Putting Out of Your Mind by Bob Rotella

Author:Bob Rotella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports
Publisher: Free Press

IF YOU’RE EXECUTING a good mental routine, you’re going to feel the atmosphere around you change. It won’t, of course. But your perceptions of it will.

Players with strong putting routines tell me that they feel as if they’re stepping into their own little world. It’s almost like going into a bubble. Their awareness of the things around them fades as their focus on the putt they’re facing tightens and intensifies. It’s a pleasant place, this little world. They have the feeling they love to putt. They take great pleasure from their skill at it. They feel safe, secure, and competent. They don’t care what anyone else thinks or might think about the putt they’re about to hit. They are immersed in the challenge of putting it into the hole.

The climactic part of a good routine is very simple: putt to make it.

As my mother might say, “Why else would you putt?”

Unfortunately, there are lots of reasons. People putt not to three-putt. They putt to give themselves a good leave for their next putt. They putt not to go too far past the hole. They putt not to leave it short. They putt to make a good roll.

Well, you can buy a good roll in a doughnut shop. And none of those other reasons works very well, either.

Putt to make it. This means you’re absolutely absorbed in this moment, no other. Nothing else in the world interests you except making this particular putt. There is no future and no past. You’re not dwelling on the good shot you hit to get your ball to this spot. You’re not thinking of how you’ll feel if you miss. You’re just rolling this ball into that hole.

Seve Ballesteros, a two-time Masters champion, once four-putted a green at Augusta. He was asked about it later in the media center. “I putt and miss. I putt and miss. I putt and miss. I putt and make,” Seve explained.

People laughed, but it suggested to me something about the way Seve’s mind worked. Seve’s answer suggested that he was completely in the present moment on each of those putts. He didn’t say that the greens at Augusta were slick and treacherous. He didn’t ruminate about the iron shot that may have left him with a tough first putt. His attitude hadn’t changed from one putt to the next. He wasn’t affected by his misses. He had had four putts. He’d tried to make each of them. He’d succeeded on the fourth.

He had done all a golfer can do. That’s why, in his prime, he was such a great player.

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