Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  Your game plan must also prepare you for adversity. No matter how carefully you study the course and plan your targets, you are not going to hit everything perfectly. And even if you hit it perfectly, golf courses are full of bad bounces. Some of your tee shots are going to land in fairway traps. Some of your approach shots will also find sand. Once in a while you’ll be in the woods, and once in a while you’ll be in the water.

  Your plan has to prepare you for all contingencies, so you’re ready for the best happening and ready for the worst. Let’s suppose that you are about to play in a club championship, and the 1st hole, a 370-yard par four, has a deep-lipped fairway trap 235 yards out from the tee on the left side and out-of-bounds on the right. You decide that you’ll hit a 3-wood off the tee, aiming for the left center. You choose the 3-wood because you can’t normally hit it 235 yards and you rarely slice this club enough to go out of bounds. Four rounds out of five, your choice will work out fine. But one round out of five you might block it right, past the white stakes. Or you might really catch it pure and see it trickle into the fairway trap.

  If you haven’t planned for either eventuality, you might get all upset and kick away your chances right there. But if you’ve prepared, you will know that in the event of an out-of-bounds tee shot the only effective thing to do is to realize that all players occasionally block a ball, forget about it, tee up a new ball, and swing more freely than you did on the first shot. In the event of hitting the fairway trap, you’ll have already decided that if you’re within five yards of the lip, you can’t reach the green, and you’ll take out a sand wedge and rely on your short game to salvage par. If you’re more than five yards from the lip, you’ll take out an 8-iron and go for the green. The important thing is to be prepared for both bad shots and the bad breaks the course can dish out even on good shots. When they happen, as they inevitably will, you’ll maintain your equilibrium.

  Doing this helped Tom Kite win the U.S. Open in 1992. Three years previously, at Oak Hill, he let a bad hole upset him. This was the 5th, and it happened when he was leading. He hit a shot in the water, pitched up, and had a putt for a bogey. As he later described it to me, he still felt positive and confident and knew he was going to make it. But two feet from the hole, the ball caught a subtle break that he hadn’t foreseen and slid past. He was really shocked. Rather than mark the ball, collect himself, and adhere to his routine, he walked up to the next putt quickly and missed it. That turned the hole into a triple-bogey and really hurt his chance to win that Open.

  In 1992, as he prepared for the Open at Pebble Beach, I asked Tom every day whether he was prepared to miss a two-foot putt and not let it bother him. He told me he was.

  He proved it Sunday on the 4th hole. Everyone remembers the chip he holed for a birdie at No. 7 to take the lead. But to me, what happened at No. 4 was equally important.

  The 4th at Pebble Beach is a very short par four, only 327 yards from the back tees. It’s one of the holes a good player wants to birdie, because he knows he’s likely to need that cushion as he plays the much tougher holes ahead. Tom hit two good shots at No. 4, a 4-wood and a sand wedge, but his approach hit a hard spot on the slick, wind-dried green and bounced into a bunker. He exploded out, missed his par putt, and had a tricky short putt for bogey. He missed it and took double-bogey.

  But this time, he had learned his lesson and was better prepared. He never let his thoughts get ahead of his position on the course. He never let himself wonder whether those two wasted strokes had cost him his chance at the Open. He kept his attention focused tightly on every ensuing shot as it came up. He stayed with his game plan and his routine. And he won his richly deserved major championship.

  YOUR GAME PLAN must always have flexibility. You must think in advance about what you will do if the wind blows strongly. In this case, you might hit more low irons off the tees into the wind rather than taking a chance on a wood hit up into the wind. You might hit a driver instead of a shorter club on a par five with the wind at your back, if the wind gives you a good chance to reach the hole in two. If it rains, or the course is soggy, your shots will get less carry and much less roll. You have to alter your plan accordingly. You may want to use longer clubs off the tee and go for more pins in marginal situations.

