Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  People are always giving unsolicited lessons and tips to leading professionals like Seve. They want to take some of the credit for his successes. In his desire to win an Open, Seve bought the idea that he needed to restructure his swing, to make it more mechanically flawless. He forgot that course management, a stellar short game, good putting and patience win Opens. Of these, the only quality he might have lacked was patience.

  So he set out to perfect his swing. He took lessons from some of the game’s most renowned teachers of golf mechanics. His swing doctors persuaded him that if he practiced hard enough, he could incorporate half a dozen or more separate changes into his swing and find the Nirvana where all balls are perfectly struck. And periodically, on the range, all of these changes would fall into place and Seve would start hitting beautiful shots.

  The trouble was that all of this work on the swing changed his attitude toward the game. Now, if he hit a drive into the rough, his mind did not click into thoughts of how to get the ball through the trees and into the hole. It clicked instead into thoughts of swing mechanics. He felt that he understood his swing now, and he should be able to fix it on the course and make the next shot great.

  It didn’t work.

  “If I hit one bad shot, I started trying to do all things my teacher had been telling me about. Things just got worse and worse,” he said. Eventually, he added, the tendency to think mechanically had infected his short game.

  He stopped winning tournaments and, after a while, he stopped enjoying the game.

  In a corner of his mind, Seve knew what had gone wrong. He understood that he couldn’t think of all those swing changes and still hit the ball.

  But then he discovered that it was not easy to go back to the old, instinctive way of thinking on the course.

  I told Seve that he had to find his way back to the old Seve. He had to learn again to trust his athletic ability. He had to recapture the attitude of the young Spanish caddie, navigating the golf course with a handful of cast-off clubs, inventing shots to get the ball into the hole.

  I talked to him a little about how the body and brain work best together when an athlete simply looks at a target and reacts to it, rather than thinking about the mechanics of his movement.

  That struck a chord with Seve.

  “You know, when I was a little boy, a caddie, we pitched pennies in the caddie yard. We’d put a club down on the ground and pitch pennies to the club. No one could touch me at it. I was the best. Sometimes, now, I lie in bed in the hotel and throw things at that—what do you call it in the corner?—the trash can. And I never miss. I don’t know how I do it. I just do it, like you say.”

  I was only telling Seve something he had realized himself at some level. He knew he had to recapture the confident focus on the hole that had characterized his best golf. He knew he had to go back to being an artist rather than trying to be a scientist.

  “I know what you tell me is right,” Seve said. “I know I have to go back to being Seve. But be patient. It’s going to take a while. I think I will. But now I have these thoughts in my head, and I can’t get rid of them.”

  He told me that when he stepped on a golf course, where once he had felt completely in control, he now felt lost and in jeopardy. “It feels,” he said, “like I’m stepping on clouds and I’m going to fall through.”

  My conversations with Seve reminded me of how a player can get lost trying to improve. It’s not enough to decide to get better and to be willing to work hard at it. A player has to judge carefully whether the improvement nostrums he’s being offered are right for him.

  Some players with a more natural mechanical bent—the scientists—might have been able to incorporate the changes that Seve tried to make in his swing without losing the ability to trust their mechanics on the golf course and remember that the objective is to get the ball in the hole.

  But others, who play by feel—the artists—can hurt themselves trying to do it. Our conversation showed that even a golfer who has won eighty tournaments around the world has to take care to maintain and enhance his mental game, his confidence and his trust no matter what he is doing with his swing. Even such a golfer as Seve needs to find a teacher who recognizes that too much mechanical advice can be harmful.

  This is all the more important for amateurs who play once or twice a week. They need to keep their swings simple and their confidence high. They must learn to resist the kind of temptation that can lead to loss of confidence, temptation often garbed as well-meaning advice.

  Most golfers assume that once they learn how to think confidently, they can fiddle with their mental approach to the game. They believe they can always go back to the attitude they once had.

  But, as Seve learned, it’s not always that easy.

  I think Seve is on his way back. He’s recognized his problem and he’s dealing honestly with it. Periodically, I scan the European golf results to see whether he’s broken through and started winning again. Recently, I noticed that he had.

  As long as he has his dreams and his passion, I expect that he will keep coming back.

  16.

  Conservative Strategy, Cocky Swing

  PERHAPS NO SINGLE shot has misled more golfers than the drive Arnold Palmer hit to the first green in the final round of the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills in 1960.

  The first at Cherry Hills then was a 346-yard par four with trees down the left side, a ditch on the right, and thick, U.S. Open rough in front of the green. The course, outside Denver, is a mile high, and balls fly farther at altitude. Palmer decided he could drive the green. In the fourth round, he proved it.

  Virtually every American golfer heard the story of that tee shot and how it launched Palmer on the way to a closing 65 that overcame a seven-stroke deficit and won him his only Open title. Palmer’s final round burned into the minds of a golfing generation the idea that real men, and real winners, play aggressive, even reckless golf.

