Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  Satchel Paige, the old pitcher, used to put bubble gum wrappers on the edge of the plate as he warmed up. Aiming at them sharpened his control.

  The small, precise target helps golfers in one obvious way, by making it easier to align the player and his club. But it has another benefit. A golfer needs to have something on his mind if he does not want thoughts about swing mechanics to intrude on his consciousness just as he is preparing to play his shot. The target helps fill that void. It helps prevent distractions.

  Nick Price, after we had worked together for a while, told me that once he had picked out a target, he could look back to the ball, but continue to “see” the target in his mind. He has seen his consistency and his success greatly increase as he has committed himself to refusing to hit a shot unless his mind is locked onto the target.

  Other good players tell me they feel almost as if they had a third eye on the left side of their head. Their eyes shift down to the ball before they swing. But with that third eye, they still see their target.

  Tom Kite, on the other hand, looks at a small target in the distance, thinks about it, but does not see a picture of it when his eye returns to the ball. His mind is just as locked onto the target as Nick Price’s. This is merely an individual variation.

  Hogan was so aware of the value of a target that he told me one of the worst developments in modern golf was the demise of the shag caddie.

  When he practiced, Hogan said, he always had a shag caddie stand precisely where he intended to hit the ball. This brought the target to life. The caddie wanted to field the balls with the least possible effort, catching them on the first or second hop. Hogan took pride in enabling him to do that. It made him pay attention to the target on every practice shot, in terms of both direction and distance. That habit carried over to the golf course.

  On the golf course, though, finding a target is not quite so natural or instinctive as it is in, say, basketball. Off the tee, except on par-three holes, the course often presents no obvious targets. And experience, that false friend, tells you that you can’t hit a driver precisely enough to bother with a specific target. So golfers are tempted to be sloppy about targets. If they fall prey to the temptation, they tend to hit, not surprisingly, sloppy shots.

  Many of the players I work with have found that it’s most effective to pick elevated targets—that is, something above the ground. On some courses, trees will serve this function. If you pick a tree as your target, try to focus more narrowly. Make it a specific branch on the tree. You can use a distant church steeple, a radio tower, or anything that presents something small and precise to aim for.

  Only if there is no other choice, though, should you pick something like a specific undulation in a fairway. A particular point on the ground is easy to lose track of, and in the middle of your backswing, you might find yourself wondering if the undulation you looked at just before you started to swing is the same undulation you picked out when you were standing behind the ball. And good golf course architects will use undulations to create illusions that can cause you to question your alignment. That’s why an elevated target is preferable.

  On tee shots and full swings, your target rarely will be at the precise distance you want the ball to travel. You might aim, for instance, at a tree behind the green on a par four, knowing that you can’t reach it from the tee. Frequently, your target will not be on a direct line between where your ball is and where you want it to be. A straight hitter, looking from the tee into a fairway that slopes from left to right, will pick a target to the left of center, assuming he wants the ball to wind up in the center of the fairway. He’ll allow for the rightward roll he’ll get once the ball hits the ground.

  If you curve the ball, you need to make allowance for that when you select your targets. I’m not going to tell you that your mind can cure a slice or a hook. If you’re a slicer, I don’t believe you can stand on the tee, aim at a target on the right, persuade yourself that you’re going to draw the ball, and miraculously cure your slice. And, of course, you now know better than to try to cure your swing flaws on the golf course.

  So, work with your dominant tendency. If you normally slice the ball twenty yards off line, pick a target twenty yards to the left of where you want the ball to finish. Obviously, it’s better to be able to hit the ball straight enough so that you can always aim in the fairway. But the important thing is to adjust. Too many players get obsessed with straightening out a hook or slice that they could simply play with. Without realizing it, they change their goal from shooting their best score to fixing their swing.

  There’s a limit to this, however. Don’t ever aim at a target that would mean severe trouble if you happened to hit the ball straight. From the tee, it’s all right to have a target in the rough, but not out of bounds or in a lake. And sometimes, the golf course architect will not let you aim far enough off line to correct for a slice or hook. He’ll put the tee in a chute of trees, for example. In such cases, you have to go to a shorter club, one that you can hit straight enough to get out of the chute.

  Many of the players I work with also pick an intermediate target on the tee to help them with alignment. This can be an old divot, a bit of paper, or the remnants of a wooden tee. All that matters is that it is precisely on the line between the ball and the target. The player picks both the target and the intermediate target as he stands behind the ball. Then he walks up to the ball with his eye on the intermediate target. He uses it to help align his clubface and his body. Then he forgets it.

  Some players find the intermediate target a distraction. They prefer to align themselves using the real target. That’s fine, too. Whatever you choose to do, make certain that it clears your mind and makes it easier to trust what you’re doing.

  LOCKING YOUR MIND onto a small target will help you deal with looming hazards. The brain tries to be an accommodating mechanism. It will try to send the ball in the direction of the last thing you look at or think about. If that happens to be a pond, you can find yourself in severe trouble. So if you’re preparing to hit an approach shot over water, or a pitch over a bunker to a pin, it’s important that you have an established habit of focusing your mind firmly on your target.

