Pressure
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If you want to become a consistent putter with better than average results, especially on important pressure putts, then you will need to learn more about how to handle yourself when the heat is on.
Your outlook, your self-talk, your expectations, your mental attitude, and how you react when luck turns against you, determine if you will be able to take your putting to a higher level.
Coping through Understanding and Practice
Like everything in life, the more you understand what is involved in achieving success, the better you can direct your efforts. However, knowledge and understanding can never replace the experience of actually doing it.
In other words, the more you practise your putting systematically, the more you are steeling your coping skills when faced with a pressure putt. Nothing can replace effort. You can't just think your way to success.
Gary Player, it is said, coined the phrase that the more he practised, the luckier he got. The concept that competence in performing an activity creates the confidence to do it.
The more you do something, the more you will be able to do it without conscious thinking. Putting with an empty mind is the ultimate goal. In the context of making a pressure putt: you see it, you feel it, and then without any thought you do it.
Human Mind
I have probably read more books and articles on the mental approach to putting than any other aspect of putting. I have listed some of the books in the Books on Putting section.
In human creation the mind is a wondrous thing. It allows us to think, and here is the interesting part. Our thoughts affect our moods that in turn affect our actions. We become, and are what we think.
Science and Art
Writing about the Science of Putting is easy. Explaining how to grip the putter shaft can be demonstrated, observed and corrected. You can explain the information using physics and biomechanics. But telling someone to be confident and to feel positive over a short putt, is more airy-fairy.
The Art of Putting, that of feel, touch, attitude and confidence is more abstract and more transient. On one day you can see the line of your putts clearly, the next day nothing fits your eye, and your confidence evaporates.
Topics
The only time you need to be bothered with goal setting is when your frustration has reached a level that you are now determined to do something about it. Otherwise the system of handicapping takes care of your diminishing ability.
What are your putting expectations each time you play and how realistic are they given your handicap? Are you using the correct criteria to measure your performance on the greens?
A pre-putt routine is a consistent and systematic procedure to help you cope with pressure by placing you in a non-thinking mode prior to starting your putting stroke. It should be simple, but exact.
Visualization is an effective technique used in sports training. It is a way for you to pre-program your performance by using your imagination to create vivid pictures of a future desired outcome.
A positive mental attitude is probably more important in golf than ability, as golf is as much a mind game as it is a physical game. If you want to improve your golf and your putting, it is not only your stroke mechanics that you must work on. You must also work on developing the mind.
Self-talk is the dialogue that we have with ourselves. Throughout the day we talk to ourselves, sometimes without realising it. Unfortunately most of what we say is negative, and counterproductive.
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