First You Work – Then You Get Paid

“If you are interested in improving your game, I would highly recommend helping your head as much as you are helping your swing…”

The above was a quote from Rob Mangini, former assistant men’s golf coach at Arizona State University. I read it in some material that I am reviewing written by Michael Anthony called The Mental Keys to Improve Your Golf. As Michael points out “the secrets to success is to understand and know what works. Then, concentrate on doing the work…”

Unfortunately, when it comes to golf usually us regular, recreational golfers don’t think beyond “gripping it and ripping it”. We don’t really want to put in the time. We just want to hit that sucker.

And yet in all my years of golfing, I haven’t met a golfer yet that doesn’t want to improve his or her game.

Getting better is not going to just happen, especially if you want to be consistent. It requires giving some serious attention to the four fundamentals of golf – mechanical, strategic, physical and mental. Now isn’t that interesting. How many of the (4) do you as a golfer have a handle on? I would bet that most average golfers don’t even think of (3) of the (4) and, to be honest, their mechanics probably aren’t necessarily “all that”.

Remember what I quoted from Michael Anthony’s book The Mental Keys to Improve Your Golf. “First you work, and then you get paid.”

That is the very foundation of what Strategy Golf is all about - focusing on doing “the work”.

Any sport requires practice. But golf requires so much more. It is you and you alone against the golf course, the elements, and your own demons. It is you that has to make the shot or sink the putt.

Something that Michael also mentioned was that “When you focus on winning (the outcome), you open yourself to the fear of losing”; letting bad shots or mistakes get you angry and that usually leads to something other than first place.

Again, this is where putting your attention on your Strategy and not on your competition is so important. All things being equal, if you play to your game-plan, then the outcome should take care of itself.

I would recommend Michael’s books The Mental Keys to Improve Your Golf to anyone serious about their game. But I would also highly suggest that you think about the game a bit differently and start observing the course and physically writing out a game-plan of how you intend to approach each hole. (Managing the Course; Plan Your Strategy)

It is a fact that “written goals have a mysterious way of becoming real…” page 15 of the The Mental Keys to Improve Your Golf. Unfortunately, most golfers, let alone most people fail to realize that reality.

Michael points out that there are “two reasons why people don’t write down goals. The first reason is similar to why people stop making New Years Resolutions”. They don’t keep them! ”…so (they) stop making them…the second reason…is that it is time consuming.”

You are the one playing each round; there is no doubt time between each shot waiting for the other players and on every tee; golf takes about 4 ½ hours to play 18 holes; and most of us fiddle around with stats and such on the 19th hole so what’s the problem? If you made notes a little after each round you would have plenty to lay out a solid strategy in no time. I know you think about the game, why not think your way onto paper?

Just some food for thought from a golf fanatic