  Most tour players have long since learned not to let things like water hazards bother them. More often, their brains get distracted by something like the flag. Fred Couples, in the final round of the 1992 Masters, barely escaped disaster when he hit his tee shot onto the bank in front of the 12th hole. Miraculously, it hung up in the grass and stayed out of Rae’s Creek. Couples was able to pitch up to the green and go on to win. He later acknowledged that he had planned to play the 12th safely, by aiming for the left-center of the green. But at the last second, his attention was distracted by that siren flag, fluttering in the breeze on the right and most dangerous side of the green. Not surprisingly, the ball went where his attention did.

  This is not a problem peculiar to Couples. Many players have difficulty focusing on their real target when a flag is in their field of vision. I often work with them on this, suggesting that they try to focus on something small, like a fence post in the distance, instead of a flagstick. It helps to develop the discipline they need in pressure situations.

  Sometimes even the best players let a hazard distract them from their target. I went to Houston in 1986 to give a talk to some of the touring players. It was a week after the Masters. I was talking about the importance of having your mind focused tightly on the target for every shot you play. Corey Pavin raised his hand and stood up.

  “That’s what I didn’t do at the sixteenth hole on Saturday and Sunday last week,” he said.

  I asked him to explain.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m cruising along Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’m eight under coming into sixteen, with birdie chances ahead of me. I get up to sixteen, and for some reason I tell myself at the last second, ‘Don’t hit it in the water.’”

  Splash.

  “I go home that night,” Pavin co
ntinued, “and I tell myself, ‘Make sure you don’t do that tomorrow.’ On Sunday, I get back to eight under. I’m in position to win the thing, and I get up to sixteen, and all I can do is remember what I did yesterday and think, ‘Oh, God, don’t do that again today.’”

  And splash again. Two mental mistakes and he was out of the hunt in the Masters.

  Two things impressed me about what Pavin said. First, it confirmed one of the key attributes of the brain and how it affects your golf game. The brain, at some level, cannot seem to understand the word “don’t.”

  If your last thought before striking the ball is “don’t hit it in the pond,” the brain is likely to react by telling your muscles to hit it in the pond.

  That’s why it’s doubly important, when facing a hazard, to focus your attention sharply on your target. Obviously, you have to be aware of where the hazards are. But I tell tournament players to think about them only during practice rounds. Take the 1st hole at Augusta. It has a gaping sand trap down the right side and pines on the left. Obviously, a player wants to avoid each of them. But a player who stands on that tee, fighting nerves already, and thinks about where he doesn’t want to hit it, only multiplies his chances of hitting it badly. He needs to use his practice rounds to learn where the hazards are and establish the right target for his drive—fade or draw, long or short. Then, when he steps onto the tee in competition, he must think only of that target.

  The second thing that impressed me about what Pavin said was his commitment to learning about himself and his game. He didn’t care what anyone else, including his peers and competitors, thought. He was intent on learning what he had to know to get better.

  8.

  Your Rod and Staff

  WHEN TOM KITE stepped to the 18th tee at Pebble Beach on Father’s Day in 1992, protecting a slim lead in the last round of the U.S. Open, it would not have been overstating things to say he faced a challenging shot.

  The wind was howling. The Pacific Ocean lined the left side of the 548-yard fairway. Deep rough stood ready to punish anyone who tried to play safe by pushing the ball down the right side. Add to that the enormous pressure of being on the brink of winning a first major championship.

  Bob Toski later told me that he couldn’t bear to watch. Sitting at home, watching television, he had to get up and go into the kitchen, asking his wife, Lynn, to let him know what Tom did.

  I was nervous as well, but I was more aware than Bob was how much Tom had practiced something that would help him handle this challenging situation.

  I was not thinking of practicing drives, though Tom had certainly done that. I was thinking of Tom’s preshot routine, an element of his game that he works on constantly.

  A sound preshot routine is the rod and staff of the golfer under pressure, a comfort in times of affliction and challenge. It ensures that he gets set up properly, physically and mentally. It blocks out distractions. It helps him to produce his best golf under pressure.

  Which is what Tom did that Sunday, smacking a 280-yard drive down the middle of the fairway.

  High handicappers often tell me that what they most want to solve are problems of inconsistency. They can’t figure out why what feels like the same swing produces a long, straight shot one time and a ball that fades to a splash the next.

  I usually respond by asking them to describe their preshot routines. Many of them can’t, because they don’t have preshot routines. And yet, the pros I work with, who know the golf swing better than anyone, tell me that 80 percent of any golf shot happens before the player takes the club back: when he aims, takes his grip, addresses the ball, and, most important, focuses his mind.

  This fact leads to the next fundamental principle:

  The foundation of consistency is a sound preshot routine.

