round the way you want it to go down before you throw down, but seriously Rotella says picturing your round before you play is a great helper if your nervous or doubtful. You get to play while your comfortable, you also get to see the shot that you want to hit before you hit it and all of this is helpful to the real round because you have already 'hit' the shot, relieving the pressure. The conscience is next, Rotella says that the conscience is constantly taking in data and processing it. The conscience sees what you see. It knows you. On the other hand the sub-conscience is like the dumber, blind brother. Like earlier I mentioned how the sub-conscience only knows what you tell it and in golf the sub-conscience can either be your greatest ally or you worst enemy. If it is your enemy don't fret, Dr. Rotella has got the power to change it. Rotella says that to get you sub-conscience, which is inadvertently tied to your confidence, up you have to remain positive with yourself just about all the time. He also suggest that if you have been badgering yourself for years that you need to do some deeper training, like keep a golf journal to record all the good things you did during a round and don't use don't in a sentence when talking to yourself because most of the time whatever you told yourself not to do will end up happening.

Ms. Terrell this was the best book I have ever read about golf. It was so enlightening. Dr. Rotella really opened my eyes in that there is more to golf then just the swing mechanics, but there is also a mental side and it is waging on like World War III. One of my favorite things that Dr. Rotella talked about was the training of the mental game by keeping a shot journal, I have started to do so in my life and I feel like it is working (the feeling is meniscal but regardless it is there). But all in all, Dr. Rotella knows what he is talking about and I agree/believe in every word written in his book. The topic I feel the greatest connection with is the staying positive, even though I don't do it. This is my favorite topic because it showed me what my belittling comments to myself do to my game and my potential, also that if I ever want to be better I have to mature a lot and keep on the sunny side.

Rotella, Dr. Bob. Your 15th Club. New York, NY: A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2008. Print.

For my live interaction I interviewed a former PGA professional, Chris Rigdon. I first asked Chris how he had gotten into golf, he told me that it wasn’t until late in his middle school years that he picked up a club and started to play. Chris told me that when he first started he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from five feet away. That led me to ask how did not being able to play effect his emotions. He responded: “When I first started playing being bad didn’t really bother me, mainly cause I didn’t know anything, but as progressed through middle school golf onto high school I saw that there was much more competition and it required me to have to play to my best. And when I didn’t hit a good shot I had to forget about it, I didn’t have time to wallow in self-pity. But this helped me become the best in junior golf. Regardless college golf is a whole new league; even though I was the greatest junior golfer those guys in college whooped my tail left and right. But I continued to get better until I was the one doing the whooping and eventually moved into the professional ranks. Where if you don’t have a great mental game you might as well pack up and leave.” After that I asked how he obtained such a great mental game. He told me that when he played he liked to imagine that it was a large tournament and that if he lost his mental game it would mean he lost the tournament. This helped him keep the mental part in check. This led me to the next question. What do you recommend to a golfer who is looking for a better mental game? He told me: “ If someone wants a better mental game that person has to be able to forget the bad and permanently remember the good; also they have to not talk down to themselves after a bad shot, all that does it tense them up and lower the self-esteem.

From this interview it showed me that even if you start off terrible you can still achieve greatness by hard work and practice. Chris talked about some pretty interesting things in the interview, a good bit that didn’t pertain to golf, but what he did have to say about the sport really opened my eyes. Mainly in part of all the stuff he said not to do, I do. Take for example the forgetting the bad, lets say I birdied the first hole and on my next tee shot I shank the ball into the woods, but it kicks out into the fairway only 215 yards away from the green. In my mind I already think that this hole is going to kill me and I become slightly enraged, forgetting all about the birdie the hole before. Also after I hit a bad shot for some reason I think that de-grading myself in my head will help me hit the ball better, trust me it doesn’t. It only makes me play worse and hit more bad shots, which in turn makes me mad. But I digress, all the things Chris said like forgetting the bad and not talking down to yourself I completely agree on, even though I don’t do them myself but I’m trying.

I read the chapter "Laws of Polarity" in the book The Cosmic Laws of Golf, by Printer Bowler. In the chapter Bowler starts at the beginning, the beginning of everything. He starts with a being of pure undefined energy, who he calls the Primal One, who was everywhere but was lonesome. The being then created two fundamental was of being; masculine and feminine. These are also know by a plethora of other names such as; yin and yang, Alpha and Omega, good and bad or ball and cup, that when joined would create a miniature Primal One. The masculine and feminine polarities also play a key role in cause and effect, how a change in one polarity causes changes in the other. After Bowler basically defines polarity he connects to golf with a quote from Bobby Jones; "The impulse to steer, born anxiety (cause) is the accountable for almost every really bad shot (effect)." Bowler goes on to say that until we can find the root cause of anxiety, which is fear. The fear of failing, of succeeding, of looking weak, of losing control and the greatest of all, of self-discovery. The only way to defeat anxiety is trust. Trust that everything that is rightfully yours is here or is on its way to you now, there is no need to push, shove or force anything, including golf shots. Bowler then goes on to tell the reader that to achieve trust is that we have to 'let go'. He provided steps to follow; clearly identify the conditions you no longer want in your life, be willing to let yourself go, imagine the ideal you, lastly, accept and commit to your new vision. If we can do this, we can finally relax and swing smoothly.

All I can say is "WOW." Reading that chapter was amazing. I felt like I connected with everything Bowler had to say, especially the part about the impulse to steer and about the fear. In my golf game I have in the past and occasionally now steer my shots instead of letting them naturally happen, doing this cause immense strain on my body resulting in fatigue by hole eleven. The reason that happens is because instead of letting my motions be fluent, I try to 'make' my club head square at contact which makes me start to think in my back swing, and more often than not I hit an atrocious shot. Also, the fear. Normally I don't let people see me in fear, mainly because I have always associated fear with weakness. But in all truthfulness I am probably one of the most fearful people you'll ever meet. But I'll keep the fear talk related to golf for now. When I play I strive for greatness. But even when I'm playing good my sub-conscience doesn't want me to succeed. I don't know why it just does, it never fails either. I also have the fear that when playing in a tournament that when its my turn to hit, I fear that the other guys are silently critiquing my swing. This leads me to think about what they could possibly see and then I will correct the phantom mistake resulting more than likely a bad shot. But all in all Printer Bowler wrote a fantastic book and I agree with his theories, also he has opened my mind to new thoughts that should prove beneficial to me in later years.

Bowler, Printer. The Cosmic Laws of GOLF. New York, NY: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2001. 25-36. Print.