Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  I went to talk to the young man and asked him when his free-throw problem started.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The first game of the year, I guess.”

  Anything prior to that, I prodded.

  “Well, in the NCAA tournament last year,” he said, “we were playing North Carolina and we had a chance to upset them. Inside the last minute, it was a one-point game. I went to the free-throw line with a one-and-one. And I shot an airball. They brought it inbounds, but after about ten seconds we stole it. I had the ball and the whole North Carolina team attacked me. I thought, my gosh, they want me on the line.

  “I thought I was composed, but as soon as I was set to shoot, the North Carolina fans started chanting: ‘Airball.’ That really got to me, and I barely ticked the rim with my shot. North Carolina went on to win the game.

  “I had let myself down and I had let my teammates down. Before I left the locker room, I made a commitment to myself that I would never shoot an airball again.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Keep on doing what you’re doing and you’ll never shoot another airball. But if you want to make free throws, you have to change your thinking. You have a perfect attitude for avoiding airballs, but a lousy attitude for making free throws. If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you have to accept an airball now and then.”

  Golfers can do the analogous thing. In their eagerness to stop leaving their putts short (and being called “Alice”) or to stop running them too far past, they can lose focus on the real goal, which is putting the ball into the cup. The putter who is called Alice on the first green runs putts five or ten feet past on the next seventeen holes. Or the putter who runs one way past on the first green becomes tentative. What they don’t do is knock anything difficult into the hole.

  SO, YOU’VE READ the green decisively and picked out a line or a target. You may at this point in your routine want to take a couple of practice strokes. Take them with your eyes on the target, not the ball, and certainly not on the putter blade. Use them to make sure you feel the right stroke for the distance the ball has to travel. If you look at the ball or the blade, it will only introduce questions into your mind about the path the blade is taking, mechanical questions that divert you from your focus on the target.

  The next step is getting yourself aligned and aimed properly. Many of the players I work with use the lettering on their golf balls to aid in doing this. They mark their balls, clean them, and then replace them so that the lettering is precisely in line with the intended line of the putt. Then they take their stances and use the lettering to align the blade of the putter.

  Though there’s no particular stance or grip that makes for good putting, there is one mechanical point worth mentioning in the alignment process. The eyes see the putt better when they are precisely over the ball. As a golfer develops a putting routine, it’s worth practicing this indoors. Put a mirror on the floor and place the ball on it. Adjust your stance until your eyes are right over the ball or just inside it, whichever works better for you.

  Once you’ve aimed yourself, you have to trust that your routine works and you’re aimed correctly. Sometimes, a green will have undulations placed purposely by the architect to create optical illusions and confuse players. Don’t let them distract you. Be decisive. If you take your stance, look at the target, and start wondering whether you’re aimed correctly, you need to walk away and start the process over again, because you can’t putt decisively if you’re questioning your aim. Don’t worry about slowing play down. If you are this meticulous about trusting your routine, you will make up for the lost time in the long run by taking fewer putts.

  The heart of the putting routine is analogous to the core of the exemplary routines for full shots and the short game:

  Look at the target. Look at the ball. Let the putt go.

  Two principles, by now familiar to you, underlie this postulate. One is that your brain and nervous system work best when the brain simply reacts to the target. The other is that the longer a player stands over the ball before he hits the putt, the more likely he is to allow the intrusion of mechanical thoughts or doubts that will corrupt the pure, simple interplay among the target, the brain, and the nervous system.

  The “run-and-shoot” attitude that Davis Love III borrowed for his short game from watching Michael Jordan play basketball exemplifies this. The idea is to let the conscious mind step aside and let the subconscious react to the target. Think when you’re behind the ball. Don’t think when you’re over it. Do.

  As with the full swing, there is a rhythm to looking at the target, looking at the ball, and letting the putt go. When I begin to work with a player, we spend a lot of time getting this rhythm ingrained in his or her routine. The player strokes one five-footer after another in time with my voice: Look at the target. Short pause. Look at the ball. Short pause. Let it go. It’s almost like a mantra.

  If a player I’ve been working with develops putting problems and asks me for help, the first thing I check is his rhythm. Is he following his routine in competition at the same pace he did on the practice green? If he’s not, particularly if the pause between looking at the ball and letting the putt go has lengthened, that’s a sign that he’s not getting himself into a decisive frame of mind before he strokes the putt.

  This is especially important on short putts. In every round, a golfer will have some critical putts of three to six feet. And everyone I work with, from high handicappers to the winners of major championships, occasionally has trouble with them.

  Short putts remind me of field-goal kicks in football. Kicking field goals has little in common with the elements of football that most coaches like to emphasize: blocking, tackling, running. It’s a simple task that comes down not so much to strength as to trust. But so many games are decided by field goals that no sensible coach would send a team onto the field without a good kicker. Similarly, no golfer should approach competition without a confident attitude toward short putts.

