How To Develop A Dynamic Mental Approach In Golf

Here are some tips to help you develop a dynamicmind; he merely shut them out of his golf. While he
mental approach to improve your golf. When a matchwas playing he would talk intelligently about any
grows to a climax the great player is apt to becomesubject that cropped up, stocks and shares, eating
slower and slower. It is not that the putt on the lastand drinking, politics or puritanism. Nothing, neither
green is more difficult than that on the first; probablywind nor weather, bad greens, tight corners, or
his experienced eye tells him all he needs to knowunduly chatty opponents, ever made the Hage tense.
about it at first glance. But he potters about,Consequently golf never exhausted him; he was as
sometimes to the annoyance of uninitiatedfresh at the end of a Championship as he was at its
spectators, until he has pushed all that the puttbeginning. Incidentally this mental limberness was not
means out of his mind, until all he is conscious of isleft behind on the last green. I remember talking to
the feel of the stroke that will hole the ball. The pupil,him at Sandwich on the day he won the British Open.
let us say, is making good progress. He is beginningHe had finished and we sat and chatted for a long
to co-ordinate his game and build up his controls,time while waiting to see if George Duncan would
when he suddenly takes himself off for an afternoondeprive him of the title which otherwise he had won.
in an entirely different atmosphere-that ofWell George very nearly did it, but Walter Hagen
competitive golf, in which style means nothing andnever batted an eyelid. He was as chatty, as
immediate results everything. Of course his buddingcheerful, and as untense as ever-at the end of a
style and incipient control go overboard andweek's competitive golf with the whole issue of a
end-gaining dominates. Everything is subordinate tothree thousand mile trip in the balance. I suppose
getting the ball into the hole. It is only an intentionallyeveryone would agree that "self-control" as effective
established set of controls that can resist theas that possessed by men like Hagen and Harry
temptation to force and guide the ball when much isVardon is a priceless quality. But how achieve it? It
at stake. The general verdict is that the Hage had acan only be done by building one's golf into a closed,
"marvellous temperament for the game." And whatself-controlling circle, and then keeping extraneous
do we mean by that? My own interpretation is thatmatters outside that circle. The reason why the
the Hage had perfect psycho-physical equilibrium, thatneophyte and the player needing re-education find
his mind and body were perfectly balanced andcontrol so elusive is simply that their golf has not yet
perfectly correlated for the purpose of the game ofbeen built into ouch a closed circle. And if they only
golf. Walter Hagen had found by trial and error, asknew it they make things far worse by trying to
most of us do, how he could best hit the ball. He hadlearn golf and play golf at the same time. When that
got the feel of his shots thoroughly into his systemhappens, pity the poor teacher! Then, and not until
and could pull them out whenever he wanted. Whilethen, he can hole it. If you want my idea of the ideal
he was playing he inhibited any extraneous matters inmental attitude to the game I will give it you in two
the most effective way possible he refused to letwords-Walter Hagen's! Walter Hagen was not only
them into that part of himself that was concernedone of the greatest golfers, he was one of the most
with his golf. So he could play his best inbuoyant. Wherever he played he simply oozed with
circumstances that would have turned gray the hairthe joy of life. The more he was up against it the
of any less perfectly adjusted player. Please notebetter he played. He really enjoyed a fight and the
that the Hage did not concentrate in the acceptedharder it was the more superb his confidence.
sense. He did not shut extraneous matters out of his