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.

In the video Dr. Patrick Cohn talks about how to play golf to ones best abilities. This can be done by having no target score, because when you tell yourself a target score, you have sub-conciously told yourself that's what you have to shot, but if you start doing better you'll choke, not all the time but a majority of the time you will. Also, if you do worse than you want you will become angry and keep piling on strokes. Dr. Cohn also says don't keep score, that bogs down your mental game with how many over or under you are instead of being in the moment: "You can't keep track of your score each and every hole, in your head or even on a scorecard." Cohn also says that no matter how good you're playing always stay on the offensive and never get to where you're trying to stay at one spot, it doesn't work. Finally Dr. Cohn tells one to stay focused on his or her target. Because if your not focused on it you won't always hit it there.

Unlike Dr. Cohn I like to set a target score just because in school golf one needs to shoot low in order to help out his team. So that's why I like them. That also makes it hard to not keep track of my score because in a tournament you have to tell the person who is keeping your score what you had the previous hole. When playing I will admit I do get defensive with my score just because even though I've played for four years I'm still inexperienced and I will try to get comfortable with one under thru six holes and go on to shoot a 79, that's eight over at our home course. Lastly I also have a problem with staying focused on the target, mainly because I let the opaque cloud of anger get in front of me. Normally that's why I post not-so-great scores for the school tournaments. But I digress, I personally don't follow what Dr. Cohn has to say, but I can see how what he is saying can be beneficiary to one's game.

In the book Golf Rx, Dr. Vijay Vad talks about many things dealing with golf, one of which is the mental game. In the chapter "The Mental Game: What To Do When The Wheels Fall Off", Dr. Vad talks about when a golfer hits a bad shot they tend to project their minds ahead. Meaning they get out of the present and out of their rhythm because they're frustrated, this causes them to rush and to make more mistakes. Dr. Vad also says that golfers need to quiet the self-chatter, because when you get nervous the inside conversation you have with yourself tends to get louder, faster, and more negative. He goes on saying that golfers need to create distractions to get their minds off the bad shot they just hit. They can do this by; staring at the trees, singing their favorite song, or picking up a conversation with playing partners. Dr. Vad continues in this chapter that when your over (about to hit) a shot, take a deep breathe. When confronted with a stressful situation the body releases serum cortisol, which tenses up muscles and gives one rapid, shallow breathes. The final thing the Dr. Vad talks about in the chapter is how not to blow a gasket. Dr. Vad says that: "It also helps to be aware of your tendencies, both emotionally and physically, when things start to unravel. This way, you can catch them before they get the better of you..." (93). By that Dr. Vad means when you think you're about to imploded due to anger, he wants players to recognize the signs and stop the anger before it can manifest. He gives some of examples of how to coup with the anger and try to diminish it, if it does veer its ugly head. One way is by taking a five-count right after a bad shot has been hit, this can help one disassociate himself with the shot. Also calling a mental time-out. A mental time-out is just a way of getting your mind off golf mid-round, golfers can do this by picking up a conversation with partners about a new movie release, eat a power bar that you've been saving, or even stretch, all of this will take a golfers mind out of his round giving him a well needed mental break.

I completely agree with Dr. Vad. First off, golfers who project in the future of the round get out of their, if you will, 'happy place'. This causes them to be unbalanced not only physically but also mentally. When I play golf I tend to go off into the future of the round and the final result is a bad round where I fell apart when I got ahead of myself. Dr. Vad says that positive self-chatter is important, even though I know that I always blast myself for bad shots and not congratulate myself on good ones. Basically I forget the good and remember the bad. The breathing thing Dr. Vad talks about is a good calming down exercise when one needs to get off of cloud nine or needs to get his head out of a thunder cloud. Staying calm is a must in golf because you can't play when your pissed off or perturbed, trust me I have had my fair share of bad rounds due do course anger management. Also golf is a fun sport, if you let it be, but when you get angry it becomes more like a crap job that offers bad pay. Which is no fun for anyone.

Vad, Dr. Vijay. Golf Rx. New York, NY: Gotham Books, 2007. 91-100. Print.

In this video Dr. Cowen talks about a pre round mental preparation and how it is beneficial to ones round. He says that you should have a game plan, focus on your game, remember it's just a warm up and to discard any expectations. Cowen says that a game plan should consist of processed goals, it should be planned for the golf course your playing, and that you should play to your strengths. Cowen also says that during your warm up you can't compare yourself to the other golfers and you have to focus on your pre-game preparations. Also when you're warming up his says you can't make any assumptions based on how you're hitting the ball at the range. Finally he says to disregard any expectations you have about playing, like have no target score. but set process goals instead. Cowen says this about self-confidence: "Self-confidence is a much better option than demands or strict expectations on your performance."

Each of Cowen's points are right, in a sense. Like the game plan idea is spot on, all golfers should know what they want to do on the course before they ever tee off. Also on the points for ones warm up, its true you can't focus on others or you'll psych yourself out before you even have a chance to play. Also, just because you're hitting the ball not exactly how you would like it to doesn't mean it'll transfer to the course, one might just have pre-round jitters. But his points on expectations are a little off. I like to have a 'reasonable' score that I want to reach and if I don't obtain my goal I look back to see where those strokes went. Also, never have I used process goals, which I don't even know what those are, during a round of golf. Basically I agree with the video Cowen made and think most of his points are credible except for the ones about expectations.