Put on Your Poker Face

You will have some good holes and some bad holes, and so will your opponent -- this is the essence of match play. The key is to maintain your composure. Don't get too elated when you go ahead or too dejected when you lose ground.  

 

"Absolute idiots play steadiest," said W. G. Simpson over a century ago in The Art of Golf. "An uphill game does not make them press, nor victory within their grasp render them careless." 

 

Jerome Travers won four U.S. Amateur Championships in part because he knew that "in the game of golf confidence is a great helper. Let a player lose it and he is marked for slaughter. On the other hand, an attack of overconfidence is apt to be fully as disastrous. Overconfidence and carelessness are teammates." 

 

South Africa's Bobby Locke, as tough a competitor as ever strode the fairways, maintained an absolutely stolid demeanor. "I try to avoid all extremes," he said. "I have been called many things when I am playing because my expression never changes -- 'poker face,' 'muffin face,' etc., but that is due to a determination never to convey to my opponent what my inner feelings are." 

 

Horace Hutchinson wrote that "the best competitive golfers are the distrustful and timorous kind, who are always expecting something terrible to happen -- pessimistic fellows who are quite certain when they come upon the green that the ball farthest from the hole is theirs. This kind of player never takes anything for granted and cannot be lulled into complacency by a successful run over a few holes."

Read more: http://www.golf.com/instruction/10-commandments-match-play#ixzz2lTj21yeU