The biggest barrier to using all of your talents is TIME. I’m not talking about the amount of time you have available to practice and play. I’m talking about how you use time when you do play. Most amateur golfers spend the majority of their rounds time travelling. Indeed, they spend so much time hopping from the past to the future and back again, they forget that are actually playing golf!

Single Minded Golf simply means connecting the ball to the target in your mind, making them one. In theory, doing this should be really easy – you see the ball, you see the target in your peripheral vision and you join the dots! When playing in the zone, this seems easy and natural, and when you’re not…well you know the rest!

The “zone” state that gets discussed and revered so much is simply a state of peak performance that only exists in the PRESENT MOMENT. It can’t exist when you’re dwelling on the past or future. For example:

PAST

• Being angry about a poor shot you’ve just played
• Thinking about a previous time you played that hole that didn’t go well
• Having high expectations based on how well you’ve been playing so far
• Remembering previous competitive rounds where you felt the pressure

FUTURE

• Being uncertain and worrying about the outcome of your shot
• Getting excited about the possibility of winning or scoring well
• Writing off the rest of your round when you’ve just had a poor hole
• Thinking that at some point the wheels will fall off!

I’ve written about NOW before, explaining the Playing State – the state to enter to play in now. However, sometimes the pull of the past or the future is so strong, it wants to pull us out of now. Staying in NOW requires you release these pulls so you can simply play that shot to the best of your ability.

Releasing emotional attachments to the past and future is not as simple as saying to yourself “I can’t do anything about it now” – if the emotions are there, they will pull you off track at some point. Emotions are simply flags that hold messages for us to pay attention to. So if you play a poor shot and get angry about it, the anger is simply saying – DO IT DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME. So all you need to do is re-run the shot in your mind doing it differently and feeling good about doing it that way. The anger will then go. If you jump ahead and feel nervous, it’s simply because you’re focusing on things going wrong, so the nerves are simply saying, CHANGE THE PICTURE! Picture things going the way you want, one shot at a time, and notice the nerves disappear. When you are able to focus on what you want, in the past and future, all of the emotional ties disappear so that you’re free to focus on what you want NOW.

I hope you use these mental golf tips to receive the messages from your past and future, so that you can put the flags down and focus on the flag you’re aiming at! I’m happy to answer your questions about dealing with time to help you develop your own golf psychology. Also, I’m giving away audio mental golf tips through a series of six free tipcasts to help you through the toughest parts of the game. Sign up for my newsletter now if you would like to receive these.

Love every shot!

Adam Sprackling

Mental Golf Coach