Golf Psychology Online

“Putting – a game within a game, might justly be said to be the most important part of golf”

Bobby Jones.

Over one third of your shots will be with a putter.

Sergio Garcia led the 2009 European Tour ‘Greens in Regulation’ statistics with 79.8%, the average was about 68%, the leading US tour pro was John Senden at 70.89% with the average about 65%. For amateurs these numbers will be much lower so you need to be able to use your short game to make par several times a round.

Most tour pros strike the ball pretty much as good as one another so where is the difference between the best and the rest? – THE SHORT GAME.

Build your game from the green backwards.

Is there a right and wrong way to make a putting stroke, I’m not sure there is. Some set ups and strokes may give a better chance than others but whatever gets it in the hole is right.

30 years ago the average handicap for men was around 16 and 29 for women, during this time there has been a continuous march of technology in the game; graphite shafts, titanium heads, cavity back improvement irons, soft feel putters, wedges that grip like Velcro, the list is endless, not forgetting modern balls which fly ever and ever further. So ask yourself, why with all this game improvement equipment, have the average handicaps remained exactly the same.

I believe that nowhere on the course do we get in our own way as much as when chipping and putting. Why is this? Give a kid a putter, a ball and a target to aim at and in no time they’re hitting the target, or close to, more often than not. They have no scar tissue from previous experience, they don’t self analyse to destruction, they just get on with the task in hand – and enjoy it.

Do you enjoy putting? If you don’t you’re already up against the 8 ball, if you don’t walk onto the green thinking “I can make this putt” you probably wont. With very few exceptions every putt is makeable, of course you won’t make them all, nobody does, but at least believe in the possibility.

How many things go through your mind when faced with a simple uphill 3 footer?
- Am I square, is my putter head square, don’t lift my head, have I still got the line, if I miss this I’ll probably lose the hole, I missed this putt last month, I need to make the fairway off the next tee, last week I cut it into the trees – what are you thinking of, it’s a straightforward 3 foot uphill put, GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY.
David Duval says that one of the most challenging putts he ever had was on the last green of the 1999 Bob Hope Classic, not only was it for an eagle and to win the tournament it was also to shoot a 59, the first ever sub 60 score on tour, so quite a lot riding on it. He says that the temptations were to try and be too precise and to focus on the outcome, he resisted both and quietened his mind by thinking purely about preparation and routine and hit the putt like the thousands of others before it, needless to say he middled it from 7 feet.
Putting doesn’t require athleticism or physicality but it does require confidence. We all miss putts but it is fatal to dwell on them, far better to maintain a library in your mind of putts you have made, this is not deluding yourself these are putts you have actually made, and when you stop and think about it you’ve made plenty.
The more importance you place on the outcome of a putt the more pressure you place on yourself, the more tense you become, the more you get in your own way. Learn to putt like it doesn’t matter, this doesn’t mean not giving the putt your full attention it means don’t focus on what the outcome means just on the task itself. Like David Duval get yourself a routine that you use every time, the more used you get to following the same procedure the more automatic it becomes and the more comfortable you’ll feel over every putt.
Of course it is also important to practice this vital aspect of the game, the more putts you hole on the practice green the greater your confidence on the course. But, beware of hitting putts aimlessly, Jack Nicklaus said “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head”. Without doubt the most informative and to many minds radical thinking I have read on putting is in Golf: The Mind Factor . by Darren Clarke and Dr Karl Morris.

Golf Psychology

Tags: Golf, Golf Psychology, Golf Tips, Nick Madgett

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