Mental Toughness
on the Golf Course

Make Nerves and Choking
a Thing of the Past

In need of mental toughness? We’ve all been there. A putt gets pushed wide because of a shaky hand on the 18th green. An approach shot darts into the water to doom a hole in a match play tournament. Your team needs your drive to hit the fairway in a scramble, and you pop it up harmlessly.

Nerves can get the best of anyone, so don’t feel too badly about it. But don’t feel the need to accept that as the inevitable result of stress on the golf course either. There are some simple techniques that can help make choking in the clutch a thing of the past.

Develop and Rely on
Mental Toughness

Develop and rely on mental toughness. A common theme of most mental golf tips to improve your performance in the clutch is to relax. The body doesn’t perform as well when it is under stress – as it relates to golf, stress makes your golf swing less fluid and likely a lot balkier because your brain concentrates on the situation rather than the golf swing. So for starters, try any relaxation technique that works for you in other settings and is appropriate for the golf course. If you meditate, for example, relying on strength from Heaven above, incorporate some of those mental techniques, or if closing your eyes and breathing deeply settles you down, you can use that to your advantage.

Develop and Rely on
a Pre-Shot Routine

Develop and rely on a pre-shot routine and stick with it. That helps clear your mind set and mentally focuses you on the golf shot rather than the situation. A four-foot putt to win a Nassau should be treated the same as a four-footer on the first putting green, as that will keep last-second nervousness from altering your form.

Mentally Focus on the Positives

Mentally focus on the positives. Don’t think about how an important golf shot has a lot relying on its outcome, but rather picture your solid form and the ball going where you want it to go. Think about the playing and shot making process, basically what you have control over, rather than the outcome of your golf ball coming to rest.

Mentally Prepare in Advance

For particularly important matches, like a club championship tournament, it may help to do some mental preparation in advance. The night before the match, picture the first few golf holes and how you intend to play them. Visualize the golf ball going from the tee to the fairway to the putting green, and right into the hole. That should keep the nerves away early in the match, since you’ll have already “seen” yourself excelling on that very terrain.