Exactly How Can Your Game Benefit From The US Open?

What does the US Open have to do with your game? Well if you want to play well in your own club competition it could have a lot to do with your success. When you practice simply focusing on your swing and blasting balls at the range it’s only one small aspect to true practice. This is what is called the practise makes perfect method. Yet if you’ve golfed for any length of time you know this simply isn’t true: practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practise makes perfect. So  really you should be practising what is essential for you to play at your best. Your Mental Game of Golf requires equal attention .

In order to play well with the anxiety of pressure you need to practise under the same conditions. When it counts the most and you need to pull off a great shot the stress of the moment you have forced on yourself increases 10 fold for some golfers. The trial by fire approach to improving your mental game of golf toughness and performing under pressure is a haphazard method. Yet it’s the only method that most amateur players know.

They enter more competitions with the hopes that by being in more events they will attain the mental game toughness and concentration skills to deal with the pressure. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work that way. What do you see happen most of the time with this typical approach ? Most players don’t perform to their own abilities in the key moments when everything is on the line because they lack the mental game training.

Then they merely chalk it up to knowledge and hope to get in the position to win again. This strategy , if you can call it one, is the “natural” way. Simply get in position as many times as possible and you’re bound to win. This is a very hit and miss mental game strategy. Although the odds are if you are in position enough times sooner or later you are going to win.

I want to submit to you that the more times you are in contention and don’t win that what you are doing is increasing the likelihood of losing again, not of making winning easier. Why is this, lack of mental game training? You have built a mindset of losing in your subconscious mind around not performing well under pressure. It will drive your behaviour (your thought processes and the swings you make under stress). You will without thinking reproduce the experience of losing that you are accustomed to.

This a tough pill to swallow but if you want real and lasting change then mental game preparation can save you months, and even years for some golfers, of pointless inner turmoil around pressure, performance anxiety, competitive stress and its influence on your golf game. So what if you could simulate   the US Open championship pressure when you practise and then were able to take that mindset out to the course when you play?

Now let’s say you have a mental game visualization routine that is filled with every imaginable pressure situation you could encounter. Do you think you would be perhaps a step or two ahead of your average player with the “natural” approach? I believe you most certainly would be!

By using visualization and actually feeling with your mind’s eye you can invent the exact kind of pressure you would feel in competition. Your subconscious mind will absorb these sessions and add them to your mental game collection and integrate them into your golfing self image. These become real events to your mind. With this approach you are providing your mind and body with sensory specific information about what anxiety is to you and how to perform when it’s there.

This is in fact preparing your mind and body to react in a desire behaviour when the anxiety of tournament play is present. Practise your mental game by imagining you are in the US Open and at the range hitting balls. Give yourself only one shot to hit your desired target. Create a scoring system to examine how well you do when practising this way. Increase the pressure by taking only one drive, then one iron, then a chip shot if you miss your imagined green with your approach shot. Try to pay very close attention to how your perform when using this technique.

If you want to accelerate your mental game improvement and begin to play well under pressure then it’s vital you simulate pressure in your practice routine. What other way is there to get ready to face the inevitable? Do you honestly want to rely on the time worn routine of entering more and more tournaments and matches with the hopes of getting used to it? How much time money are you prepared to lose before you make the changes needed?

Grab a hold of your potential and start to develop a dependable mental game. Your overall mindset on the course, your inner game of golf toughness, your sense of clarity and inner confidence under the gun, and a list of other benefits will enter your game. Not just occasionally but for a lifetime. You will be amazed how the little things that used to distract you before no longer enter your mind.