Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  Then Neumann missed her 3-footer.

  The scoreboard, in effect, had given Val a false picture. She had assumed that Neumann would make her 3-foot par putt and tie for the lead if she missed her own par putt. It was a false assumption. But that false assumption, plus the information from the leaderboard, made her own par putt harder than it needed to be and nearly cost her the tournament.

  Of course, it’s very difficult to block out the score.

  “Doc,” Val told me later, “I didn’t want to look at that leaderboard. But it was like that leaderboard was looking at me.”

  20.

  Competitors

  SOME MONTHS AFTER I started working with Tom Kite in 1984, he started recommending me to other golfers on the tour. One of them got to wondering.

  “Wait a minute,” he said to Tom. “If this guy Rotella helps you, why do you want him to help us? We’re your competitors.”

  “The way I see it,” Tom replied, “there’s more than enough money out here for all of us. You guys are going to help me get better. And I’m going to help you get better. We’re all going to help each other have fun seeing how good we can get.”

  Tom had the ideal attitude toward competition and his fellow competitors.

  He recognized that the other people on the golf course are not the real opposition that a golfer faces.

  The first opponent is the game itself. The course, the club and the ball are all idiosyncratic and unpredictable foes, and they will humble the best golfer more than occasionally.

  The second opponent is the golfer himself. Can he discipline his mind to produce the best score his body is capable of?

  Only after those two foes have been confronted do the other people on the course come into the picture.

  The best athletes realize that if they win the battle with themselves, they have done all they can do. The golfer who can look back on a tournament that he lost and say, “I played as well as I could. I had my mind where it was supposed to be on every shot,” will be satisfied and happy.

  This is true in all sports. When I worked with professional baseball pitcher Greg Maddux I suggested he approach pitching in much the same way a golfer approaches a golf course. He needed a plan for facing each hitter. He needed a target for each pitch, and a velocity. If he delivered a pitch precisely as he wanted to, he should be satisfied. If Bobby Bonds then hit the ball out of the park, Greg did not consider himself a failure.

  Big-league hitters could do that. That’s why they were in the big leagues. Testing himself against the best, Maddux would not get everyone out. But testing himself against the best would help him find out just how good he could be.

  The best golfers have much the same attitude. Their primary concern is performing as well as they can, or as close to their potential as they can get. If they do that, and lose, they shrug and go on. They know that if they keep performing as well as they can, the wins will come. And they do.

  That’s why a player like Tom Kite can want to help his competitors play better. He realizes that if they improve their games, it will motivate him to do what it takes to get better. He will move closer to finding out how well he can play.

  Most of the touring players I work with come to me because another player advised them to do so. Typically, two friends will sit down for dinner during a tournament, and one will ask the second why he or she seems to be playing better. This happened a lot in 1993 and 1994 to Nick Price, for obvious reasons. Nick would always be happy to share with players how he had learned to discipline and focus his mind on the golf course. And if they wanted to know more, he gave them my number.

  The point is that it never occurred to Nick not to want his competitors to get better. Nor would it occur to any of the players I work with.

  So it distresses me when I run into players, usually lesser players, who think it’s smart to use gamesmanship to throw off opponents in competitive tournaments. They’re always pointing out water hazards or swing flaws.

  Such players must be treated as unfortunate distractions, like a slow foursome in front or the greenskeeper’s lawn mower roaring to life across a fairway. A golfer simply has to put them out of his mind, get on with his routine, and tend to his business.

  Gamesmanship experts hurt themselves. If they are touring players, they will soon be subtly or not so subtly warned to cut it out. If they fail to heed the warning, they will be shunned. The tour, no matter how much money they make, will be a lonely and unhappy place for them.

  If they are amateurs, they risk foregoing one of the great joys of the game, friendships with fellow players.

  So I advise players at all levels to cherish their competitors. It’s better for their games. It’s better for them.

  Never decide that you can’t stand another golfer, because you might find yourself paired with that golfer for the most important round of your life.

  On the other hand, a golfer can’t let admiration for a competitor intimidate him. A golfer has to choose someone to believe in. It had better be himself.

  I work occasionally with some of the players on the Senior Tour, like Larry Laoretti, who spent their twenties, thirties and forties working as club pros and watching players like Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino on television. Nicklaus, in particular, was their ideal. Now, they have to be prepared to face a Nicklaus or a Trevino over the final holes of a tournament.

  I tell them that if they want to keep Nicklaus on a pedestal, if they want to look at him as a hero, they ought to buy a ticket and watch the tournament instead of entering it. If they want to step onto the golf course with him, they have to believe they can beat him.

  I sometimes tell golfers a story about a basketball player I worked with at Virginia named Olden Polyniece, who is presently in his ninth year of playing in the National Basketball Association. He had one of the best minds for sports I’ve ever encountered.