  But in general, I recommend altering your game plan only in a conservative direction. I don’t like to see players under pressure make bolder and more aggressive choices than their plan calls for, especially in medal play. Too often, the new choice winds up costing them more strokes. Any time you’re not sure, make the more conservative choice.

  18.

  Thriving Under Pressure

  MOST GOLFERS TAKE up the game casually. As beginners, they’re just trying to learn how to hit the ball, and their only opposition is the game itself.

  But sooner or later, most move on to another level, the level of competition and pressure. They join a foursome that plays for a few dollars a side. They enter club tournaments. At higher levels, they try to make their living as professionals. And at the highest level, they try to engrave their names on the trophies awarded at major championships.

  When they step up to this level, they often find that they perceive the game very differently. The grass is still green and the ball is still white. But fairways that once looked wide and inviting turn tight and menacing. Putts that once seemed short and straight start to writhe like snakes.

  At their first exposure to competitive pressure, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of players choke. They don’t produce anything resembling the kind of golf they play when they’re completely relaxed.

  To deal with choking, let’s first define it.

  A golfer chokes when he lets anger, doubt, fear or some other extraneous factor distract him before a shot.

  Distracted, the golfer then fails to do one or more of the things he normally does. He fails to follow his routine, particularly his mental routine. He forgets his game plan. He fails to accept his shots. Quite often under pressure, a distracting doubt or fear turns on the conscious mind. The golfer stops trusting his swing. He starts going through a checklist of errors to avoid. He gets tight and careful. When he’s tight and careful, his body must work against gravity, rhythm and flow. His muscles get spastic, his feet get stiff, and he loses his natural grace and tempo. He hits a bad shot, relative to his ability.

  That’s all that choking really is.

  It’s important to dispose of a few common misconceptions.

  First of all, choking is not synonymous with being nervous. The fact is that, at one time or another, all golfers are nervous. I visited Jack Nicklaus some years ago, and I remember vividly what he told me about nerves. Nicklaus wanted to be nervous. He liked being nervous. One of the symptoms that he noticed as he aged and his performance level started to decline was that he didn’t get nervous often enough.

  “I don’t know how you play well unless you’re nervous,” he said. “Nowadays, I don’t get nervous unless I’m in a major and in a position to win. If I could only learn to concentrate when I’m not nervous, so I could get in position to win, then I’d be fine.”

  Nicklaus understood what most great athletes do—being nervous can help performance. Bill Russell, the great Boston Celtic center, wrote in his memoirs that he always felt confident the Celtics would win a big game if he threw up in the locker room before it started. A nervous stomach meant, to Russell, that he was interested and excited. If he didn’t vomit, he was afraid his performance would be flat.

  Being nervous produces adrenaline. Being very nervous can produce a great gush of adrenaline. That can cause the heart to pound. It can cause the hands to shake.

  In a young golfer, or an older golfer who hasn’t learned how to handle it, this gush of adrenaline can be devastating. He stands over a shot or a putt and feels the trembling hands and the furiously beating heart. He doesn’t understand that this is simply a natural reaction to the situation. It’s the way the body is wired. He begins to think, “W
hat the heck is wrong with me?”

  And that thought introduces doubt and fear, which, as we have seen, are the termites that destroy the foundation of the successful stroke. He or she may try to still the heart and hands, which makes the body stiff. He or she forgets to trust. He blames the ensuing bad shot or putt on shaking hands, not on being distracted by shaking hands.

  Many players, including Val Skinner, one of the LPGA players I work with, have had to learn to handle this challenge. Under pressure, particularly on the greens, Val’s hands would start to shake because of the intensity she brings to the game. She worried about this until I told her about all the critical putts that good golfers have made with shaking hands. Then she started to accept and welcome the physical symptoms of stress as a normal part of the human condition.

  The successful golfer either has learned, or instinctively understands, that the pounding heart and the trembling hands are nothing to worry about. They are, at worst, another factor to be accounted for, like a following wind. They may cause an iron shot to carry 10 or 20 yards longer than it normally would. But they will not, of themselves, destroy the swing.

