We all know the famous cliché that states: “You drive for show and putt for dough”. But the truth of the matter is this: great players know that if they make putts, they will be in the hunt to play their best round and to win championships. If they putt poorly or have an average day on the greens, then their chances for success are greatly diminished. This is why that one of the most important things you can have when you step onto the first tee is the internal sense and feeling that you will putt well for the entire day. Knowing that you have the proper “touch and feel” helps create a foundation for success that carries into every part of your game. In fact, knowing that you are prepared to play and putt well is one of the most important assets to your golfing confidence level!
As LPGA player Vicki Goetze-Ackerman states: “If I practice and warm-up the right way, then normally I feel prepared and then I have confidence.” Vicki is stating that the way in which she prepares herself physically, mentally and emotionally allows her to perform with confidence. She prepares to be confident by planning her practice and warm-up time to accomplish specific goals of feeling good about her ball striking and putting. In this way, she creates a climate of positive feelings and thoughts by virtue of her warm up and preparation.
However, most golfers fail to plan for their success. In fact, a great number of amateur golfers tell me that they don’t take the time or even consider that they have the ability to prepare themselves for success! So, with that in mind, what I would like for you do to is take a bit of time and reflect back into your golfing past and think about your best putting round.
I’m serious about this…..right now as you’re reading this article, try and remember when you had a “hot” putter or when you were seeing your ball roll gently into the cup. Think back to that great putting day….Did you believe that you could make every putt? Did you concentrate well? Did you feel in control? What started the belief that you could make everything? Did you have a nice flow to your pre-putt routine? If you can tap into your memory bank and retrieve these same thoughts and emotions, you may find yourself rekindling wonderful feelings that can work their way back into your golf psyche’ the next time you take your putter out of your golf bag. (Now, that wasn’t that hard to do, was it?)
Positive Reminders for Success
Reminding yourself that you have the capability to think good thoughts and make good decisions about the line and speed is a good place to start if you have had putting problems in the past. By taking the time to reflect back into your past and draw on only good memories helps create a positive mindset as well as re-emphasize good feelings with the putter.
However, I also hear this many times in my work: “Dr. Winters, I know I am not a good putter and I don’t know if I can be very effective on the greens….I haven’t had a lot of success before on the greens. So, what am I supposed to do?”
Well, if you feel like this and you don’t have any good memories of putting success, it becomes vitally important that you start to think about specific things that you can do well….right now! These would be things such as:
(1) getting a good read of the putting surface and looking for contours and tilt
(2) making a clear decision of the ball-roll line
(3) knowing how hard you need to hit the ball in order for it to roll on your ball-roll line
(4) contacting the ball squarely and having a smooth, accelerating stroke
(5) knowing that one putt is all you need to start building putting momentum
(6) adhering to your putting plan and routine
The key point to all of this is that you have to start somewhere to create these positive feelings of confidence and when is a better time to start than right now?
The Mind of a Great Putter
One of the most important pieces of information from my research in putting psychology during the past twenty-five years is crystal clear: Great putters think, believe and create their own good thoughts about great putting! Great putters are always talking and thinking about making putts and putting great, even if they are missing, because they realize that missing is a part of putting. The flip side of the coin is that poor putters think, believe and create negative thoughts about their putting. Poor putters are always talking, complaining, and thinking about how bad their putting is and talk about failure. The truth of the matter is, whatever dominant thought one holds in the mind becomes reality!
It is little secret that the main difference between great and poor putters are their perceptions of self-thought, self-talk and self-image. One-group views themselves as successful while the other group views themselves as failures. Thus, what you think about most of the time comes true! Therefore, you have a choice: You can think about changing your image into a great putter and create good thoughts and feelings for success…….. OR …….You can think that you are doomed to putt poorly for all eternity and feel sorry for yourself and putt mediocre at best.
