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Well, it’s been an exciting week for me and for Fearless Golf as we had 3 wins on 3 different tours all in two weeks!
Last week Samantha Richdale (Duramed Future’s Tour) won the Turkey Hill Classic to lock up her LPGA Tour Card for the 2010 season.
- Roberto Castro won his second EGolf Tour event to push his winnings over $100k for the year, and move atop that Tour’s money list.
- Heath Slocum won the Barclays Classic to make it 3 in a row for Fearless Golfers in FedEx Cup events. So, by applying the techniques that coach teaches you, and that I try to reinforce, you can see that success happens!
Regarding Heath’s win last week, the things he said perfectly capture what your coaches and myself are trying to teach you! In this case, Heath was able to hit shots in the clutch, coming down the stretch with Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Steve Stricker chasing!
Heath said, “I’ve worked with Gio Valiante quite a bit on this. All I can do is play the golf course. That’s all I was doing. The people that I’m chasing or are chasing me, all that stuff is kind of irrelevant. I really was just trying to play the golf course. I just kept telling myself, “Hit this fairway. Try to hit this green in the best spot possible. Try to make the putt. As corny as it sounds and as easy as it sounds, if you stay in that routine, I tend to play better. The tournaments that I’ve played better in, I’m just better able to do that. I don’t worry about who is ahead of me, who is behind me. I’m focused right on the golf course and the task at hand.”em>
Using that as a launching point, below are a few keys to effective performance in golf that we discuss in Fearless Golf!
1. Stick to your routine. Every time. Regardless of the situation.
2. Play “golf” rather than “golf swing”. As we say, “do all your thinking behind the ball. Once you’re over the ball, be athletic!”
3. Love your short game (the stats tell the same story every year on every tour: short game matters!).
4. Get in the habit of asking yourself “what’s my target?”
5. Immerse yourself in the process, rather than the outcome. We tend to:
- Win tournaments by not thinking about winning.
- Shoot great scores by not thinking about a score.
- Beat other golfers by not thinking about other golfers.
Thus, immerse yourself in the process of playing the golf course, one shot at a time, to the exclusion of everything around you!
6. Swag. The way that you move matters. If you move like a slug, with your head down, feet shuffling, you’ll tend to feel lethargic. Great golfers (athletes in general) move a certain way. Think of Tiger, or Camilo, or Lebron … move and feel like an athlete on the golf course!
7. Be aware of your grip pressure. As tension or pressure builds, our grips tend to tighten, thus affecting rhythm, tempo, and mechanics of the swing. It’s a good thing, on a regular basis, to soften your grip pressure (if you watch the tape of Heath’s win, you can see him tightening and softening his hands as he walks down the fairways on the back 9).
My best,
Gio