  The next time you watch a tournament on television, take a look at a player like Tom Kite or Pat Bradley and see if you can break down his or her routine. You will find a remarkable consistency. These golfers strive to repeat the same mental and physical steps before every shot, right down to the number of waggles.

  There will always be inconsistency in every golfer’s results, as Kite and Bradley would be the first to attest. No one can completely prevent minute variations in the swing that can lead to great disparities in the way the ball flies. But golfers with an effective mental approach to the game know that they can control much better what happens before the swing begins, when the movements are slow, deliberate, and more susceptible to discipline. They seize that advantage by adopting a disciplined, constant preshot routine.

  They use this routine for every full shot, be it a wide-open lay-up on a par five or the tightest, most challenging tee shot on the course.

  Every player I work with has his or her own variation on the routine. But all sound routines incorporate certain fundamentals. A good routine enables a golfer to be trusting, decisive, and focused on the target. It fits his or her personality.

  To develop a reliable routine, a golfer has to decide to follow it and practice it time after time after time until it becomes an ingrained habit that will show up no matter how much pressure he or she is under. You can be sure that under pressure, you will find out what your dominant habit is.

  Some players like to begin their routines with a triggering gesture. They may fiddle with the grip on the club, or hoist the club over a shoulder. They may set a hand on the top of the driver as it rests in the bag. It doesn’t matter what the gesture is. It simply serves to remind the player that his preshot routine has begun and it is time to focus intently on it. Players whose attention tends to wander on the course may find a triggering gesture particularly helpful.

  Other players don’t need triggers to start their routines. Just taking the club out of the bag or standing behind the ball and beginning to plan the shot suffices to get their attention. It’s a matter of personal preference.

  Good players feel that when their routines start, they are stepping into a bubble, a small, private world in which nothing can distract them. Tom Watson once said it feels like going into a room where everything is dim and quiet.

  Once their routines are under way, most players assess the distance they want to hit the ball, the wind, the trajectory, if that’s a factor, and the appropriate club. The important thing about club selection is decisiveness. If you step up to the ball still uncertain whether you have the right club, your routine is not sound. You have to start over, rethinking the shot until you are convinced you have the right club for it.

  Next, pick the target. Most players do this standing behind the ball. Some do it standing next to the ball. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the target be small and precise.

  This preaddress phase of the routine is the time to deal with any problems that might be caused by an unusual or unfavorable lie. If the ball is on a downslope, an upslope, or the side of a hill, take a stance next to it, take a practice swing or two, and determine the adjustments in the flex of your knees or the tilt of your shoulders you will have to make to cope with the lie. Think them through at this stage because you don’t want to have them occur to you as you prepare to hit the ball. If your lie is flat, of course, this step isn’t necessary.

  The next step depends on the individual. Some players, when they have picked the target and club, can visualize the ball flying through the air, landing, rolling, and stopping where they want it to stop. They can visualize how their swing will look. These visions are as clear to them as if they were in a movie theater watching them.

  Such visualization can help to produce a successful shot. Brad Faxon feels that the vision in his mind dictates to his nerves and muscles the type of swing to execute. If he stands on the tee of a par four that doglegs to the left and demands a high draw, he sees the high draw. That’s enough to get his body to produce the swing that makes the ball fly high and curve from right to left. He doesn’t have to think consciously at all about the grip, the stance, the swing plane, or any of the other mechanics that mos
t golfers would associate with a high draw.

  But you don’t have to visualize. A lot of great players don’t, because their minds don’t work that way. They look at their targets, decide they are going to hit those targets, and how they will work the ball—draw or fade. That suffices. Some players simply focus on the target and know the ball is going there. That gets the job done.

  The important thing is that you know the ball is going to the target. If you can’t make yourself believe it, pick another club or another target until you can. If you’ve got a driver in your hands and you can’t believe that the ball is going to go where you want it, put it back in the bag and take a 3-wood or an iron.

  Instilling this unwavering belief in the shot is one of the fundamentals without which your routine loses its purpose. Remember that the point of the routine is not to go through a physical ritual. It is to get your body aligned properly and your mind in an effective state before every shot.

  Val Skinner had an unfortunate experience at the 1994 British Women’s Open that illustrates the point. Val arrived in England for the tournament a little jet-lagged, and her first-round score reflected it. But she righted herself in the next two rounds, and by Sunday afternoon, she was three under par, two shots off the lead.

  On the 15th hole, though, she made a critical mistake. She drove the ball well, leaving herself an approach shot of 173 yards. There was a slight breeze. Her instinct told her to hit a 5-iron, but she chose to ask her caddie for advice. He said 6. This introduced doubt into her mind about club selection. She hit the shot with a mind infected by doubt and plugged the ball in a trap. She was fortunate to make bogey.

  She repeated the mistake at No. 17. This time, her instincts told her to hit a 9-iron for a short approach shot. She asked her caddie again, and he said wedge. Again, she hit before resolving the doubt. Again, she bogeyed the hole.