The choice is up to you. It was for this very reason that the late Harvey Penick told his two star pupils, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, to go out to dinner with good putters and players. The reason was simple psychology. The good putters were always talking about making putts versus the poor putters who were constantly complaining about the greens and making excuses for their inability to drop the ball into the hole. Just by “hanging out” with the good putters, Ben and Tom gave themselves a chance of successful input just by being exposed to their positive thought processes. This is why I believe that Mr. Penick was one of the true golf psychologists that knew the value of a positive and directed mind….long before we ever realized the value of his philosophical teachings!
I have written down some additional thoughts and ideas about warming up your mind for success that will help build a foundation for your putting confidence.
Imagining Success on the Green
Perhaps the best place to create positive thoughts and feelings is when you lie down in your bed getting ready for your night’s sleep. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words!” In the case of getting yourself ready for a great putting round, I will turn that phrase around a bit and say: “A picture is worth a thousand putts!”
Therefore, one strategy is to imagine yourself putting great and playing with a lot of putting confidence. As you lie in bed the night before a big match or tournament, what I would like for you to do is to take a couple of deep breaths and clear your mind of the days’ activities. Lay motionless for a few minutes and just focus on the pattern of your breathing. Now, visualize yourself at the golf course walking onto the first green and appearing confident. View yourself as a player who looks as if he or she knows that the putts are going to fall into the hole. Imagine going through your pre-putt routine and see yourself setting up and addressing the ball with the sole purpose that this putt is going down!
Continue to see yourself performing confidently as you take your last look at the hole as your head and eyes come back to the ball. Finally, see yourself making a smooth stroke that hits the ball squarely and solidly. Watch the ball roll down the line with the proper speed and see it fall into the center of the cup. Relive this picture again and again. You can never see this picture of success often enough! Build a foundation for success by seeing yourself in your mind’s eye as always being successful. By picturing yourself as successful and viewing yourself confidently allows you to relive that picture the following day on the green. In a way, you have pre-programmed yourself for putting success via your imagination. Thus, you can create your own blueprint for success by just thinking good thoughts about your putting!
*A KEY POINT: Remember, everyone who has ever been successful on the golf course or won their first tournament had to picture themselves as a winner in their mind first……..the actual performance followed the thought!
Becoming a Positive Putter!
It seems almost a cliché to remind yourself to stay positive, but the truth of the matter is clear: If you can’t get enthused about your own success, no one else will! You have to understand that there is real power in the world of positive thinking, but that there is even a greater power in the world of negative thinking. What we know from the sport psychology literature is that you can be very positive, try hard and still not be successful. However, the real power of negative thinking is that if you do it and believe in negative thoughts and feelings, it almost always works! Using positive thinking coupled with a positive attitude, at least gives you the opportunity to see how great a putter you can be. If you use the negative approach, you don’t even get onto the first green before your golf day is over. The point is this: It remains imperative to your putting success to stay enthusiastic and keep your self-talk upbeat and positive. Never, ever criticize yourself or be judgmental of your putting prowess (or lack of it) on any day!
Remind yourself as you drive through the front gates to your club or golf course that you are going to believe in your putting ability and become your best buddy on the green versus doubting yourself and turning into your worst enemy. Just using this strategy alone will help your putting success immeasurably. Also, remind yourself that you will stay patient and composed even when the putts don’t drop.
LPGA Tour star and 2007 European Solheim Cup Captain Helen Alfredsson told us: “I know that I am going to miss putts, but I am going to miss them while trying to make them!“ This type of attitude has allowed Helen to know that on each putt, her mind is focused on making putts and that she can accept whatever happens. Thus, the game of golf doesn’t have to become a YOU vs. YOU situation! It now becomes a game of YOU for YOU! You need to become your best partner, ally and coach on the golf course because this allows you to create an attitude for success, while also maintaining your playing focus and composure.
