I’ve been working and training as a mind coach for over 15 years and have been fortunate enough to witness many rapid transformations over that time. I’d like to share with you the story so far of one of my most recent clients. He really is an inspiring example of what can be achieved when you get your mind on board!

Prior to April 2010, Mark (now 20) had played the odd game of golf on holiday with his parents and had knocked a ball around in his garden. Keen to give golf a go, he decided to get himself fitted for a set of clubs and got stuck in. He started by taking lessons once a week, working on grooving a consistent swing that he could rely on. His initial 23 handicap quickly tumbled to 14 as he started to practice 5 or 6 days a week, hitting the range after work and as much as he could at weekends. The more he practised and played, the more he wanted to practise and play. As you might expect from a player with so little experience, he played very freely and creatively, going for every shot and having lots of ups and downs, learning from his many mistakes.

By early July, Mark won his first trophy at the Dyke Golf Club near Brighton (a tough course). This was a remarkable achievement in itself after such a short space of time. But his score was the truly remarkable feat. He went round in 71 shots,

1 UNDER PAR!!!

I spoke to him about this round recently and he said he simply said “Yeh, I played quite well”. Hang on a minute, 3 months of golf, played “quite well”, 1 under par???!!! John Richardson famously wrote his best seller about breaking par in a YEAR – not 3 MONTHS!!! And the best bit was Mark’s reaction when I asked him about it, “I never thought much of it really”.

By November 2010, Mark had been making great strides, taking his handicap down a further 7 shots in as many months. With such rapid progress, he had begun thinking about turning pro in 2011 and what it was going to take to get there. To become a PGA pro he needed to have at least a 4 handicap and successfully complete his PGA Playing Ability Test. At the same time he was starting to find that the better he got, the harder it was to improve. Rather like squeezing a bar of soap, the more he focused on shooting lower scores, the more they eluded him. He had developed his swing, he now needed to develop his mind and his ability to score consistently. This is when he approached me to help him become Single Minded.

I was obviously very impressed with his development to date and curious as to how his progress had seemingly ground to a halt. He was starting to become disheartened and stuck on a plateau. The key barrier to overcome was his inconsistent focus. He was inconsistent pre-shots, during shots and post-shots - and therefore had inconsistent scores, shooting almost as many double bogies as birdies. We set about working on 3 key areas to develop a consistently single minded approach for every shot. I shall go through the first area we worked on in Part 1 and cover the next two in Part 2 of this blog.

1. His Process

We developed 3 phases for each of his shots:

1. The Think Box – before the shot behind the ball

2. The Play Box – over the shot

3. The Learn Box – after the shot holding the follow through

For each shot, Mark often did not spend enough time in the Think Box so he would step up to the ball without a crystal clear image and feeling of his shot. Not being ready before he stepped up, led him to spend extra time thinking in the Play Box, causing him to think too much over the shot (a common mistake). He also had very little awareness of how to learn after shots, more concerned with the outcome of the shot than learning from how he played it.

When putting together routines, most players (even pros) do it based on what they’ve been told to do or seen on TV. This usually does not work as it misses out the key purpose of the routine – to get you ready for the shot EVERY TIME. In designing Mark’s routines, we started by uncovering his two “readiness triggers” – how he knew he was:

a) Ready to exit the Think Box and step up into the Play Box (for him this was clearly seeing the shot shape from behind the ball) and

b) Ready to play the shot in the Play Box (for him this was a warm expanding feeling of connectedness in the centre of his feet)

Knowing exactly HOW he was ready meant that he would no longer ever stand over shots waggling and feeling uncertain about what to do. It also meant we could tailor make specific routines for the 3 phases of each shot to ensure his readiness triggers would be fired off each time.

We also put in a Learn Box, a post-shot routine, to make him review and learn from every shot he played by imagining how he could play it even better. This stopped him dwelling on what he did wrong and focused him on what he wanted to do instead. This meant that he could feel good and learn from even bad shots and therefore recover quickly after mistakes, making the next shot even more single minded.

In Part 2, I will take you through the other 2 key areas we are working on that are transforming his results – his focus and his commitment to every shot.

In the mean time, if you’d like to learn more about how to get the most from your mind and your game, click here.

Love every shot!

Adam Sprackling

Single Minded Golf