  In 1984, Olden’s first year, the basketball team got off to a mediocre start, breaking even in its first few games. The coaching staff decided to put Olden in the starting lineup, at center. His first game would be against North Carolina, in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels had a fair team that year. It included Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Sam Perkins. They were undefeated and ranked first in all the polls.

  Olden learned that he would be starting against them at the team’s weekly Sunday night dinner in the back room of a local restaurant. After the players left, Olden walked back into the room, where the coaches and I were still sitting and talking. Olden stepped up to me and said, “Hey, Doc, I’ve got a question. How am I supposed to believe in myself if this is my first start ever, and we’re going up against the No. 1 team on its home court, and we’re playing against guys I loved to watch on television when I was in high school?”

  I was impressed with the candor of Olden’s question. He didn’t care that the coaches were listening. All he knew was that he had to get ready to play Jordan, Perkins and Worthy.

  “You’ve got to go in there with the attitude that you’re better than they are until they prove otherwise, rather than the attitude that they’re better than you are until you prove otherwise,” I told him. “Put the burden of proof on them.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Olden said.

  He went down to Chapel Hill and played a beautiful game. He had something like 15 points and 18 rebounds. The team lost by a point at the buzzer. Then, with its confidence buoyed, it went on to record a string of upsets in the NCAA tournament and reach the Final Four. Olden may not have been quite good enough that night to lead his team to a victory but he had begun to demonstrate an attitude that would assure him of future success.

  Golf is much the same. Great players lose more tournaments than they win because players with just a bit less talent got more out of their talent in a particular week. Certainly, Nicklaus at twenty-five was better than Larry Laoretti at twenty-five. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Nicklaus will be better at fifty-five. Some golfers progress. Some regress. Some get hungrier and d
ouble their commitment. Some lose their hunger, develop other interests, or develop other priorities. The USGA Junior champion rarely goes on to become the Open champion.

  And what someone did to you in last year’s club championship—or what you did to him—has nothing to do with what happens if you meet in this year’s tournament.

  21.

  Practicing to Improve

  THE GOOD PLAYERS I work with don’t have to be told to practice. Most of them have grown up believing that hard work and dedication pay off in success. When something goes wrong with their games, their first instinct is to head for the practice area. Then they start working on fixing their problems.

  This kind of attitude has won them praise all of their lives. Americans believe in the work ethic. They believe that practice makes perfect, and the best players are the ones who practice the most.

  So good golfers grow up thinking that time spent on practice is automatically time well spent. And that attitude takes them a fairly long way. If they have enough talent, it can make them scratch golfers. It can win them college scholarships.

  But it rarely can take them to the next level, the level required to win on the PGA Tour. To do that, a lot of them have to learn to back off a little, to stop investing all their time and energy in the fruitless pursuit of mechanical perfection. They need to learn to practice in a different way.

  In golf, working hard does not guarantee success. It can even make things worse. Doing the wrong things in practice can ruin your golfing mind.

  To improve, you must practice. But the quality of your practice is more important than the quantity.

  Go to any practice tee or driving range and watch the way most golfers hit balls.

  Many of them don’t even bother to select a target before they hit a ball. They would laugh if you suggested that they practice shooting a basketball without using a basket. But they bash golf ball after golf ball into the ether, blithely unconcerned with hitting a target. When they get onto a course, focusing on a target is a new experience for them.

  Others spend an entire practice session trying to break the swing down into its component parts and work on one or more of those parts. They may focus on their swing planes, or their hip turns, or their right elbows. But their practice sessions are entirely mechanical. When they get onto a course, they tend to think mechanically.

  To understand how to practice you must first understand that there are two states of mind in practice—the training mentality and the trusting mentality.

  In the training mentality, a golfer evaluates his shots critically and analytically. In the trusting mentality, the golfer simply accepts them.

  In the training mentality, the golfer tries to make things happen. In the trusting mentality, the golfer lets things happen.

  The training mentality is very thoughtful. The trusting mentality feels like reckless abandon.

  The training mentality is impatient. The trusting mentality is patient.

  In the training mentality, a player may just rake ball after ball into position, working on something mechanical. In the trusting mentality, he goes through his shotmaking routine with every ball he hits.

  This distinction is not a matter of good versus bad. Both the training mentality and the trusting mentality have their places in a golfer’s practice sessions.

  The training mentality is essential for incorporating swing changes and for working on the swing fundamentals. Even at the top levels of the game, players constantly work on maintaining their setup and preshot fundamentals as well as basic swing mechanics. The best athletes in the world always spend a portion of their practice time in the training mentality.

  One of the things that separates a pro like Tom Kite from the average golfer is that Tom doesn’t wait until his game goes sour to try to remedy things. As soon as he detects the slightest problem with any of the fundamental shots, with setup and routine, or with his mental game, Tom drops whatever else he’s doing and heads to the practice area to fix it. That’s one reason he’s such a consistent money winner. When he does this, he’s immersed in the training mentality.

