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How do you know you are going to win? It’s a question that’s asked of every player at every level. It doesn’t matter if you are coming home from a round with friends and it’s your wife asking or you are one of the best players in the world and it’s your fans, the media and the world asking. Winning is so process-oriented. There is so much that goes into playing well consistently that the victory actually happens well before you raise the trophy on Sunday or collect a couple of bucks from your friends after the round. There is a checklist that the great players run through. Are you taking care of yourself? Do you eat well? How is your fitness? What are your practice sessions like? How is your focus? Are you comfortable in your life both on and off the golf course? The better the player, the greater the stakes, the more faithful and dedicated he or she has to be to this process. When I look at the tour players we work closely with and analyze their best weeks, those weeks are invariably the ones when the players were the most comfortable in their surroundings. They like the hotel and have a favorite restaurant where they can wind down. They have productive practice and find a comfortable way to play the golf course. They do a couple of fun things away from the golf course that let their mind escape and relax. They just keep building on this process, day after day and tournament after tournament, until they have completed several good weeks in a row. It’s the same for the amateur player. You build a solid six holes into your round, then it expands to 12 holes. With the proper process in place, there is nothing to keep you from playing all 18 holes with this level of comfort. If you think back to your most successful rounds, you probably remember that you were comfortable. You enjoyed the group you were playing with and liked the golf course. You were relaxed in your surroundings. It allowed your best golf to come out naturally. Years ago, I was walking a practice round with one of our players, and he was playing with a marquee player. Our player was struggling. The entire round I was preaching to him to relax and stop trying so hard. The harder he tried the worse he played. I wanted him to let all the work that had gone into his preparation allow him to relax so that the game could flow out. It didn’t click for my player that day, but the marquee player leaned over during the round and told me we were on the right path. He said it had taken him years to figure it out, but when the light came on and he recognized the process needed to be consistently great, it allowed him to relax and perform like a champion. Jamie Mulligan is chief operating officer and an award-winning PGA professional at Long Beach’s Virginia Country Club. |
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