by Bob Rotella
She walked to the 18th tee angry. And she hit her drive in that frame of mind. It wound up in an unplayable lie, and she finished the tournament with a double-bogey. She fell from third place to ninth in the final four holes.
In each case, she later said, she failed to follow her routine. To a spectator, this would not have been apparent. Physically, she went through all the motions. But she did not follow the mental side of the routine, which required her to dispel any doubt or anger from her mind before she hit the ball.
This is often the hardest part of the routine to execute. It’s not enough to go through the motions that set up the body properly. You have to set up the mind as well.
Even the best players, the ones who have learned this principle, understand it, and have practiced it, have to work constantly at it. The game is always tempting them, as it tempted Val Skinner, to hit a shot before their minds are set. Everyone succumbs to the temptation once in a while and strays from the proper routine. The best players recognize when they have done it and renew their commitment to hit shots only when they have executed each step in their mental routine.
SO, NOW YOU have assessed the shot, picked the club, picked the target, and adjusted for any lie and stance variations. You may or may not have visualized the shot, but you know the ball is going to the target. Your mind is calm, focused, and decisive.
At about this point, you might want to take practice swings, particularly on shorter touch shots. Whether to take them, when to take them, and how many to take are matters of personal preference. Some of my players stand up next to the ball, take a practice swing, then go behind the ball and visualize the shot. Others prefer to visualize behind the ball, take a practice swing, and then step forward and begin their address. Still others visualize, step up to the ball and take their swings in an alignment parallel to the one they plan to use. The only important thing is that the practice swing or swings leave you feeling comfortable and decisive.
Davis Love III’s routine is to visualize the shot, stand next to the ball, then take a practice swing, feeling a high draw or a high fade or whatever he’s planning. His practice swing captures the feel of that shot.
The practice swing, improperly used, can inject trouble into your routine. Some people, for instance, feel it’s important to take precisely the same number of practice swings before each shot. But if the last swing doesn’t feel right, and they step up to the ball anyway, they can’t help but have doubts about their ability to execute the shot. They would be better off being flexible about the number of practice swings they take, making certain that the last one feels right and inspires trust in the swing.
Some of the best players are inconsistent about practice swings. Brad Faxon sometimes takes a full practice swing. Sometimes he takes merely an extended waggle. Sometimes he does nothing at all. He knows that the purpose of the routine is not to take a certain number of practice swings, but to set him up properly, mentally and physically, for the shot. So he does what feels right at the time.
The practice swing can be the back door through which thoughts about swing mechanics invade your routine. Many players, as they take their practice swings, remind themselves of all sorts of mechanical concepts, from keeping their heads still to following through. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, for them to then step up to the ball and banish those thoughts from their minds.
I much prefer that a player take his practice swing with his focus on the target, thinking only of loosening up, feeling the right swing and gaining confidence.
I know that many golfers cannot easily bring themselves to do that. They go through a phase where they simply must think about mechanics on the practice swing. If you fall into that category, my advice is to take at least two practice swings. Let the first one be the one on which you think about mechanics. Once your mechanics feel right, take a final practice swing in which you concentrate only on target and feel.
In the ideal routine, the player takes his grip and his stance unconsciously and correctly. I like to see my players take their grip while they are standing behind the ball, rather than during their address. I don’t want to see them fiddling with the grip over the ball.
The best professionals can deal with their grip and stance unconsciously because they recognize their importance and they practice them, sometimes more than they practice hitting golf balls. Many of them have full-length mirrors at home on which they have placed tape to indicate where their hands, shoulders and other checkpoints should be when they set up properly.
Amateurs may not be able to spend as much time on this as professionals, or they may find it boring, but it’s still a good idea. The correct grip and stance are so important that if you plan on taking only one golf lesson for the rest of your life, I would recommend that it deal only with grip, stance, alignment, ball position, and developing a routine that enables you to mentally and physically set up properly every time.
Until you reach the stage where you can unconsciously take care of grip, stance, and alignment, you need to be consciously meticulous about your setup. As soon as you’ve completed setting up, shift gears mentally, stop thinking about mechanics, and focus on the target.
Then the most important part of an exemplary routine begins. It’s deceptively simple:
Look at the target, look at the ball, and swing.
The idea that underlies this fundamental principle is the same one behind trusting your swing. Your brain and body work best together when the brain reacts to a target. Once you have completed your setup and locked onto your target, further delay can only be an opportunity for unwanted thoughts and distractions to disturb your concentration and pollute that pure and unconscious reaction.
You will, however, see some professionals who spend a long time with their eyes focused on the ball after they have taken their last look at the target. Jack Nicklaus did this. If it works, it is a sign that the player doing it has a highly disciplined mind. But I wouldn’t teach any beginner, or any golfer just developing a routine, to stand over the ball very long once that final look at the target has been taken.