Warming Up Your “Mental Oil”
Many golfers don’t take the time to warm-up on the putting green and create a sense of feel for the speed of the greens. Many others that do take the time to warm-up, do it in a way that is detrimental to their confidence and feel system. You see them go to the practice green and take three balls and drop them down and start putting to a hole twenty feet away. They putt the first ball and it slides by on the low side about 15 inches left of the hole. The second and third balls aren’t much better and the result is that this player has just hit three putts and experienced three misses. To me, this isn’t a good way to develop feel and touch for the upcoming round and it certainly doesn’t provide a foundation for building putting confidence. The following is a system I have devised that will help you warm-up your putting focus and "mental oil" for the round:
1. Start by just rolling some long putts of 30 to 40 feet towards the far part of the green (no target focus, no putting cup) and just hit the ball solidly and watch it roll over the green. By just starting to warm up with a few long putts to no specific target allows you to get the “kinks” out of your system and to just concentrate on making solid contact with the ball without judgment or critical thinking. (This is similar to race car drivers who drive around the track at speeds of 50 to 70 miles an hour. They are simply getting their machine’s oil warmed up for the big performance later in the day when they will be racing around the track at 250 mph or more). You are simply doing the same thing in this procedure.
2. After hitting five or six long putts back and forth with no judgment or target focus, I then recommend hitting putts of 20 to 30 feet to the edge or apron of the putting green for distance and speed control. If you can successfully place six balls within one foot of each other in a tight dispersion pattern, this should show you that you have fine-tuned your distance control to a fine edge.
3. Then, I want you to move to a putting cup or hole and place three balls twelve inches away from the hole. Proceed to stroke these three balls into the hole. This is so important that you do this because your first pictures at a hole are of success! You see, hear, and feel the golf balls going into the cup! In truth, you can never experience this sensation often enough in your pre-putt round. By doing this, you can have your first experience with the putting hole as a success picture which provides positive feelings for the entire day.
4. I then want you to putt with just one ball and use your pre-putt routine to try and hole some 10 to 15 foot putts. Using one ball at different distances not only will help you get into a “playing mode” but will warm-up your routine, your focus, your green reading and decision making capabilities for the round. As PGA Tour player Bob Estes said: “You are going to get more out of your practice and warm-up if you make it more like what it is going to be on the course.” Thus, it becomes a good idea if you complete eight to ten trials at this 10 to 15 foot range.
5. Once you have completed eight to ten trials at the 10 to 15 foot range, proceed to hit some longer putts at different lengths (20, 30 or 40 feet) and check to evaluate your distance control. Remember that the warm-up is a place to fine-tune your mind to make putts, but it is not the competition. Tune into your touch and feel and do not allow yourself to become distracted with mechanical thoughts. Just get into rolling the ball smoothly with your mind focusing on the ball rolling into the putting cup.
6. After you are satisfied that you have adequate distance control, proceed to make three 3-foot putts in a row before you go to the first tee. Holing three shorts putts and seeing the ball go into the hole helps to “set” a positive image of your putting competence for that day when you walk to the first tee.
Finally, when walking onto the first green, remind yourself that you have prepared yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically to putt well and that you are ready to putt great. Don’t place huge expectations on yourself that “Today is the day that I putt great or else!” Rather, on each and every putt, know that your mind is giving your body the proper thoughts and signals to respond appropriately and that this is giving you the greatest chance to be successful on the green.
A Final Word
One of the key elements that I am trying to develop with all golfers is the feeling that they have “earned the right to be confident.” By preparing yourself mentally, emotionally and physically helps to instill feelings and thoughts of competence and success. Give yourself a chance to see how great a putter you can be by looking inside yourself and understanding that great putting is more a matter of personal choice of attitude than just mechanical stroke aptitude. Throughout the history of the game, the greatest putters have known the importance of practicing their mechanics and fine tuning their touch and feel, but they never forgot to warm-up their mental oil and attitude for a great putting day either! May all your putts find the bottom of the cup!
Dr. Robert K. Winters
Dr. Robert K. Winters is an internationally renowned sport psychologist who works with competitive golfers from around the world. He is the Resident Sport Psychologist for the David Leadbetter Golf Academy World Teaching Headquarters located at Champions Gate, Florida and he is well known for his expertise in confidence and putting psychology, sports vision and enhancing athletic performance. He can be reached at mindpowersports@aol.com. He can also be reached at his Orlando office at 407-264-4222 for individual and group consultations.
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