Everyone knows that golf is not considered to be one of the easier sports to pick up and also master it. It is one of the sports that requires a lot of practice, patience, and time to be able to improve your game. Not to mention having the correct mindset. As Golf Monthly likes to mention that this sport is undoubtedly one of the most psychologically challenging sports in the world. We would like to highlight the Top 10 Golf Mental Tips that can help you to improve your golf mental game.
Golf Mental Tips To Improve Your Game
Here we have listed best golf mental game tips to improve your game!
1. Use your routine that you’ve practised during every golf round
Once you’ve practised your pre-shot routine at the driving range, every golf shot during your game on the course should be implemented. This allows your mind to calculate and focus on this particular shot.
Are you aiming correctly? What is the distance of this shot? Is the ball above your feet or below when you are about to hit? Will the ball pull or slice naturally, due to the positioning of the ball and your stance?
The pre-shot routine will also help with your course management on visualising your shots before you hit your golf shot every time.
Mentally, it also helps you to stay focused, be in the present, and commit yourself to every shot.
2. Practice putting with only 1 ball
This is a tip by Mark Wilson, a PGA tour professional who has a realistic view toward practising your putts during your pre-round warm-up. The idea is to prepare your mind that every putt matters during your warm-up. It is to keep yourself accountable for every practice putt that you make.
It is the same when you play on the course. Every putt is also considered a stroke in a normal match, why not practice as if it is the same?
3. Making a pre-round warm-up a habit
Besides warming up your body and mind, it is good to set a pre-round routine and keep it as a habit before you start every round of golf. This might take some effort because you will have to arrive at the golf course earlier than usual to register for your game as well as get yourself into the warm-up routine.
4. Warming up your body as well as your mind
Whenever we start any sporting activity, we are thought to warm up our bodies to prevent any physical injury when we play. The warming up of our mental state and getting into the golf minsdet is also important to remember because it helps you to be able to have 100% control of your body.
It would be having a full breakfast or being well hydrated before you begin your golf game can definitely help with that too. Some golfers need to have a cup of coffee before they are completely awake. That would be a remedy to warm up your mind.
5. Structure your golf practices (setting routines and goals)
After mentioning the 5 mindsets that golfers should have approaching to improve their golf game, the next 5 golf mental tips are actions that you can do to wrap your head around the mindset mentioned before. Therefore, the following tip is to structure your golf practices by setting routines and goals at the practice range and putting greens.
Many golfers like to head towards the driving range and order 200 balls to just hit them aimlessly into the range until they finish their balls. However, creating a structure for how you practice during your golf range can efficiently improve your golf game.
Setting practice goals at the driving range can also help you to get consistency in your golf game. For example, one could set a target to aim at, like the pole, or a flagstick out in the driving range.
For every club in your golf bag, you will aim to hit 20-30 balls consistently towards that flag then only you change to practice another club in your bag. This will keep you focused on individual clubs and understand your distance from each club better.
A pre-shot drill is also important to keep your game as consistent as possible. The pre-shot drill works by standing at the back of the ball and looking at the direction of your shot. This allows you to focus your mind on the shot and also consider all the other conditions for this shot.
This drill helps you on the course in terms of aiming in the right direction, directing your body parallel towards the line that you’ve visualised with your ball and proceeding with your stance to prepare to hit the ball. During your driving range practice sessions, this should be implemented regularly.
6. Appreciate your hard work practising golf
Whether it is a small monthly medal or a major tournament that you might participate in, we all will have come across at least once feeling the jitters before the game even starts. Second-guess yourself even though you know you’ve practised a lot prior to the competition.
As many golfers like to say that in golf, you are actually competing against yourself even though your score is being compared with another golfer’s score. However, appreciating your previous hard work practising your shots will make you believe in yourself and you will be more confident stepping onto the tee box to hit your shot.
7. Evaluate your expectations
Although everyone has a handicap score and that will generally determine your current standard of golf. However, setting the right expectation of golf score outcomes can also help to improve your game. Set realistic goals before you begin your golf shots instead of your score.
For example, your expectation should be towards hitting a consistent tee shot, or consistently getting good contact with the ball would be a better expectation to improve your golf game.
Setting an expectation to hit towards your handicap score or lower can be a good motivation for you to have before you begin every round of golf to challenge yourself to stay focused constantly and not think about other things.
8. Every shot counts
Golf scoring is calculated by counting how many times your golf clubs come in contact with your golf ball. Over 18 holes, you tally up that score and it can be used to rank amongst your friends/ flight mates either as a friendly golf match or a tournament.
To always think that you are just playing a friendly match and you can re-hit the same shot even after a bad shot may not help you to improve your game. It is a mentality that will not help you identify the mistakes in your swing after hitting a bad one.
It is good to have a mindset that every shot counts even on the driving range. This will keep you accountable for every bad shot or even the good shots that you’ve hit. You will be able to identify the smaller mistakes and improve your golf game quickly and efficiently.
9. Forget about your previous bad shots
We are all humans. It is always common to make mistakes, especially in golf. However, thinking about “the putt that you should have sunk it” or “I shouldn’t have lifted my head up for that tee-shot… look where I’ve ended up.. In the rough” will not improve the rest of your golf game, it also ruins your golfing mood.
Having a mindset to not dwell on your past golf mistakes and understanding golf psychology as much as possible will help you focus on the current golf shot that you will need to take. And the one thing that we all know in golf is that every shot counts.
10. Staying in the Present
As many people claim that golf can teach you many life lessons and with many life lessons that we learned, staying in the present is usually one of them. This is one of the most important mental golf tips whenever you are on the course. Staying in the Present will help you to keep the focus on the round of golf that you are currently playing.
It helps to block out all the distractions like your previous shot, your current score, and the strategy to come back from a deficit of your current golf score.
It can also help with getting consistent club contacts with your ball because you will be more focused on hitting one shot at a time.
Conclusion
Here are the 10 golf mental tips to improve your game that we think every golfer can try to use to become a more consistent golfer. We certainly hope you're golfing journey improves greatly with these mental tips for golf.
If you're looking forward to improving your flexibility while playing golf you can read our article- Golf Stretches and Flexibility Exercises to Improve your Game!!!
If you just started playing golf, you can read our blog - Best Ever Golf Tips for beginners.
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