Putting With An Open Mind – New Audiobook – shortly to be released
Drive for show, and putt for dough. I know it is a cliche, but nevertheless it is true. The fastest way to bring your handicap down, or make more money on tour, is to shave a few putts from your round. Even just one would make a huge difference. It is the easiest thing to do, or the hardest, depending on how you think about it, and which part of your brain you are using. Children are often very good at putting because nobody has told them how difficult it is, or blinded them with technique. There is a lesson there for you too.
I’ll start with the most difficult challenge that faces you now. After that we can move to the easy stuff. Here goes…… I want you to stop judging your putting success by how many putts you hole or miss. I know this sounds revolutionary, but following statistics can be counterproductive. Statistics are there for you to use, but do not allow them to use you. You are their Master, not their slave. One way useful way that you can use a statistic is to recognise that tour players on average miss half their 6 foot putts. This fact surprises most clients. A good putt does not always find the hole.
So if you do not judge your putting success by how many putts you hole or miss then how can you measure your success? By setting yourself a much easier target. Adopt the mantra that you will follow your process, and your results will take care of themselves. In other words if your processes are good more putts will drop, and your statistics will improve as a result.
This is the process that you will use to improve your putting stats. There are only 4 magic ingredients to this process. They will open your mind, and as a result you will hole many more putts. Here they are:
- Be confident about the line
- Be confident about the speed of the green
- Be confident in yourself
- Be confident to stroke the ball smoothly
This sounds easy, and it certainly can be. The power word that applies to all these four ingredients is confidence, and my role is to explain HOW you can increase your confidence in these four critical areas. Before we can work on the HOW it will be helpful to understand a bit more about how your brain works, and unearth a few clues why most people get in their own way, and make putting, and life, a lot more difficult than they need be.