  You have to begin by committing yourself to liking them. You will not be one of the guys who sit in the locker room complaining about what great scores they’d be shooting if they weren’t blowing short putts. You will, instead, be a player who loves holing short putts. You will roll them just as freely as you roll 40-foot putts. You won’t try to steer them or overcontrol them.

  You can do this, in part, by practicing them. As you practice, emphasize being trusting and decisive with each putt. In most cases, this will mean hitting it firmly. I advise my professionals to do this with all short putts, taking some of the break out of them.

  You won’t, of course, make all your short putts. But when, inevitably, you miss a short putt, ask yourself why you missed it. Did you misread the green, or get the speed wrong? If so, forget it. But if you missed it because you were afraid of missing it and got tentative and careful, because you really didn’t believe you would make it, redouble your effort to be trusting and decisive. If you do, you will still miss some short putts. But you will be a good short putter. You will miss less often.

  On long putts, the biggest fallacy I see players falling for is the three-foot target. This is an imaginary circle with a radius of three feet and the hole at the center. Some teachers suggest a player facing a long putt should try only to get the ball inside this circle. This makes no sense. Think about an archer or a pistol shooter. They shoot at an artificial target with a bull’s-eye and concentric outer circles. But no matter what the distance, they always aim for the bull’s-eye. It gives them the biggest margin of error. Even if they miss it, they’re likely to hit something on the target. The same principle applies to putting. Always aim to make it.

  It’s not hard to be decisive if the ball is going in the hole for you. Anybody who makes a couple of long putts on the first two holes is going to be decisive when he putts on the third green. The hard part is remaining decisive even if the first critical putts of the day don’t fall.

  This bedeviled Nick Price and a lot
of professionals. I’ve had players tell me that they actually hope they don’t hit their approach shots stiff on the first few holes. This sounds incredible, but the fact is they don’t want to risk blowing a few makable birdie putts, because they know from experience that if they miss a couple of short birdie putts on the first few holes, their putting will be tentative and ineffective the rest of the day. Responding positively to missed putts is a major challenge.

  The question you must ask yourself is not whether you’re sinking your putts. The proper question is whether your attitude is giving your putts a chance to go in. If it is, you should be encouraged by missed putts. Sooner or later, since you’re doing everything right, putts will start to fall. The law of averages, if you’ve just missed a few, suggests it will be sooner rather than later.

  But if you have to admit to yourself that you have not been trusting and decisive with your putting, then you have a choice. You can let your missed putts make you even more tentative and indecisive for the rest of the day, and hope that geese land on the green and peck your errant putts into the hole. Or you can decide to become even more decisive and trusting in your putting and give yourself a chance to make some.

  I recall Tom Watson at the 1982 U.S. Open. Everyone remembers the chip shot he sank at the 17th hole to seal the win. But equally impressive to me was the way he reacted after missing a straight, two-foot putt on the 7th green. He missed it so badly that it didn’t even touch the cup. But he refused to get flustered and refused to get tentative.

  On the next hole, he buried an 18-footer for birdie, getting back the lost stroke and a share of the lead with Jack Nicklaus. Some time after that, I asked him what had gone through his mind on those two holes. He told me that his miss only showed that even great putters miss an occasional easy one. He was a great putter. He acknowledged that it was disappointing and unfortunate to miss a two-footer in the final round of the U.S. Open. But he reminded himself that if he wanted to continue to be a great putter, he had to give himself a chance on the next hole and the ones after that.

  In candor, Watson said, he knew that giving himself a chance would not guarantee that the next birdie putt would fall. But back in the days when he was putting well, that was what he knew he had to do.

  11.

  Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

  A FEW YEARS ago, Tom Kite and I were in Austin, and we played a round at Lakeway Country Club with a couple of members of the University of Texas golf team. It was a beautiful day and a great match. They all shot between 69 and 73. Afterward, we all sat down for a soda, and it was obvious they were dying to ask a question. So I said, “What’s on your mind?”

  One of the guys replied, “Tom, we basically hit it as good as you did today. When we missed and hit a bunker, our bunker shots were as good as yours. When we missed a green, we got it up and down like you did. We scored within a shot or two of one another. So how come you’re the all-time leading money winner and we’re the number three and four golfers at the University of Texas?”

  Tom grinned at me and said, “Do you want to tell them?”

  “No,” I said. “They’ll believe it more if it comes from you.”

  “The difference,” Tom said, “is that when you guys get in tournaments, the likelihood is that you’ll lose your concentration on four or five shots every round. Over a four-day tournament, even if every lapse costs you just one stroke, that’s sixteen to twenty shots a week, and that’s the difference between being the leading money winner and losing your card. If one of these lapses costs you two or three strokes, or you get upset and lose concentration on a second shot, you can be talking about twenty-five to thirty strokes a week, and you won’t even make the college golf team. Over a career, losing concentration once in a while can mean lots of strokes.”