  But not many people remember what Palmer’s effort to drive the green produced in the first three rounds of that Open: one par, a bogey, and a double-bogey, thanks to drivers hit slightly awry. In other words, Palmer was three over par for No. 1 when he started the fourth round. The final birdie he got by driving the green meant that he had played the hole in two over for the tournament.

  Suppose he had decided to play the hole differently that week, hitting a 2-iron off the tee and setting up a wedge into the green. He would, most likely, have done no worse than par each round. Quite possibly he would have sunk a birdie putt or two.

  He wouldn’t have needed to close with a 65 to win.

  That 1960 Open was one of the first to demonstrate an unfortunate truth: listening to television golf commentators can be hazardous to your game.

  Television producers want the broadcast to be exciting. They want the drama of bold, reckless shots and swashbuckling players. So when they see a player gamble the way Palmer did, they glorify him. People listen to the broadcasts, and they get the idea that bold, reckless shots pay off.

  They don’t. At least not often enough to make them worth-while.

  The key to successful strategy and a confident swing for golfers at every level is, instead, quite the opposite.

  Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the shot Arnold Palmer would hit, nor even the shot you think you ought to be able to hit.

  I teach a conservative strategy and a cocky swing. You want to play each hole in such a way that you’re confident you can execute each shot you attempt. That gives you a cocky swing, which is another way of saying that you swing aggressively, that you swing with trust. It produces your best results.

  The opposite approach would be a bold strategy and a tentative swing. A bold strategy would have you attempting shots you are not confident you can hit. That leads very quickly to tentative swings, and tentative swings produce bad shots. Bad execution of bold shots produces very high scores.

  What does this mean in practice?

  A great story from the literature
of golf illustrates the point.

  The late Tommy Armour won all the major championships available to a professional golfer in his day—the U.S. Open in 1927, the British Open in 1931, and the PGA in 1930. But at that time, golf tournaments paid the winner a thousand dollars or so. A professional golfer who aspired to a decent standard of living had to know how to make money in other ways—in short, to hustle. And Tommy Armour liked to live well.

  After his competitive career ended, Armour spent his winters at a posh club in Boca Raton, Florida, giving lessons in golf and gamesmanship to the swells. He took their money in the mornings, giving swing lessons. And he took it in the afternoons, playing exorbitant Nassaus.

  “What do you take me for? Jack Benny?” Armour would fulminate when someone on the first tee suggested slightly lower stakes.

  One winter day in the locker room, Armour overheard a pupil of his offering to bet some friends that he could break 90, a feat that the pupil had theretofore never threatened to accomplish. Armour’s keen instinct for a sure thing was aroused.

  Armour offered to back his pupil in the wager, on one condition: that Armour be allowed to walk the course with him during the round and offer advice.

  With the stakes set, and set high, the match commenced. The first hole was a long par four. Armour’s pupil wound up and sliced a long drive into the rough to the right of the first fairway. They walked to the ball and eyed the green, about 170 yards away, elevated, guarded by a couple of deep traps. The pupil pulled out his 5-iron.

  “Put the five-iron back,” Armour said. “You’re going to play an eight-iron to the fairway thirty yards short of the green and a little left. Then you’re going to chip up through the opening to the green. The worst you’ll make is five. If you go for the green and mishit that five-iron just a little bit, you’re looking at six or seven.”

  The pupil was smart enough to do as he was told. He played the 8-iron to the spot Armour indicated. He chipped up. He sank the putt for his par. He went on to shoot 79. And Tommy Armour won enough money to live a good while longer in the style to which he was accustomed.

  What Armour had done, of course, was to give his student a temporary brain transplant. With Armour making the strategy choices, the student played only shots that were well within his physical capabilities. He aimed at specific targets that Armour selected for him. He felt calm, confident and decisive. He stopped worrying about his swing mechanics, assuming that Armour would correct any flaws that needed correcting. And by doing those things, by acquiring a conservative strategy and a cocky swing, he shot a score he had previously only dreamed of.

  This principle applies to golf at the highest levels as well. Tom Watson, in his final round at the 1992 U.S. Open, demonstrated it.

  Playing the par-five 18th hole, Watson hit a 3-wood onto the fairway and then a 7-iron, leaving him a full 9-iron to the green. The broadcast crew, expecting his second shot to stop much closer to the green, thought momentarily that he had flubbed it. Of course, he hadn’t. Normally, he said later, he laid up closer, with a 5-iron. But earlier in the round, he had partially mishit two short fairway sand-wedge shots. He wanted a full 9-iron into the green because he didn’t think he would feel confident with a wedge, particularly a partial wedge.

  A lot of golfers, facing that situation, would have tried to bash a driver and a long iron and lay up close to the green. They would have told themselves that they simply have to be able to hit a fairway wedge if they want to consider themselves real golfers. Not Watson. He was perfectly content to leave the wedges in his bag until he had a chance to do some postround practice and restore his confidence with them. So he altered his strategy slightly to give him the shot he wanted. But he altered it in the conservative direction.

  He had, in other words, a conservative strategy and a cocky swing.

  17.

