Finding the Champion Within – Part Two

Continued from Part 1…

Your preparation for your second shot is as complete as you know how to make it.  With club in hand, you confidently address the ball and focus on how it will feel to hit it.

As you settle in, and concentrate on that feeling … somewhere in the next nanosecond, just before ‘takeaway’, doubt pops in. Out of nowhere, you flash back to the feel of chili dipping it. Hitting about an inch behind the ball. “Chunk!” What?!

Yeah. You’re going to hit it fat! Whomp. You can feel the turf stopping the club under the ball. The feel of that chunk reverberates in your muscles. It vibrates like a tuning fork. You try to talk yourself out of it. “No, I’m going to hit this cleanly!”

But it’s no use. You can’t shake the bad vibes. And you know they almost always lead to a man-sized “Chunk”. Disaster. You’ve done it a hundred times. It’s like the Devil has all of a sudden taken up residence in your head and he isn’t leaving any time soon. “Come on, CHUNK it,” he’s saying.

There follows a rapid inner dialogue in which you try to convince yourself that you’re not going to chunk it, and that you’re going to hit it cleanly.

Back and forth you go, arguing with your devil self. In the end, aware that others are watching you, and completely annoyed with this dark invader who is clearly trying to ruin your game, you go ahead and hit it anyway.

Whaddaya think happens?  Duh…Chunk.

These self destructive flashes come from fears that we have.  Fear of failure.  Fear of looking stupid.  Fear of looking like a loser.  Fear of being a loser. Fear of being abandoned.  Fear of being ostracized.  All kinds of fears.  There are hundreds of them.  Thousands, even.

The point is: you’re human. And the most basic human emotion is fear. If you don’t believe that, think about it for a few days and figure it out. Fear is universal. It’s the first of all the emotions. And it ain’t specific to you. It is the most common denominator of our species. ALL people, and that includes ALL golfers, have fears.

Now. What to do about these fears that foul your game. Fear of chunking it. Or skulling it. Or smothering it O.B. Or slicing it into the wa-wa.

First thing you do is to admit to yourself that you have this fear. “I’m afraid of chunking it,” you have to tell yourself. “I’m afraid. And the fear is so powerful that it often controls me. The fear of chunking makes me chunk it.” “The fear of losing, makes me lose.” “The fear of …” etc., etc.

Okay, you’re on the right track. You next have to realize that it’s natural to fear things. You’re no different from any other golfer. Or any other athlete. All athletes fear things. The Shortstop fears booting the easy grounder. The pitcher fears walking the number nine hitter. Djokovic fears whiffing the overhead. Brady fears the INT. Kobe fears the air ball. Minnesota Fats feared a bad leave. Whatever.

You’re just like everyone else. Not some weird kinda guy with self destructive urges. You’re a regular guy with a good head. And probably a good player, too. But what you don’t have … yet … is the ability to control your fear. And this is the part of golf, or any sport for that matter, that separates the good player from the great player. It’s the ice water in your veins, the steel in your spine. It’s what determines whether you’re a chump, … or a champion.

You know there’s a champion within you. You know there is. The problem is, you don’t know how to access him. You don’t know how to overcome the fear… of not being a champion.

So, what you need to do is to construct a short imaginary scenario that you can quickly run through at those critical times when self destructive fears flash into, and take control of, your consciousness. This will be a little mental routine that you’ll go to WHEN NECESSARY, and it will push the fear out of the forefront of your consciousness and into the background. It will allow you to restore the calm and make a good swing. It will settle your nerves. It will allow you to slip back into peak performance mode.

First, start with an objective understanding of the fear. What’s the worst that could happen if you chili dip it? Embarrassment? Loss of face? Loss of hole? Loss of a few bucks? Lost of prestige? What? Is it life threatening? Or life changing? Probably not.

So, in perspective, chunking it is not the most important thing in your life. Which is not to say that’s it’s unimportant. It’s just not the most important thing in your life. In other words, you can handle it.

Let’s read that again: it’s not life threatening, you can handle it. But, you might think, “Isn’t it a sign of some defect in my character, or my process, or my life? I feel like I’m trying to sabotage myself?” And the answer is, ‘no’. All people go through the same thing. Always have. Always will. Most people are not honest enough though, or courageous enough, to admit the fears and work through them.

You’ve taken the first step by recognizing your fear of chunking it. Now to the crux of the matter: go face to face with that fear. Go look for it. See if you can’t discover the source, or where it lives.

Do the following: imagine a door in front of you. Imagine opening the door and peering into the darkness behind. What are you looking for? The “Chunk” fear. It’s in there somewhere. In the darkness. Slowly move in and look around and see if you can find it. Look in this corner. And that. Up there. And over here. Look carefully. You want to find that fear and face it. Dead on. Eyeball to eyeball.

You’ll probably only see darkness. Which is fine. (These fears aren’t readily apparent or available.) Come back out of the dark and close the door. Okay, you didn’t find it. But you feel different now. Just the act of looking for it, and your willingness to face it, has pushed the fear out of your mind. Or so far to the back of your mind that it’s not a factor now. And you can go ahead and hit the shot as planned.

The more times you look for that Chunk fear, the less potency it will have. After a season or two, it basically becomes a non-factor.

The simple act of trying to find and confront the fear — no matter what it is — will allow you to overcome it. The little mental routine that you construct will beat it down and push it out of your mind. It will also calm your nerves, and erase the reverberation of that chunk that you just felt in your body.

In the last part of this series, you’ll see alternative routines and how to use them to strengthen your mental game. You’ll try them, rehearse them, get them down to a quick routine. So, if you need to use one — which only happens on occasion — as you back off the shot and gaze at the target one last time, nobody will ever know what’s going on upstairs.

Cover Photo via Flickr