Of course, you don’t want to rush your backswing. Your routine at this stage should have a pace that fits your personality, yet has rhythm and flow: Look at the target. Pause. Look at the ball. Pause. Swing.
This core of the routine remains the same for all shots, from drives to putts.
Some players have faster natural rhythm than others. Nick Price is most effective with a pace that would feel rushed to Davis Love or David Frost. A player has to find a tempo that feels right to him or her.
Individual routines also vary on such things as waggles. Tom Kite has for years had a routine that incorporates several looks and waggles after the address. It works for him and I wouldn’t recommend that he try to change it. Tom does the most important thing very well. After his last look at his target, he starts the swing without delay, his mind focused narrowly on his target.
One of the first things I look for when a player I’m working with is having trouble under pressure is the rhythm of this final part of the routine. If the time between the last look at the target and the beginning of the backswing grows any longer on the course than it was on the practice tee, that’s a sure sign that the player is not maintaining his or her routine.
UP UNTIL THIS point, most golfers find everything about this pre-shot routine intuitively satisfying. Then it strikes them that there is no place in it for a swing thought. And they panic.
The best swing thought is no swing thought. But I understand that most golfers have been raised with them. So if a player tells me he absolutely must have a swing thought, I let him have one.
But he can have only one per round, and only for shots of 120 yards and longer. Switching from one swing thought to another bogs the mind down hopelessly in mechanics. And from 120 yards and in, it’s important that nothing interferes with concentration on distance and the target, on getting the ball into the hole.
Some swing thoughts are more
conducive to staying focused on the target and trusting your mechanics than others. “Nice and slow” is a good swing thought. Counting your looks and waggles is a good swing thought.
The swing thought should suggest an effortless motion. There is a big difference, mentally, between “Take it back straight” and “Make sure to make a really straight takeway.” The former is flowing and effortless. The latter is so tight, careful and contrived that it’s deadly.
The same is true of almost any swing thought that involves the downswing. Once that club starts forward, you’re courting disaster if you try to think about its path and control it.
YOU CAN’T ALLOW yourself to be rushed through any segment of your preshot routine. But a player with a sound and deliberate preshot routine need not be a slow player. In fact, a person with a sound, deliberate routine should be a faster player, because he or she will spend less time in the woods looking for lost balls. And he or she won’t spend long chunks of time frozen over the ball, reviewing all the mechanics that someone has said must be executed perfectly.
I advise my professional players to make their routines as short and simple as possible. The best routines are often the simplest and take the least time. It’s easier to repeat a simple routine than a long, complex one.
I also advise them to make sure they can execute their routines well within the time allowed by the rules, so that they never need worry about a slow-play penalty.
I never urge a professional to hasten his routine unless I see evidence that indecision, rather than being deliberate, is the cause of the slowness. This happened recently with a young player I’ve been working with, Glen Day.
Glen was having the best tournament of his rookie season at the Anheuser-Busch Classic in Williamsburg, Va. He had the lead after 36 holes. But then he began playing very slowly. The television network covering the tournament made an issue of it, superimposing a clock on the screen as soon as it was Glen’s turn to play. He shot 72 and fell out of the lead.
He called me after the third round, upset about the added pressure this placed on him. I sympathized with him. It’s not something the network would probably have done to Jack Nicklaus. But Nicklaus has the wherewithal to retaliate against a televison director who offends him. A rookie doesn’t. This, I told Glen, was a fact of life he would just have to put up with.
Then I told him that he had another, better reason to speed things up. When he and I had worked on his routine, he had no trouble making his shots within the time allotted by the rules. But in the tournament, once he got the lead, he started having trouble making up his mind. He read putts two and three times. He changed clubs before approach shots. That was taking up time. More important, it was undermining his confidence. It showed in his score. I told him he ought to trust his first instinct on putts and club selection the next day.
He did, and though he finished second to Mark McCumber, Glen shot 66 and Mark had to sink a couple of great pitch shots on the final holes to beat him.
There is a distinction between being indecisive at the beginning of the routine and being distracted close to the end of the routine. While I want my players to be decisive, a player should never hit a shot if he is distracted and not absolutely ready. If this means backing away from the ball and starting the routine over again, so be it.
This was a point I emphasized to David Frost when we started working together a number of years ago. Frosty thereupon went on to New England for a tournament and called me after the first round.
“Doc, I had to back off from about ten shots today,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Well, one time I heard a baby crying. Another time someone jingled change in his pocket. Another time the wind kicked up. But you told me not to hit the ball if my mind wasn’t where it should be, and I walked away every time. Should I have had to do it that often?”
“What,” I asked, “did you shoot?”
“Sixty-six,” David replied.
“I guess you did,” I said.
I assured him he would not always have to walk away so often. As his routine became an ingrained habit, he would be less prone to distraction. But the most important thing was that he had played a round free of mental errors, where in the past he probably would have hit two or three bad shots because of lost concentration.
