Golfers are a conundrum, psychologically speaking. They are at once the most hopeful, and most pessimistic, people you will ever encounter—hoping for the best but not daring to expect it, and chasing perfection in an imperfect world, they are certain that a change of clubs, a change in their swing, a new golf ball, a fancy new grip on their putter, a different pair of shoes—almost anything, in fact—will make all the difference. Some change, some magic bullet, is all they need to open up the wonderful world of fairways and greens hit, of putts made; the world of breaking 100, 90, or 80, of low handicaps and strokes given, not gotten.
Professional golfers, as you might expect, take this to the extreme (or at least many of them do.) Take the frustration that we feel as recreational players and multiply it by factoring in the pressure of making a living for yourself— and your caddie, if you have a regular looper—or providing for your family. It’s easy to see how professionals golfers get wrapped up in their own heads and end up turning to “gurus” like Bob Rotella to guide them back out of the dark places their minds go to when fairways elude them and putts don’t drop.
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I freely admit to being skeptical when it comes to mental-game “self-help” books; as a wise man once said, “The very fact that self-help books exist is proof that they don’t work.” In fact, I am more than skeptical: I think they’re pointless nonsense, and Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot, the latest book from Dr. Bob Rotella, does nothing to change my mind.
Supporting my case for that point of view is the choice of golfer to write the foreword to this book: Padraig Harrington. Don’t get me wrong, I think Paddy Harrington is a great guy; a real gentleman, and one of the best interviews in golf. He gives thoughtful answers to good questions—sometimes rather long and rambling, but responsive and well thought-out. But… Paddy won the Open Championship two years in a row, in 2007 & 2008 (not so unusual a feat, actually—it has been done nine times since 1900, including six times post World War II), and was ranked as high as #3 in the world—and then he decided that he needed to change his swing.
Why would he do that? He was right up there at the pinnacle of his sport, and even followed his 2008 Open Championship win with a PGA Championship later that year. And the result of changing his swing? Within a couple of years he had dropped out of the Top 25, and a few years later began a slide that saw him bottom out at #385 in the world by late 2014.
To me, Paddy Harrington is a great example of the way that pro golfers sometimes can’t get out of their own way—so maybe they do need someone like Dr Bob whispering in their ear—but to me all of this “mental game” stuff is just common sense and can be boiled down to a few simple concepts: Play within yourself, know your game, know (and trust) your abilities; or in the (paraphrased) words of my favorite golf writer, Dan Jenkins (as spoken by pro-golfer character Bobby Joe Grooves in Dan’s golf novel Slim and None): “…keep your mind from jacking with your swing when you haven’t invited it to the shot.”
Maybe it’s because my competitive background is in two very different sports (different both from golf and from each other): motorcycle racing and gymnastics. These are sports in which you are on your own—no caddie holding your hand and giving you advice—and in which the consequences of poor choices or indecisiveness can be severe. In the case of motorcycle racing it can be high-speed crashes (been there, done that); in gymnastics it’s flying off of the apparatus in an unintended manner and landing on something other than your feet (had some close calls…).
As consequences go, drowning a new Pro V1 in the hazard fronting a long par-3, or three-putting from four feet to turn a birdie into a bogey—well, they sort of pale in comparison, and what this means is that I learned my self-reliance skills in a school of hard knocks, and I didn’t need the words of a self-help guru like “Dr Bob” to guide me on my way.
This book is replete with pithy, self-help-ish chapter titles like “You Are What You Think About Yourself”, “Believing In You and Your Game”, and “A Quiet Mind Will Set Your Talent Free” – all sounding very self-help-seminar-at-the-convention-center, and all very eye-roll inducing.
All I can say about Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot is that the several hours one might spend reading this book, and the $27.00 + tax that you would spend to buy it, would be better spent at your local golf course, just getting out and playing the game—and figuring it out for yourself.
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