Make Up Your Mind

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

         
At the ’03 Masters, Tiger Woods was about to hit an iron for position off the third tee when his caddie suggested he take a chance and hit driver. Tiger had already made up his mind, so the suggestion to hit another club literally “un-made” it. Woods, lacking permission from himself to carry out his plan, drove his ball into the woods, made a double-bogey and kissed his chance for a Masters three-peat goodbye. What can you learn from Tiger’s mistake? Play the shot you have permission to play.

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Seventh Hole Tips

Your round is one-third complete. It’s time for a tension check. You should feel what I call Selective Tension, where some of your muscles (your lower back, the insides of your thighs, ankles and the inside of each foot) are tense and ready for action, and others (like your jaw, neck and shoulders) are relaxed.

At the 7th is also a good time to check in on your Time IQ (how you handle time during your round). At the first sign of bad shotmaking, you need to do everything in slow motion. Drive the cart slowly, walk slowly, stop at the water cooler, be the last one on the tee, etc. In other words, fake it until you make it.

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Stop The Nega-Talk

You’re bound to miss some putts you should make, so it’s important to eliminate “nega-talk,” the kind of self-talk where you berate yourself and destroy your self-confidence. If negative autosuggestion works, so must positive autosuggestion. Tell yourself you’re great on the greens.

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Triangulate Your Putts

 

You should read all your putts from three vantage points—from behind the hole, from midway between the hole and your ball, and from behind the ball. Using this process of triangulation maps out the putting surface perfectly for your brain to interpret. Anything more is overkill; anything less is not enough.

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Lag With A Purpose

Not wanting to be too aggressive on the first hole, you left your iron shot 40 feet from the cup, and the first hole isn’t the place for a three-putt. Here’s the tip: Most good lag putters don’t ascribe to the “three-foot circle” theory. Good putters try to hit the ball in the hole, not three feet from it. Think about this: From a long distance, it’s easy to leave your putt three feet short of where you want it to stop and, if you miss the three-foot circle by that much, you’re six feet from the hole.

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First Green Tips

On the practice green, check the grain by lightly dragging your putter across the grass. If the grass stands up, you’ve scraped your putter against the grain; if it stays down, you’re with the grain. When you’re playing, the Rules of Golf don’t permit you to test the green in this manner, but you can test the collar or apron of the green without penalty. Just make sure it’s the same kind of grass as the putting surface before you factor the information into your read.

In addition to grain direction, learn how the greens drain. A well-designed putting surface has drainage patterns that draw water off to the sides and away from the center of the green. In general, you can expect swales to channel the water away from the bunkers and toward ponds and lakes. Therefore, if you have a putt with a bunker directly behind, the putt probably breaks away from the bunker. Changes in grass color surrounding the green as well as damage from past accumulations of water also are clues to how the drainage flows. The ability to read the drainage patterns is a key to good putting.

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Go Toe-To-Toe

Web Tip: Develop A Stroke For All Distances
Before every round, calibrate the length of your stroke by widening and narrowing your foot width. For short putts, use a very narrow stance, position the ball in the center, and then stroke the putt by taking the putter back to your back foot (big toe) and through to your front foot. Do this for different stance widths until you develop a feel for how long a backstroke you need for each length of putt. Once on the course, simply match the distance of your putt to your foot width and putt toe-to-toe.

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