Archive for Nick Faldo
Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with my rants about golfers changing their swings in response to what I see as their golf psychology problems. Sometimes they change their swings in the often mistaken belief that they somehow need to play better. This generally seems to have one of two results and neither are better than trusting their unconscious golf mind to remember how to play well.
If they are really talented and especially strong mentally, they struggle their way through the changeover period and emerge a season or two later scoring almost as well as they did before the change. They of course believe that they are now better and more consistent golfers and clearly have a new swing. I’m thinking here of people like Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods. Now don’t get me wrong, they are both fantastic golfers. It’s just that they don’t seem to be better golfers than before their swing changes …
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I’ve just been reading about Nick Faldo returning to competitive golf to play in the Open at Turnberry. It reminded me about his focussed determination on the golf course and prompted me to do a bit of research into his attitudes to golf psychology.
I’ve seen Nick playing at very close hand and even played with him in an open amateur tournament, the Hertfordshire Stag, at Moor Park back in the 70′s. I recall that it was just a couple of months before he turned professional and I was amazed at his confidence and scoring ability. I felt like I outplayed and outscored him both morning and afternoon. The scorecard told a different tale with me scoring to my handicap with a couple of 76′s against an SSS of 74 and Nick scoring well below par in both rounds.
Coming back to Nick’s current attitude to golf psychology, I was fascinated to find this fairly recent video article on YouTube with Nick giving a masterclass in Thailand on golf concentration and his mental approach to golf.
I’m particularly in agreement with Nick’s emphasis on not using the word "Don’t" when thinking and talking about your shot – "don’t hit it in the trees"; "don’t hit it in the water"; etc. As Nick reminds us, your unconscious golf mind doesn’t know the meaning of "don’t" and does its best to deliver what you are thinking about – "hit it in the trees"; etc. I also like his ideas around visualising the shot you want to play, making a rehearsal swing to achieve that shot and then hitting it.
I’m certainly looking forward to watching Nick playing at Turnberry.
Have you noticed that the winners on the professional golf tours around the world aren’t always technically or statistically the best players. They often don’t even look like the best player over the four rounds the week they win. Now, I know that’s a contradiction, because if they win the event, then they must be the best in that event.
Going back a few weeks to the 2009 Masters, no one would suggest that Kenny Perry, Angel Cabrera and Chad Campbell were the best players in the field, but they were the one’s that got into the playoff, despite their obvious mistakes. Many of the technically and statistically better players looked to be playing really well, but despite some amazing heroics from the likes of Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, none of them came near getting into the playoff …
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When people write about the top professionals, they tend to talk about the externally visible aspect of their game – their swing technique. Those same writers rarely tell you about the golf mind golf secrets of those same professionals.
So what about Jack Nicklaus and 90% of golf in the mind?
When I started out in golf in the late 60’s I recall hearing Jack Nicklaus talk on TV about golf being 90% in the mind. However, when I eagerly read his first book, The Greatest Game of All published in 1969, I found very little information about golf psychology. In fact, two thirds of the book was biographical and the remaining third was about the golf swing. Maybe that was what the public wanted to hear or what Herbert Warren Wind, his co-writer, wanted to write about …
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