Zen Golf

Brian had entered the Qualifying School for the PGA Tour for twelve years, but had fallen short every time. The Q-School is actually a series of tournaments, culminating in the finals, a grueling six-round tournament. It is the ultimate pressure cooker, as each golfer’s career for the next year is on the line. I met Brian two months before the Q-School finals. He told me about his career in golf, his hopes and fears, his strengths and weaknesses.

In the martial arts and similar mind­-body traditions of the East, the body’s “center of gravity” is the source from which all movement and energy flow. It is located a few inches below the navel, in the center of the torso. Awareness of this center of gravity is extremely helpful in golf.

Less than one percent of all golfers have completed a round of golf on par or better. That makes it a rather unrealistic target score for all but the most skilled among us. Measuring yourself against the par on the scorecard is a setup for failure for the average golfer. Another problem with par is that it is printed on scorecards and signs. When it was first used, the number set as “par for the course” varied according to the difficulty of the course conditions under which a competition was played.

The mental skills necessary to play your best golf need to be learned and groomed, just as good swing techniques do. The tendency to “focus on the negative” needs to be replaced with the habit of accentuating the positive. A conversation with a touring professional provides a good illustration of this point. After the first round of a tournament, I asked Andy how the day went.

I’d like to congratulate you. You have a perfect swing. Now, you’re probably thinking, “What’s that about? He’s never seen my swing.” Well, I don’t need to, because I didn’t say the perfect swing (which, by the way, doesn’t exist, since we are all as different as snowflakes). I said a perfect swing, and everyone has one. Your perfect swing is the best one you can make today.

Everyone has comfort levels. They are the levels of performance or spheres of activity that are familiar to us. We’re comfortable playing in the B-flight, we’re comfortable chasing the leader from behind, or we’re comfortable just making the cut. We’re comfortable playing our usual game. Sabotage is the undermining (through underhanded interference) of a project or mission. Self­-sabotage doesn’t make sense—why would we undermine our own work to reach an important goal (like breaking 80)?

My teacher, Ösel Tendzin, had a favorite response when his meditation students would ask how to control their thoughts and emotions. He’d say, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. One person will struggle with the waves and be battered about. Another person will learn to ride them. Same waves, very different experiences.” We experience waves of emotions through the course of a tournament, a round of golf, or even a single golf hole.

Here’s a pre-round putting warm-up routine I have given tour players and amateurs alike. Step 1: Putt to nowhere. In an open area of the practice green, stroke a few putts with no target at all. Vary the distances you roll the putts. Do this until you feel your stroke is smooth and consistent.

Every golfer has had the experience of setting up to a shot and not feeling completely comfortable with some aspect of it. We might have a vague feeling that something is not quite right, or we might know what’s wrong but not bother to do anything about it. In either case, when we “go ahead and hit it anyway,” the result is usually terrible. I call that kind of shot an “anyway.” Anytime we can reflect on a shot and say, “You know, I knew better,” that was an anyway.

This is one of the many paradoxes of golf. The control we want to get refers to consistent accuracy, control over where the ball will go. The control we have to give up is the kind we exercise when we “steer” a shot. Steering is an expression of the thinking mind trying to control the swing to make sure we get the results we want. Paradoxically, the results we get usually range from not very good to terrible.

Everyone agrees that when we have a lot of thoughts while swinging, poor results follow. Why wouldn’t we want to be thinking during our swing? Why wouldn’t thinking help our body to do what our mind wants it to do? To understand this dynamic, we need to understand different aspects of mind and how they relate to the action of our body swinging a golf club. The many expressions of mind can be described in various ways.

We’re so hard on ourselves. We tie our self-worth to the results of our actions, to how well we hit a golf shot or what score we make on a hole. When things go badly, we start to doubt our basic goodness as human beings. We start to say things like “What’s wrong with me?” We usually can’t accept making a mistake, despite the fact that we know everybody makes them.

One of the challenges faced by all levels of golfers is expressed in this lament: “Why can’t I hit it on the course the way I was hitting it on the range? It feels so frustrating!” There are many reasons, one of which is purpose. When you are on the range before a round you are usually trying to get comfortable with the swing, seeing how it feels that day, looking for some swing key, and so on. Once we’re on the tee, it is about performance.

Once there were two monks walking along a path through the woods. When they came to a stream, they encountered a young woman dressed in fine silks, unable to get across without ruining her clothes. One of the monks offered to carry her on his back. She climbed on, they all crossed the stream, and on the other side he set her down. She thanked him, and the two monks continued on their way. The monastery to which these monks belonged had a rule prohibiting them from touching women.

Many years ago in Japan, a student came to a master swordsman and said, “If I become your devoted student, how long will it take for me to master the sword?”

The master replied, “Perhaps ten years.”

“That’s a long time,” said the student.

“If I try really hard, how long would it take me?”

The master replied, “Oh, maybe twenty years.”

The student was shocked. “First you said ten, now you say twenty years. What if I try as hard as I can?”

The best preparation for any shot is to have an image that is as complete and precise as possible. For putting, imagine the ball rolling the full distance to the hole. See in your mind’s eye the way it will change speed and direction. See the path it will take all the way to the exact point on the edge of the hole where the ball will fall in. In the following pages are techniques, exercises, and routines that will help you feel confident over any putt.

Often a golfer will have a bad start to a round and get completely depressed, assuming that the day will go that way. His discouragement creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since each hole is physically independent of the others, isn’t it possible that the rest of the round will be the best he ever played? Sometimes we struggle and struggle until late in the round when we say, “Oh, I give up. I’m just going to get up there and hit it.” And to our surprise the shot comes off well.

Do you talk to yourself on the golf course? Out loud, silently, or a bit of both? Most of us engage in some form of self-talk. We don’t usually pay much attention to the quality of what we’re saying, but perhaps we should. The way people talk about something to themselves is a reflection of how they feel about it. If we say, “I don’t have much of a chance on this shot,” we’re not likely to do well. On the other hand, if we say, “I can see what I need to do and how to do it,” we are more likely to succeed.

In golf, if we keep thinking about a mistake we made on a previous hole, or project how our score will turn out at the end of the round, it’s as if we’re daydreaming. We spend much of the time “asleep” to the present moment, preoccupied with thoughts about the past and future. Lacking awareness of the task at hand leads to poor decision making before the shot and distraction while we’re swinging.

Trust is one of the most important qualities in the game of golf. With trust, it feels like you and your golf club are partners dancing as one. Without trust, it feels like you and your golf club are on opposite sides in a tug-of-war. Golfers often have a mistaken notion of trust. They think that trusting their swing means it should be perfectly reliable. We’re human beings, not robots, so our swing doesn’t repeat exactly. What we can trust is that it will be like our signature.