Rid Your Game of Mind Bumps
IN: Golf Psychology | by Carey Mumford | 11 Oct 2005
There are many reasons to stop, look and listen to ourselves as we lament the "bad hole" that rips off a good round. Often, that is followed by another bad hole that makes the "rip" appear even bigger. Strange as it seems, it is perhaps more disconcerting to make a birdie and follow that with a bogey or double (sometimes referred to as "the birdie curse."), or to need a par on the last for the lowest personal round ever, only to make another costly mistake (variously excused as "choking" or thinking about the score).
And then there's that wholesale "bump" that does not appear to get as much notice, but may be even more a part of the scenario - what about the player who shoots lights out and wins one week and doesn't make the cut the next?
At this point, if you have no "need to know," you will likely find this article superfluous. In case you are in "search mode," however, we'll start with a bit of a description of the size and shape of symptoms of "the problem", as we have come to understand it, entertain the anatomy of "the problem," and conclude with a recommendation or two.
Have a look at the following partial list and see how many of the indicated "bumps" you may ever have encountered in your game, and while at it, try to determine which ones are mental and which are "mechanical:"
- Badly missing a shot or putt
- Breakdowns in swing tempo
- Casual doubt before or during a shot
- Fear of a particular shot, like over water or a bunker
- Forgetting to use any swing key at all
- Great round followed by a poor one or vice versa
- Great shot, followed by a poor one or vice versa
- Guilt about playing instead of working
- Holes that you always regard as "hard"
- Missing a shot, dropping another ball and hitting it perfectly
- Noticing what other people are doing when you get ready to execute
- Playing so well, it upsets your buddy
- Running out of energy during the round
- Shots that don't shape the way you want them to or go where you intended
- Thinking about scoring
- Thinking about too many swing keys
- Wandering, indecisive pre-shot planning
No matter how we cut it, the questions that come in connection with those "bumps" are typically all over the map. We tend to get stuck on the symptoms that keep showing up when we play. That does little more than take potential solutions off the table, since we are not likely to find much other than sympathy from our friends on review of our bad fortune. So we need to point ourselves toward any root causes and general principles we can find so we don't mire the wheels of our cart in some bunker along the way.
Hopefully, we have already noticed that the "bumps" that cause a lot of our's and other's consternation are not a lot different in kind from the more familiar "yips." "Bumps" really come from the same root cause and and our concern reveals a somewhat limited view of how we may be perceiving and measuring what we see as our consistency in the game, or lack of it.
To find solutions to any problem, the first priority is identifying its basic nature. In this instance, some of that will be obvious. Some will not. Part of the more obvious lies in our behaviour styles. For instance, Drivers and Persuaders tend (not always, but certainly as a pattern and allowing for variations in supporting traits) to "start slow and finish fast." Craftsmen and Analysers are the opposite - "start fast and finish slow."
If you track tour performance, you can see that as a frequent pattern over the four rounds of an event. The 2005 American Express Championship gave us Tiger, in the Driver/Persuader group playing catch-up and Montgomerie, in the Craftsman/Analyser group falling back.
"Bumps" in the game certainly appear to come from a number of different sources, though the good news is that the origins are not really large in number. Mid-round, they can seem to piggy back on anything from accidental "moments" (in the "senior moments" variety) to some form of non-conscious alliance, or even conspiracy, with mistakes from the past, influenced by energy and style issues. A "bad" round following a good one may give us a more startling picture of the most commonplace issue, however. The "where-did-that-come-from?" mental invasion often is louder at that juncture than when something "bad" follows something "good." But both are born of the same parent. And they are part and parcel of why we employ the word "inconsistent" in our vocabulary. (Inconsistency is among the top three "complaints" we ever hear from players).
Unexpected Anxiety
We have already burned holes in the media (papers, internet, forums, etc) that contain our articles concerning the non-discriminatory nature of the human system and the clear indication that our systems do not make a distinction between what is good for us and what is not. So when we have those unusually good rounds, it sets us up (like a whack to the gut of our non-discriminatory system) for a sudden, unexpected dose of anxiety. That may lead to self-entrapment initiated and fermented by trying to figure out "how we did that" when we shot lights out (a fast track into the past where anxiety hangs out).
Often, if we make a birdie, we simply experience a mini-version of the "good round-bad round" syndrome. The birdie, for the average player, jolts the system and we don't have enough time (on Mother Nature's schedule) to make an adjustment before the next hole and that may open the gate for enough mental jello to produce a bogey. It may take a bogey to make a dent on the professional, accustomed to lower scores already. Of course, neither of those happen all the time, but we have all had the opportunity to view our own tendencies in that respect. And that typically serves up what will pass for an exception to normal style and energy patterns.
Several years ago, I helped a player install clear keys for his game and a couple of weeks later, he blew it around the Phoenix Open to a first round leading 62. Next day he shot 74. As he put it, all during the second round, he kept wondering how he had done what he did the day before.