  Game Plan

  NO FOOTBALL OR basketball coach whom I’ve ever heard of would send his team into competition without a game plan. Coaches in those sports recognize that an intelligent game plan can take advantage of a team’s strengths and camouflage its weaknesses. More important, a good game plan makes the mental side of the game easier. Players don’t have to make as many impromptu, possibly emotional decisions. They can instead execute decisions made in advance, calmly, outside the heat of competition.

  The same considerations apply to golf:

  You must play every significant round with a game plan.

  Amateur golfers, particularly high-handicappers, frequently don’t understand this. They play spontaneously, making up strategy on the fly. As a result, they make more bad decisions.

  A good professional never plays a tournament round without first examining the course and preparing a plan to play it. The plan encompasses target and club selection for each tee shot, the preferred landing area on every green, and hazards to be avoided. It envisions responses to rain, wind and other weather variables.

  The professional plans all this ahead of time because he wants to do as little analyzing and improvising as possible once he’s on the course. He wants to leave his mind clear and free to focus on each target.

  Once in a while a player has to play a round on a course totally new to him, without time to inspect it beforehand. In such cases, a golfer has to improvise. He should look at hole diagrams on the scorecard, ask a caddie, or ask a member with local knowledge. Even a plan made up at each tee is better than no plan at all. But whenever possible, plan in advance.

  The best way to prepare a plan is to walk or mentally review each hole backward. Standing on the green and looking back toward the tee usually reveals much more about a hole than standing on the tee and looking at the green. It shows more of the tricks and deceptions that the architect may have built into the hole. And it forces you to think strategically about where you want your ball to land on the green, what club would be best for landing it there, and what kind of tee shot will set this up.

  Consider perhaps the most familiar stretch of holes in tournament golf, Nos. 10—13 at Augusta National, the holes encompassing Amen Corner. What do you learn from examining each hole backward? This is what I see when I walk them with a player preparing for the Masters:

  No. 10 is a long, downhill par four, a slight dogleg left, 485 yards from the tournament tees. Standing on the 10th green and facing the tee, you immediately notice that the green itself slopes to the left into a downslope that is very hard to chip back from. Next, you notice how tough the shot can be from the bunker that protects the front right corner of the green; you might have as much as 50 yards of carry from the far end of the bunker to the far end of the green.

  For a professional, the biggest discovery gleaned from standing on the green is how much the hole favors a tee shot played down the left side. This isn’t so apparent from the tee. But from the green you see that the downslope in the fairway is much more significant on the left side. A drive drawn around the corner and down the left side can make the hole play almost a hundred yards shorter than a tee shot blocked down the right side.

  Hitting the left side of the fairway leaves a professional with a 6- or 7-iron, while the approach from the right can be a long iron or a fairway wood from a sidehill lie that makes you feel as if you’re standing on your ear. So, for a professional or a first-class amateur with good length, the game plan is very likely going to be to draw a drive down the left side.

  Every game plan, of course, must be tailored to the individual’s strengths and preferences. It must be based on an honest appraisal of a player’s skills, and it can change from one year to the next, or one round to the next, depending on changes in those skills. I would never prescribe to a player the strategy he or she ought to use on a given hole. If one of my players told me he just felt better hitting the ball down the right side at No. 10, that would be fine with me. My concern is that the player has a plan, that he believes in the plan, and that he follows the plan.

  For a typical member at Augusta National, or an amateur lucky enou
gh to be invited to play there, the calculations on No. 10 would be somewhat different. He would still take note of the leftward slope of the green, especially if he likes to putt from below the hole. He would definitely pay attention to the potential problem caused by the right bunker. He would want to avoid at all costs a long, faded approach shot that fell short, slid into that bunker and left him with perhaps the most difficult of all shots for amateurs, the long bunker shot to a green that slopes away.

  He would also take note of the trees on either side of the fairway, trees that rarely come into play at the Masters, but which could certainly threaten to catch a drive a weekend player might hit, particularly if he swung hard, trying for distance. Finally, he would note the large bunker in the middle of the fairway, about a hundred yards short of the green. It rarely affects a Masters golfer, but if the amateur laid up, he would be safest to lay up short of that bunker.

  From these observations, the intelligent amateur might well conclude that he must play this hole as a short par five rather than a long par four. He would want to hit his first ball somewhere into the fairway and his second shot short of the big fairway trap, a total distance of perhaps 360 yards. That would leave him an easy wedge or 9-iron to the green, with a chance to sink a putt for a par and a realistic plan to make no worse than five on the hole. That’s not bad, considering that the Masters field averages about 4.2 strokes here.

  By working backward, the amateur can then make an informed decision about the club to use off the tee. If he merely stood on the tee, without a plan, he would probably decide to bust his driver as far as he could, given the length of the hole. But by working the hole backward and planning a strategy, he might come to a different conclusion. If he can hit a fairway wood or even a 3-iron somewhere into the fairway, he has only a comfortable mid-iron left to his lay-up position. The obvious call, if he wants a conservative strategy and a cocky swing, is to leave the driver in the bag and play something he knows will get the ball into the fairway, 200 yards or so out. Then he can count on a 6- or 7-iron to the lay-up spot.