You’ll hear many performance psychologists talking about the skill of being able to ‘live in the moment’ or ‘get into the zone,’ where the player is able to exhibit 100% concentration without any concern for the future. This is what has been called, for hundreds of years in the Far East, the state of satori, where the individual feels everything but thinks nothing during performance, specifically in martial arts.
The buzzwords around performance psychology these days are all about making sure the process prior to and during performance is as close to perfect and well thought-out as possible. All of this really means that if you take care of what’s in front of you and execute with excellence every time, the outcome will be excellent too. Excellence, in these terms, is defined as doing the very best with what you have at that moment.
If you adhere to these simple terms and execute with excellence every time, then the product of your efforts will be, by definition, the very best that you could do, which, in golf, is the most sought-after result there is.
There is a prayer that has been used or adopted by organisations dealing with addiction, which focuses on the day-by-day principle: if you take care of one day, and all the moments within it, that’s all you can do. Then, after a period of time, the days become weeks, the weeks become months, and so on.
The prayer goes:
“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”I appreciate this might appear a little deep and meaningful, with a touch of, “Does Neil have a problem?” But I will stay in my lane, make this relevant as far as golf is concerned, and leave the wider-reaching topics to somebody far more qualified than myself.
Regarding the first sentence of the prayer, where we’re asked to accept the things we cannot change, I see huge relevance in golf, when a player reacts badly to a golf shot. What’s the point? You can’t change what just happened. Tying back to the original point, if you executed with excellence, you wouldn’t be upset, or if you did your best, that’s all you can do. Yet, scanning across the golf course, I can see on a minute-by-minute basis players being very upset with individual golf shots, and then carrying the emotion along the fairway to the next shot, which is invariably another bad one.
Yet if the player was able to accept that they did their best with what they had at that moment, then they should be content. However, having a clear and accurate understanding about what they are capable of doing on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis is sometimes where the problem lies. The player could be accurately accused of trying to hit a golf shot beyond their capability, executing the shot knowing they only had a 0% chance of success, and then getting upset that they didn’t achieve their desired (but unrealistic) outcome.
If you were to look back to your last round of golf, did you try and take on a shot you were poorly prepared for, even when, standing over the shot, you had doubts, and then, when you hit it, it didn’t come off? Tie that back into the first sentence of the prayer: can you honestly say that you accepted the things you cannot change? If you tried to take on that shot, you tried to change your game into something it isn’t.
I find those three simple sentences apply to a lot of areas. Next time, we’ll touch on the second sentence, which will be about having the courage to change the things we can. There might be a couple of references to maybe taking on a little bit more practice and lessons, but I’ll do my best to make it as relevant to your golf game as possible.
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