  Professionals, as they practice in the training mentality, evaluate themselves harshly. An iron shot may go precisely where they aimed it, but if the trajectory is not what they wanted, they will pick apart the swing and remain dissatisfied until the ball flies to the target with the exact arc and curve they want.

  BUT THE TRUSTING mentality is essential for getting ready to play competitively. If you want to be able to trust your swing on the golf course, you have to spend time doing it on the practice tee. Human beings are creatures of habit. They cannot, as a general rule, spend all of their practice time in the training mentality and then switch to the trusting mentality for competition. Under pressure, an athlete’s dominant habit will emerge. An athlete who spends most of his practice time in the training mentality will generally fall into the training mentality when he least wants to, when the pressure is greatest. He will start thinking analytically, judgmentally and mechanically. He will not be able to trust his swing and let it go.

  The dominant habit is the one an athlete practices most. Therefore:

  You must spend at least 60 percent of your practice time in the trusting mentality.

  This means, in general, that if you hit a hundred balls in a practice session, at least sixty should be hit in the trusting mentality. This isn’t easy, because it requires that you shut your mind down except for thoughts of target and routine. The second an imperfect shot leaves your clubface, you will confront the temptation to evaluate and criticize the swing that produced the imperfect shot, to rake another ball up, and to try to fix the problem. If you can’t learn to resist this temptation, your practice time will be less productive than it should be and you will never be as good as you can be.

  The 60 percent rule is a general guideline. There should be some practice sessions where you spend more time in the training mentality and others where you spend nearly all your time in the trusting mentality.

  You may spend more time in the training mentality at the beginning of the season, when you’re trying to restore the mechanics and rhythm that tend to slip away during the winter. You may spend more time in the training mentality when you’re trying to fix a problem that has cropped up in your game.

  Conversely, the closer a player gets to competition, the more practice time he must spend in the trusting mentality. A player preparing for a tournament should hit 70 to 90 percent of his practice shots in the trusting mentality in the last days before the competition begins. He needs to accustom the mind to the style of thinking that works on the golf course—to thoughts of target, of routine, of acceptance.

  This is particularly true of the warm-up period just before a round. This is preparation for competition, when trusting works. At this stage, a player ought to strive to hit all of his shots in the trusting mentality. If he lets himself revert to the training mentality and starts trying to fix swing mechanics, it will be very difficult to get back into the trusting mentality on the first tee. For a competitive round, a player should get to the course at least an hour ahead of time so he can spend his warm-up period steeped in patience and trust. This is not a time to be rushing from practice tee to putting green to first tee, stuffing a candy bar into your mouth on the fly.

  While no good pro that I know of tries to fix his swing while he’s warming up before a round, a lot of them do work on their mechanics after a round, trying to fix flaws that they noticed during that day’s play. If a player wants to do this, I let him. It certainly is better for him than going back to the hotel and brooding about the mistakes. I hope he leaves the practice area with his confidence restored, ready to trust his swing the next day.

  But Tom Watson told me that he made the big breakthrough in his career after he learned to stop working on his mistakes after a round. Suppose he’d played a round where he mishit a couple of wedges. Earlier in his career, he might work for an hour and a half on wedges. But the next day,
he’d find that he was concentrating so much on wedges that some other facet of his game suffered. So he changed his postround practice habits. He started working for forty minutes on a little bit of everything, not just on the clubs and shots that had been less than perfect that day. He realized that a single day’s results, no matter how bad, never justified trying to overhaul his swing mechanics in the middle of a tournament.

  Regardless of how close a player is to competition, I’m not a great believer in hitting bucket after bucket with the full swing just for the sake of hitting them. It’s an easy way to develop bad habits.

  An amateur, particularly, would be far better off hitting a couple of dozen balls three times a week, going through his routine on every ball, picking out a target, and trusting. He would at least be on his way to ingraining mental discipline and getting the best score out of the swing he has.

  And any player, whether touring pro or weekend duffer, should spend the majority of his practice time on the short game, on shots of 120 yards and less.

  I’d begin by going to a practice green and starting on the fringe. I recommend that good players practice chips every day until they sink two. This does two things. First, it forces them to think about holing chips rather than just getting them on the green in the direction of the hole. And it boosts their confidence. It’s amazing how sinking a couple of chips every day can persuade a player that he has a great short game.

  Weekend players may not be able to practice long enough to sink two chips. Darkness or divorce proceedings would intervene. They can still drop a dozen balls at various spots around the green and see how many they can get up and down, using their full routines with every shot.

  The weekend player ought to make sure he has a few fundamental short shots in his arsenal. One would be the chip from the edge of the green. The second would be the flop shot from a little farther off the putting surface. And the third would be a sand explosion that got up in the air, traveled about 15 or 20 feet, and could be relied on to get out of any greenside bunker.