Wondering Causes Wandering
A stance of "wondering" can be a very disarming feeling, and it can also lead to "wandering," in both the head and the hands. Sometimes, it is experienced as a head full of disconnected thoughts so that we can't get organised. That will typically be followed by something in our swings that feels as though it is not "in sync." But don't lose sight of the reality that such "strange" thinking is stimulated by the anxiety from the jolt of something that qualifies systemically as a "unique" experience, again due to our non discriminatory functions. And if one is still at a lower level of process maturity, or if there was a shaky past experience with personal trust, it is not difficult to be yanked out of focus and into a scrambling mode.
If we falter in our understanding of the trust issue, the effect from style tendencies are apt to multiply. At that point, those who start fast, then let down, then go again, or those who start slow, and close fast are left to bemoan the whole deal since "it happens so often." So what is really going on?
There is a clear and present reality that any, and every player is vulnerable to the likes of anxiety. In default, we are susceptible to co-operation with the human system's function that resists change, as well as to anything that qualifies as an "accident." Doubtless, at first blush, it may seem strange that our internal "programs" begin with full resistance to doing anything differently from what has marked the past. That is made all the more troubling, as it comes completely without any conscious awareness when it happens. Accidents we may understand, even though Freud said nothing is accidental. But co-operating with mistakes from the past may be in another mental zip code. That one is more difficult to understand or accept. In all those instances, anxiety will be either a passenger or "the engineer." In case you may have misplaced the information, anxiety is also an "energy burglar," and the more you have (anxiety), the earlier your "tank" will reach "empty" during a round and that can account for some of those bumps, as well. Energy, like style, holds another of the consistently persistent elements forming patterns that affect the game.
Reluctance To Change
Another noticeable tendency lies in our reluctance to give up our "old ways" of doing things. That does not come easily. Our systems will work overtime to keep us doing what we always did. That is no more than the "downside" of the way in which the first line of defence works in our lives. And, here, we must say again - remember that the human immune system - our first line of defence - is not only non-discriminatory, but it works at the non conscious level, and we cannot make it do differently, nor would we want to. The downside is that the system does resist what comes across as "change," so our choices and role in the matter lie in understanding that and how it works. The "upside" is that we can manage ourselves accordingly, rather than merely conceding to systemic defaults or trying to force some kind of "tough" control. The co-operation with resistance to change may well arise from the very first time we "got it going" really well and then stumbled. For reasons that may be hidden, we tend to dwell on mistakes (the negative) rather than to observe and hold to positive patterns in anything we do, and it stands out prominently in golf due to the solitary nature of the game (which rests on each golfer, alone, like it or not).
Hence, we pause here to enter a principle: "If we keep on thinking the way we always thought, we will keep on doing what we always did. And if we keep doing what we always did, we will keep on getting what we always got." Every result is preceded by an action and every action is preceded by a thought (not necessarily a conscious one). The hierarchy is: A thought always produces an action (even if it is an inaction). An action always produces a result (even if it is a zero). So if your thinking is messy, so will be your result.
By way of coping with results that may fail our understanding, it is a safe guess that most, if not all, players have, among other things, used the notion of a "comfort zone" to explain time and place, not to mention the normal resistance referred to here. The problem there is that by giving it a name ("comfort zone"), we are fooled into believing that the situation is now "handled," when all we have done is to seek relief through a pigeon hole in which to file away the problem. "Comfort zone" is one of those "politically correct" terms to cover for something we either don't want to admit to or don't understand.
We certainly do, however, have a tendency to keep repeating past situations, good and bad (we slip into our "comfort zone," or in some instances, use it to "hide in plain sight"). Many a player will point out that the same situation keeps cropping up at the same place on the same course, or at the same point in many rounds, and some of those, fortunately, are found in duplicating great rounds at the same location. Surprise comes, not so much from the occasions when a bump comes, but at those times when we make it from beginning to end without a bump at a location or time that has typically delivered a problem. That can bring on more worry even than an old "familiar" bump, and bring on concern that all that has gone before must have been misguided, if not dead wrong. And that does not even mention the furtive chases that follow marking the need to find what we did this time that was "so right."
A Case In Point
Charles Warren provided a prime example at the 2005 Chrysler Classic of Greensboro. He shot a 62, then a 74, then a 70 and closed with a 65. That is pretty much a picture of the way the non-discriminatory process unfolds: 1. "a provocative event (onset)," 2. period of "adjustment" 3. "recovery," that is part and parcel of every "bump" anyone ever encounters. It turns out that the human time frames and those that go with the rules of the golf are mismatched. The game goes faster than the default resolution time required to deal with the human factors - unless you know how to cut through the default by using the tool we call "clear key" to manage yourself and your game. That will minimise the number and severity of the "bumps," as well as neutralise the timing mismatches. In fact, if you learn that process, all the symptoms that we refer to here will be minimised, if not eliminated. Just do not expect that to happen instantly.