  The successful golfer knows that rather than concern himself with stilling the hands and quieting the heart, he must focus the mind, blocking out distractions and attending to routine and strategy just as meticulously as if this were a practice round, on his home course at twilight, with no one else around. The body can and probably will stay excited. The mind must not.

  Successful golfers, like Nicklaus, welcome the onset of nervous symptoms. That’s why they got into competition in the first place—because winning was important to them and overcoming the emotional challenges of competitive golf gave them a great feeling of accomplishment. They play tournament golf precisely because it makes them nervous.

  I sometimes tell young players that being nervous on the golf course is a little bit like being nervous the first time you make love with someone you really care about. Nearly everyone is nervous in that situation, but nerves are part of what makes the experience so exhilarating. If it didn’t make you nervous, it wouldn’t be so gratifying. In fact, it might be a little boring. Ask any prostitute.

  So, choking is not being nervous. Choking is also not synonymous with making a bad shot in a pressure situation. Hitting a golf ball precisely is a complicated task. No human being can do it well all the time. A player can do everything right, mentally, and still miss a two-footer on the 18th hole of an important match. In golf, that simply happens sometimes. It’s not necessarily due to choking. If the putt or shot is missed in spite of good thinking, the golfer simply has to accept his misfortune as part of the game, and move on.

  Choking is also not the inevitable by-product of a flawed swing, although you often hear golfers talk about trying to learn a swing that will “hold up under pressure.” If a swing is good enough to repeat itself on the practice tee, it is good enough to repeat itself on the golf course, as long as the golfer’s thoughts remain consistent. Swings don’t hold up under pressure. People do.

  And, finally, choking is not synonymous with having a flawed character. Some nasty, miserable people have triumphed under pressure. And some of the finest, most admirable human beings in the world have choked in tight situations. If you play golf long enough, you are bound to encounter some pressure situations in which you will perform at less than your best. They will help you learn how to cope with pressure, which is a skill that must be learned, and, once learned, constantly maintained.

  I’ve already spoken of some examples of choking. We’ve seen how Corey Pavin let the pond on No. 16 at Augusta distract him from his target and ruin his chances at the 1986 Masters. And we’ve seen how Tom Kite let a missed putt cause him to abort his routine and miss a two-foot comeback putt at the U.S. Open in 1989. These are two of the toughest minds I’ve ever known. I could cite dozens of other examples. Raymond Floyd blew a big lead and lost the Senior PGA Championship on the final nine holes in 1994. Afterward, he told the press that he realized that under pressure, he’d been altering his setup a little, causing blocked shots.

  Each of them, it should be noted, learned from the experience and went on to become a better player. Choking is not a congenital, incurable disease. It can be overcome if the golfer intelligently analyzes what went wrong in a particular situation and takes steps to correct it.

  THE U.S. OPEN is perhaps our greatest laboratory for the study of performance under pressure. Golfers can quibble about whether the Masters is more lucrative or the British Open more prestigious. But no other tournament offers quite the cauldron of distractions as our Open. The sheer, overwhelming desire to win the title is itself a distraction. So is the fear of getting into contention or into the lead and then failing to capitalize. The U.S. Golf Association lets the rough grow and pinch the fairways to provide another source of doubt. It shaves the greens to make it all the more difficult to ignore any tremor in the hands. The finishing holes are invariably among the longest and most testing in golf. Not surprisingly, the history of the Open is rich in stories of golfers, many of them great golfers, who fell in the stretch with an apple stuck in their throat.

  I say this knowing that I am putting myself into the position of the second-guesser in his armchair, whom I generally detest. I do not mean to besmirch anyone’s character. I don’t mean to gainsay the tremendous achievement of simply getting into position to blow an Open. Those who have gained such position are the warriors who dared to enter the arena, and they deserve admiration. I simply note that even the greatest players are human, human beings commit mental mistakes, and all golfers can learn from the study of those mistakes.