  I joined in. “Today, each of you hit a few balls off line, into the rough or the trees. But since it wasn’t a tournament round, you didn’t let it bother you. You just went over and found the ball, pitched out, wedged up to the green, saved your par and went on. But in the Southwest Conference Tournament, you might hit the same shot and overreact to it. You start telling yourself, ‘You’re such a jerk,’ and ‘Why does this always happen in a big tournament?’ Before you even hit your next shot, you’re convinced you’re going to make bogey or double-bogey. And you do.”

  One of the things Tom, or any successful pro, does best is to accept his bad shots, shrug them off, and concentrate completely on the next one. He has accepted the fact that, as he puts it, “Golf is not a game of perfect.”

  This does not mean that a pro doesn’t strive to eliminate mistakes from his game. He does, unless he wants to savor the joy of Qualifying School once again. But he understands that while striving for perfection is essential, demanding perfection of himself on the golf course is deadly.

  Of all the tournaments Tom Kite has won, one of the most impressive to me was at Bay Hill a few years ago. He and Davis Love both butchered the final hole. Tom hit his approach in the water and Davis flew his over the green. What impressed me was the way Tom responded to the shot that went in the water. He then had to play a long wedge shot over the same water to a tight pin. He could have dwelled on the way he hit the last shot so badly. He could have tried for the middle of the green or even the bunker, just to make sure he didn’t make two splashes in a row. Instead, he hit that second wedge stiff, made the putt, and went on to win the playoff.

  The television announcers and the golf writers weren’t impressed. They don’t think a guy who hits his ball into the water on the last hole deserves to win the golf tournament. But I knew how brilliantly Tom had responded to one of the fundamental challenges of the game:

  No matter what happens with any shot you hit, accept it. Acceptance is the last step in a sound routine.

  When I next talked to Tom, he had almost bought into the attitude of the writers and commentators that there was something wrong with the way he’d won the tournament. I told him that, on the contrary, there was a great deal to admire in it.

  Tom had wanted to win, desperately. He had hit a bad shot. But he hadn’t reacted by losing his concentration. Instead, he got up and down and went on to win the tournament.

  “You know, Tom,” I said, “no matter how good you get at this game, a lot of funky, crazy things are going to happen on the golf course. The better you can get at accepting them, the better you’re going to get.”

  Good golfers, I think, have to get over the notion that they only want to win by hitting perfect shots. They have to learn to enjoy winning ugly. And that entails acceptance of all the shots they hit, not just the good ones.

  The next week, as it happened, Tom won the TPC with a display of nearly perfect golf. The writers and commentators all swooned at his feet. But I still like the win at Bay Hill a little better.

  I FIND IT amusing and ironic that players like Tom and Nick Price, who are among the best ball strikers in the world, who practice regularly, can learn to accept their bad shots, while the high-handicappers I see in pro-ams and clinics often cannot. If Price or Kite pushes one into the woods, which he occasionally does, he accepts it as something that is going to happen in golf and he calmly plans his next shot. In fact, the best Tour players make a remarkable number of birdies from out of the woods. They know that escape from the woods demands that they become even calmer and more sharply focused than they normally are.

  But the high-handicapper, who’s got a loop in his swing the size of the Washington Beltway, who practices twice a year if the weather is good, will fume and curse and berate himself if he hits one into the woods. How could he have been so stupid as to slice the ball?

  I’ve had guys in pro-ams turn to me after a tee shot that wiped out two squirrels and a woodpecker and say, “I don’t hit the ball that way.”

  To which I am tempted to reply, “That’s funny, I thought I just saw that you did.”

  No one likes to hit a bad shot. Let’s suppose you’re on the first tee at your club in the
first round of the club championship and you pull-hook your drive into the trees. This can happen to the best of players. At my home course, Farmington Country Club, at the U.S. Senior Amateur in 1993, the eventual winner hit his very first tee shot out of bounds on the first day of qualifying. Did this make him happy? Of course not.

  But the question is, does it do any good to get angry?

  Getting angry is one of your options. But if you choose to get angry, you are likely to get tighter. That’s going to hurt your rhythm and your flow. It will upset you and distract you. It will switch on your analytical mind and your tendency to criticize and analyze anything you do that falls short of perfection. It will start you thinking about the mechanical flaws in your swing and trying to correct them.

  You will very likely play worse.

  Alternatively, you could train yourself to accept the fact that as a human being, you are prone to mistakes. Golf is a game played by human beings. Therefore, golf is a game of mistakes.

  The best golfers strive to minimize mistakes, but they don’t expect to eliminate them. And they understand that it’s most important to respond well to the mistakes they inevitably make.

  Chip Beck has one of the best attitudes toward bad shots. When he hits it into the woods, he walks toward the ball and all he says is, “You gotta love it. This is what golf is all about.”

  And he’s right. Golf is indeed all about recovering from bad shots. It’s about getting up and down from sand traps. It’s about knowing when it’s smart to pitch sideways out of the rough and do your best to save par or bogey with your wedge and putter. It’s about the exhilaration that comes from spotting a narrow path through the trees and threading your ball through it to the green. Viewed this way, any round you play will be enjoyable.