How to play without fear: conquer anxiety on the course by making 'mastery golf' your goal

Golf Digest, April, 2005 by Gio Valiante, Mike Stachura

Jack Nicklaus

Mind-set of a winner

Jack Nicklaus once wrote that "fear of any kind is the No. 1 enemy of all golfers, regardless of ball-striking and shotmaking capabilities."

I consider Jack Nicklaus to be the ultimate model of a mastery-oriented golfer. I once asked him how he had reacted to hitting a shot out-of-bounds late in a tournament while he was contending for the lead. "What were you thinking after that shot?" I asked. His reply illustrates why he is arguably the best competitive golfer ever. Without missing a beat he said, "I didn't have time to dwell. I was too busy thinking about my next shot. There were other guys out there trying to win the tournament, too, so I wasn't busy asking about why the ball flew where it did. I was busy asking myself what I needed to do to win the golf tournament."

For Jack, the amount of time between a bad shot and recovery was instantaneous. There was no dwelling. No asking, "What if I blow the tournament?" He immediately got into the next shot by asking himself, "What do I need to do to win this golf tournament?"

Tiger Woods

How to bounce back

The most interesting golf statistic to the psychological observer is the "bounce back" stat that the PGA Tour keeps. Bounce back measures the times a golfer follows a bogey or worse with a birdie or better on the next hole. In 2000, a year in which he won three majors, Tiger Woods' bounce-back statistic was an amazing 36.8 percent. Better than one of every three times he made a bogey on a hole, he followed it up with a birdie on the next. In his nine seasons as a pro, Tiger has averaged better than 25 percent in the bounce-back category (the tour average is about 20 percent), finishing in the top 12 in the final statistics six times and winning the category outright twice. Greatness isn't about your makes, it's about your misses, and Woods freely acknowledges as much: "I've hit a variety of snipes, quacks and shrimps in my lifetime, and if I continue to play I'll hit plenty more. I realize that a poor shot is just a swing away. I also realize that, once I've hit a poor shot, my only recourse is to hit a better shot on the next swing. In other words, I've learned to hit it and forget it. There's no sense dwelling on a mistake. You can't hit the shot again, so forget about it."

Adapted from Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game by Dr. Gio Valiante, with Mike Stachura, $21.95, 288 pages. Published by Doubleday. Copyright [C] 2005 by Dr. Gio Valiante.