  Arnold Palmer, who won the Open so dramatically in 1960, blew it just as dramatically in 1966 at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Most golfers know the outlines of that story. Palmer made the turn in the final round seven strokes ahead of Billy Casper. He wound up losing the tournament to Casper in a playoff the next day.

  I admire Arnold Palmer a great deal. My favorite story about him suggests how loose and trusting he was in his prime. It occurred in 1962, at the Colonial. Palmer was in a playoff with Johnny Pott when he hit a ball into a bunker on the 9th hole. He was about to hit his recovery shot when he heard a small boy’s voice, followed quickly by the sound of a mother hissing at the boy to hush. Palmer turned around and saw the two, the boy looking chagrined and the mother embarrassed. Palmer just laughed, turned back to the ball, and addressed the shot again. Just as he was about to swing, he heard another sound. This time, the mortified boy was sobbing. Palmer backed off again and again smiled at the child. Then he addressed the ball a third time. He heard a gagging sound. He turned around and saw that by this time the mother had clamped a hand over the boy’s mouth.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Palmer said. “Don’t choke him. This isn’t that important.”

  Whereupon he blasted out of the trap and went on to win the playoff.

  But four years later, Palmer was being supplanted as the best golfer in the world by Jack Nicklaus, and he desperately wanted to win the Open. He was not quite so loose.

  As it happens, I have taught at clinics several times with a pro named Mike Reasor, who was Palmer’s caddie during that Open. From Reasor’s account, and what Palmer himself has written, it’s possible to reconstruct much of what went through Palmer’s mind that Sunday in San Francisco.

  Palmer gave one standing instruction to his caddie that day. If his swing tempo got too fast, he wanted Reasor to tell him. Reasor was himself a top-flight golfer, a member of the Brigham Young University team. And he noticed on the 7th hole of the final round that Palmer’s tempo was quickening. But, he reasoned, who was he to correct the best player in golf, a man leading the Open by seven strokes? Reasor kept his counsel for the time being.

  Palmer has written that as he stood on the 10th tee, he was so confident of victory that he stopped thinking about the shot immediately ahead of him and started thinking about breaking the Open scoring record of 276, set
by Ben Hogan in 1948. Palmer already held the British Open scoring record. The thought of holding both records simultaneously enchanted him. Distracted by that thought, he lost a stroke to Casper on No. 10.

  At No. 11, he hit his tee shot into the right rough. Reasor was trailing eight or ten paces behind Palmer as they set off from the 11th tee. He had noticed that the swing was getting even quicker. He decided to tell Palmer.

  “I called out, ‘Arnold,’ and he stopped and looked around,” Reasor recalled. “I told him his swing had gotten way faster. He made an attempt thereafter to gear it down, but it was difficult. Trying to slow it down took away his free flow and put tension in the swing.”

  Palmer had already committed, in retrospect, two of the common mental mistakes a golfer makes under pressure. He had let his thoughts drift into the future. He had started to dwell on the score he was shooting and the Open record. Then, he compounded the error by introducing a new, mechanical thought, about swing tempo. As I’ve mentioned, tempo is one of the least harmful swing thoughts a golfer can have. But introducing such a thought at an advanced stage of a critical round is not the same as starting with it on the first tee. Fear of a quick backswing often leads to a tentative forward swing. In Palmer’s case it probably would have been better to continue to play with no swing thought at all, because, as Reasor noticed, trying to slow the swing down did more harm than good. Palmer managed to par No. 11, but Casper birdied No. 13. The lead was down to five.

  Then Palmer made the third mistake commonly committed by golfers under pressure. He started trying to be too bold. The 15th hole at Olympic is a short, heavily bunkered par three, and the USGA had chosen a sucker pin position, just beyond a deep trap. Palmer went for the pin, fell short of the green by inches, and wound up in the sand. He bogeyed the hole. Casper hit to the center of the green, sank the putt, and cut the lead to three.