Ahhh, and that's where the persistent repetition of the puzzle steadily escalates. A lack of the tools for comprehension and management leads to new or growing doubt. It will be as Yogi Berra once said - "It's déjà vu all over again." The doubt returns and grows in the form of wondering how to duplicate the good things. The urgency to go "practice" grows more sharply, and there is a tendency to stretch every imaginable experiment to a "new" level, (along with searching the web for some sort of training aid). Under examination, however, the "chase" is less apt to find anything really new than it is to be just a re-visitation of the old. But the search goes on, looking for anything that we may not have identified even though we might not recognise it if we came upon it. How many times have you read posts in any of a number of forums reporting a "discovery" during practice that someone can't wait to try in the next game. "Wow, it fixed me right up!" And how many reports of a consistent, positive, experience have followed such exclamations?
Before narrowing the matter down, however, ask yourself how many other avenues in your life have the same kind of "bumps" that you find in your game? Suppose you had such occurrences with the same frequency while driving your car. If you had a fender bender at the same corner on most every trip to town, you might either give up going to town, driving at all, or at least question something about your ability. You might admire your "luck," but question your skill. And if that did not erode your confidence, it would seem strange, if not miraculous. Somewhere, we may need to entertain consideration of how it is that we can learn to drive well enough to be largely accident free, but we can't seem to get our golf games into such a groove. (That may take yet another white paper).
The problem for golfers is that we seem to have great trouble giving up the need to control, and that becomes an unavoidable piece of the action when we think about what we are doing while we do it. Taking that road inevitably leads either to a failure to develop habits, or the continuation of a playing climate in which even the habits we have built cannot come into play (since habits can only work when we think about something other than what we are doing while we are doing it). And, don't omit what happens when we build habits from a haphazard, piecemeal attention base, usually without knowing we are doing it. The only remedy for that is a well planned, well developed blueprint that can be implemented for habit development in the same manner as building a house - from foundation to roof, one brick at a time, to moving in and living fully.
That, by the way, is the singular reason that my own personal preferences include a base-line for evaluation that contains understanding what Homer Kelley found about the basic mechanical issues in the game, no matter what "method" one chooses to follow, what Hans Selye gave us for comprehension of the human immune system, and Erik Erikson's gift that paints the picture of genetically composed stages of human development. All of those are in the same class as Einstein's contributions to higher math and Hippocrates' initiative in what has become the practice of medicine. (Just to illustrate).
What Can We Do About It?
So what causes all that seeming "craziness" we encounter? And what can we do about it? We have underlined the natural, systemic functions that may lure us into co-operating with the past. That "past" frame of reference, even though normal, quickly changes to too much concern for the future. In turn that can lead to a search for the golfing grail in the form of experimentation. ("There must be something somewhere that can help"). And before we know it, we have engaged in uneven skill searches, skewered habit development and/or building habits from skills that were flawed, all within a tentative environment that excretes anxiety much like the exhaust pipe sloughs the carbon monoxide from the engine of your car. (And that goes all the way to golfing "environmental pollution," in case you haven't noticed any recent golf magazine content). Why? because the quiet grinding that accompanies any soft spots in the way we trust ourselves produces static in the mind. The static from that foils examination of our options and needs, and leaves us flailing instead of finding a systematic way of evaluating and a means to move ahead in orderly fashion. It comes out like a large, if not gargantuan, conspiracy from within.
The recommendation, then, is, first of all, to build a reliable method of evaluating what we are doing and a "picture" of our personal needs revealed through that evaluation. Then create a meaningful personal game development program based on principles that will stand firm against "thunder and lightning," and the experimental manipulation that is otherwise almost sure to follow. And finally, learn how to build effective habits and an automatic path, which together supply the only environment in which habits work effectively. Then, and only then, go practice until maturity comes. (You will not find it at a "drive through" window or "walk-in clinic" some place).
The Guarantee
The guarantee is that if you follow that kind of plan, you will rid yourself of most of the bumps - not all, since our humanity simply is not up to the "perfection" that many want to imagine. But we can be a lot better than we have been. If golf were a team sport, we could perhaps take less responsibility for our own games. But it is not that way. Any golfer who is not prepared to be totally self-managed and self-responsible is not likely to gain the top of whatever mountain he/she is attempting to climb. Of course, we could limit our play to "partner" type games and that would provide, at least, an opportunity to lay our mistakes at someone else's feet.
Our humanity may prevent whatever we have in our minds that comes out as a "perfect" picture. But it is a certainty that we can have far more consistency and confidence than we typically demonstrate, whether as a seasoned pro or beginning amateur. There is no magic. It all comes from well designed, effective work. It does not have to be hard, just well defined and organised.
Now apply your clear key to that kind of plan.