The main reason I see for slow play among amateurs is not players following deliberate routines. Nor is it players who back away occasionally when they are distracted. Slow play may be caused by three types of golfers. People who aren’t ready to play when it’s their turn because they’re too busy chatting, or watching their friends hit, are slow. Indecisive players, second-guessing their club selection, are slow. Players who give themselves swing lessons as they address the ball are slow.
You can begin a sound routine while the other members of your group are hitting their shots. You can figure the yardage and pull the club. You can read the green while others are putting. If you have an unusual lie, you can assess it and take a few practice swings while you’re waiting. Then, when it’s your turn, you’re immediately ready to focus on the target, believe in the shot, set up, look at the target, look at the ball, and swing.
I believe amateurs, even more so than professionals, ought to trust their first instincts regarding club selection or the break of a putt. If your first thought as you walk up to an approach shot is “5-iron,” you will be better off ninety-nine times out of a hundred if you hit the 5-iron decisively, rather than waffle about using a 6. If your first thought on a putt is “right lip,” you will be better off hitting it there than if you start to consider whether that spike mark six feet from the hole is going to throw your ball off line.
If you do these things and develop a sound, simple routine, you will find that even if you occasionally walk away and restart your routine because something has interfered with your concentration, you will be a faster player.
9.
Let the Short Game Flow
ONCE IN A while, I come across a player I don’t help to improve. Almost invariably, this is a player who cannot accept the fact that low scores depend on how well a golfer plays once the ball is within about 120 yards of the hole. This is a player who persists in thinking that golf is about who hits the longest drives or the prettiest 3-irons.
It’s not. Everything that happens from the tee to that 120-yard range is almost insignificant compared with what happens thereafter. In fact, I’ll occasionally tell a player that I don’t care what he does with his long game—whether he focuses on a target and follows a routine or not—as long as he tries what I suggest about wedging, chipping and putting.
A good golfer must not only accept the preeminence of the short game. He must learn to relish getting the ball into the hole, to love it as much or more than mere ball-striking.
This is not a truth that I discovered. Good players have known it for generations. Still, lots of people persist in thinking that the key to improvement is learning to hit tee shots like John Daly’s. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the closer a golfer gets to hitting as long as John Daly, the more critical his short game becomes.
Early in 1994, I began to work with Daly. We sat down together and talked for five or six hours.
He told me about his drinking problems, his marital problems, his suspension from the Tour. He told me that he often found himself out on the golf course, thinking not about his game, but about all of his personal problems. He told me that hitting the ball as far as he does put even more pressure on him. If he didn’t make birdies, he felt he was wasting his potential. That made him angry at himself. Growing up, he had never learned to deal with anger or any other difficult emotion, except by getting drunk.
I taught John the same philosophy and psychology I teach all of my players. While much of what had happened to him in the past was unfortunate, the only question in front of him now was what the rest of the John Daly story would be. He had, I said, the chance to write his own biography. He coul
d be a hero, overcoming great barriers to success, or he could script a sad ending to his golfing career. But it would be his choice. It is a choice he will struggle with for a long time.
As to golf, I told him to work on his game from 120 yards and in.
In addition to his prodigious length, John has fine touch on the greens—he wouldn’t have won the PGA at Crooked Stick in 1991 if he hadn’t been sinking a lot of putts from five to fifteen feet out. And he has a natural, loose little flop shot from just off the green.
But he will not win much on the Tour without being excellent from 120 yards and in. These are the shots that will create birdies for him. With John’s length, he can hit wedges to the green on most par fours. His success will depend, in large part, on whether he can consistently get the ball close enough to the pin from 120 yards and in to make birdies.
Truth be told, though, I tell the same thing to nearly all the players I work with.
A little while ago, I was talking to another strong young pro at the Players Championship. He had just shot a 73, and he was telling me how long he hit the ball and how much potential everyone tells him he has.
I told him that I didn’t look at length off the tee when I assessed potential. I want to know how strong a player’s mind is, and how well he plays the scoring game with his wedges and his putter.
To explain what I meant, I had him review his round, stroke by stroke, while I made notes. When he was finished, I added up the totals. Of his 73 strokes, 64 fell into just three categories: drives, wedges and putts. Throw out the 14 drives, and he had played 50 strokes with the wedges or the putter.
Then I asked him how much time he thought he ought to be spending on his 3-iron and how much time he ought to be spending on his short game.
The same thing is true, and even more so, with amateurs, from tournament players down to high handicappers. Their short games may not set up as many birdies as John Daly’s can. But a weekend player’s short game can save pars and turn double-bogeys into bogeys. A solid short game can turn a hacker who can’t hit more than a weak banana ball off the tee into a player who shoots in the low 80s or high 70s.
